Volume 2, Number 5
Dec 1989

Obituary: Dard Hunter 11

On September 13, 1989, Dard Hunter Jr. died following heart surgery in Chillicothe, Ohio--home of the Hunter family for many generations. Dard Jr. will perhaps best be remembered for his two-volume biography entitled The Life Work of Dard Hunter, written as a homage to his father. Less well known, however, were the other mediums in which Dard Jr. excelled. A visit to the Hunter home, Mountain House, reveals an astonishing array of beautifully designed and constructed veneer furniture; ceramics; firearms; and an a much smaller scale, jewelry and miniature books. He was an avid collector of books and prints. Dard Jr. was an early graduate of the museum curator program at the Winterthur Museum, and for over two decades, he served as curator of one of Chillicothe's important historic sites, Adena. He served on the Advisory Board of the Friends of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum, Inc.

A humble and generous man, Dard Jr. was me of his father's greatest admirers. Fortunately, before his untimely death, Dard Jr. and his son, Dard III, were able to retrace father's and grandfather's footsteps in Europe this past year. More recently, they visited the site of the Hunter papermill at Marlborough-on-Hudson, New York. As a result, Dard III is heading a project to rebuild the mill so that paper can be made there once again. And so the love for handmade paper and the book lives an from father and son through grandson.