Just spent two days visiting with Chuck Davis, who came to Camp Angel in 1943 and taught the earliest Fine Arts members how to set type and run a press. In fact, he is the one who provided the first tabletop Kelsey printing press, which they used to print Glen Coffield’s The Horned Moon.

Chuck and his daughter Kathryn came to Eugene this weekend and viewed the Camp Waldport Records and Glen Coffield Papers at the University of Oregon Special Collections. Chuck provided some fascinating details of the Fine Arts’ beginnings, telling how in one case they discussed and debated over six hours on what typefaces to order for making their first book. He leafed through the Camp #56 library records and smiled at the list of his personal book requests to the Oregon State Library: all books on printing. 

He also answered a question that had been bugging me for years: Who was the “C D Print” that published Coffield’s The Horse of Summer at La Verne, California in 1946? It was Chuck Davis, doing a project while he was a student at La Verne College. “Glen had sent me lots of poems,” he said. “I wanted to print some of his work.”

Chuck Davis with copy of Glen Coffield’s Horned Moon.