Victor Karl Hammer was an Austrian-born American painter, sculptor, printer, and typographer.
13 Facts About Victor Hammer
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Victor Hammer began his apprenticeship in architecture at the age of fifteen in the studio of Camillo Sitte, author of Der Staedte-Bau nach seinen kuenstlerischen Graundsaetzen.
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Victor Hammer produced his first type design, Victor Hammer Uncial, in 1921.
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Victor Hammer moved to Kolbsheim in Alsace in 1934, where he designed and built a chapel on an estate for a friend.
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From 1936 to 1939, Victor Hammer lived in Vienna, where he served as professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste.
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Victor Hammer taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York until 1948.
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In 1948, Victor Hammer settled in Lexington, Kentucky and was artist-in-residence at Transylvania University, a post he held until retirement in 1953.
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Victor Hammer designed the seal for the University of Louisville, a portrait of Minerva, which has been used since the 1950s.
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Victor Hammer built his wooden press in 1927 with the help of local Florentine craftsmen based on a press in the Laurentian Library; in 1960, the Laurentian's press was discovered to be a copy constructed in 1818.
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Victor Hammer was first married to Rosl Rossbach, and together they had two children, Veronika and Jacob.
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Carolyn Reading Victor Hammer founded the King Library Pres in 1956 and later became the University of Kentucky Libraries' curator of rare books.
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Victor Hammer hand printed the first edition of his work, The Wisdom of the Desert.
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Victor Hammer died in Lexington on July 8,1967, and is buried in the cemetery of Pisgah Presbyterian Church near Versailles, Kentucky.