_There were derivative traces in Bradley’s early work--and whose hasn’t?--but when he hit his stride it wasn’t Europe’s leadership he followed. He discovered American colonial typography, bold and free, and from that springboard he took off into a career of non-archaic, non-repetitive, exuberant and exhilarating design. In its way it was as American as the Declaration of Independence. In this field we have never had any more indigenous art than Bradley’s._ _He was a native, corn-fed American in another way, too. It was a time when Kelmscott House had set a pattern, and the only pious ambition for a serious typographic designer was to produce meticulous limited editions for equally limited collectors. Bradley may have had some such idea in mind when he started the Wayside Press, but thank God it didn’t work. There was a lusty, democratic ambition in that slight body, and it thrilled him to speak to thousands, even millions, instead of just scores. The turbulent current of American commercial and industrial life appealed to him more than any exquisite backwater._ _So he spread his work over magazines, newspapers, the advertising of such houses as the Strathmore Paper Company, his own lively but not limited publications, even the movies. So he enormously enriched our arts; and he smashed more false fronts and took more liberties--successfully--than anyone has done before or since._ _Now his retirement has lasted almost as long as his active career. His work has been absorbed into our culture so completely that many of the young men cavorting brilliantly in his wake today are scarcely aware of their debt to him--the pioneer and pacemaker. They should be--he is aware of them: he closes here with chuckling praises of the fine, free-handed job they are doing. There was always a giant’s spirit in this powerful little man, and it’s as strong and generous now as it ever was. My memory is long enough that I can say for all these latecomers, “Thank you no end for everything, Will Bradley.”_ WALTER DORWIN TEAGUE _New York May, 1954_ Will Bradley, His Chap Book [Illustration] THE BOY PRINTER OF ISHPEMING It is graduation day in the little brown schoolhouse on Baltimore Street in Lynn, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. Miss Parrot is the teacher--a dear! You are six years old; next month you will be seven. The blackboard is covered with chalk drawings: sailboats, steamboats, ferryboats, trains of cars, houses, people and animals. You are the artist. Your mamma, with other mammas, is sitting on the platform, proud of her Willie--who is probably plenty proud of himself.