Ray Nash (February 27, 1905May 21, 1982)[1] [2] was an American graphic arts historian and expert on calligraphy and the history of printing.
Nash was born in Oregon and was a 1928 graduate of the University of Oregon. He was an art instructor at the New School in New York. In 1937 he began a long association with Dartmouth College as a lecturer; he received a graduate degree there in 1949 (along with an M.A. from Harvard in 1947),[3] was a professor of art in 1949, Director of Publications in 1960, and a professor emeritus in 1970. Nash ran the Graphic Arts Workshop at Dartmouth from 1937 until 1970.
In 1945, Nash designed a new railroad schedule for the Boston & Maine Railroad featuring legible typography and cartoon illustrators to decipher the previously confusing data.[4] From 1953 to 1965, Nash was co-editor with Roderick Stinehour of Printing & Graphic Arts, a journal devoted to typography and printing and printed by the Stinehour Press in Lunenberg, Vermont.
Nash was awarded the AIGA medal in 1956.[5]
According to the New York Times, "He lectured on at Oxford University in 1965, was an authority on handwriting and the author of several books on calligraphy and printing. He was an officer of the Order of Leopold from the Belgian Government and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Antiquaries of London." Nash was an advisor to the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.