Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
Amelia Hugill-Fontanel is the Associate Curator in the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology. She specializes in teaching with primary sources about 19th- through 21st-century graphic design, typography, and printing. As the Cary’s master printer, she directs printing instruction and edition production on 30 different vintage letterpress presses. With that, she is the collections manager of several thousand rare fonts of metal and wood type. In 2014, she restored the Cary’s Kelmscott-Goudy Albion iron handpress that was used to print William Morris’s fine press masterpiece, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Now Newly Imprinted, 1896. Since then, she has focused on iron handpress care, mentoring colleagues worldwide about the methods necessary to appropriately steward these machines.
Fontanel is the 2024 recipient of RIT’s Edline M. Chun Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service. She earned this through reviving Letterpress Printmaking in the curriculum after a 20-year hiatus. Prior to her Cary tenure, she was the production editor of RIT Press, where she supervised publication of over 60 scholarly titles. Her experience in archival collections management and exhibition curation began at the George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. From 2019 to 2023, she served on the first formal board of directors for the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. She also worked as Vice President for Programs for the American Printing History Association from 2020 to 2022, completing a decade of board service there.
She holds a B.A. in art history/studio art from Nazareth University and an M.S. in printing technology/design & typography from RIT. Her vocation is her avocation, printing in a home studio that she shares with her partner at Dry Inc.