In January 2014 helveticka moved to its current location – a 1930 building that’s housed a number of tenants over the last 89 years. In fact, just before our arrival, it was home to Johnston Printing, a family-owned offset printing operation we’d used for more than 30 years. Back in the 40s, though, P-W Trailer Supply Co. did business here.
Thanks to the prolific commercial photographer Charles A. Libby, images of P-W’s handiwork were captured in 1941. Today, we have access to 150,000 of his negatives – a fifth of which are available digitally – at the Joel E. Ferris Research Archives of the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture. We’ve tapped into that collection on more than one occasion for our exhibit-related projects.
