You may remember reading about my friend Jack in Not All Bad Comes to Harm You. I am sad to say that he has recently passed from this world after 96 amazing years.
Jack's eye for beautiful graphic design allowed him to create renowned works in typography and printing that will live on for generations to come at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and elsewhere.
Happily, he lived to see his memoir published this past fall, Oxen. Plough. Bicycle. Photographs & Fragments from a Tuscan diary, 1956-1958, described as "a portfolio of nine gelatin silver prints with broadside, letterpress with handset type, by Jack Werner Stauffacher, recipient of the American Institute for Graphic Arts’ AIGA Metal, the highest honor of the design profession." I still hold fond memories of reviewing the draft pages of the book with him on our ferry rides together several years ago.
As is evidenced by the tributes to Jack in the San Francisco Chronicle and our local newspaper, he was a man who truly knew his purpose and embraced his gifts. We were fortunate to have his inspiration in our midst for so long.
Jack often reminded me that life moves ever onward, and far too quickly. "Ride gently; take wine and bread and cheese. Stop in a meadow in the midst of your journey and enjoy." I try, every day, to heed his words.
He will never be far from the thoughts of three children and his wife of 70 years, the lovely Josephine.
Rest in peace, my friend.