In a weathered canal warehouse nestled beside a sleepy Ohio lake, the air smells of sawdust and history. The place hums with quiet reverence—the kind you feel in spaces shaped by hand and heart. It’s here, among quarter-sawn white oak, six-head molders, and the occasional bourbon barrel anecdote, that Dard Hunter III has spent a lifetime crafting more than just frames. He’s held together a legacy.
Before our interview could begin, Dard had to round up the cats. A comically high number of them—five by my count, all rescues from the neighborhood—roamed Dard Hunter Studios like they owned the place. “Out you go,” he muttered as he gently shooed each one toward the door. I’m highly allergic, which made the operation feel even more urgent. Only once the last tail disappeared outside did we settle in for takeout lunch and begin to talk.
The workshop is housed in an 1835 Ohio and Erie canal warehouse that once offloaded dry goods from boats drifting along the waterway. Dard transformed the space into a full millwork studio and showroom, where hand-finished frames now share company with Motawi tiles, Yoshiko Yamamoto woodblock prints, pottery, and jewelry inspired by designs created over a century ago by his grandfather, Dard Hunter—the original; the one Sherwin-Williams named a paint color after.
In 1994, Dard opened Dard Hunter Studios, initially using his grandfather’s Washington hand press to recreate classic designs on handmade paper. A decade later, he moved the business into the warehouse, building out the space not just for production, but for storytelling—each frame, each object a continuation of something older.
If you ask Dard about the Arts and Crafts movement, he won’t give you a textbook answer. He’ll walk you into it. Through the shop, and then a short drive up the hill overlooking Chillicothe, to the family home—a house that has held four generations of Hunters, and a legacy carved into every beam.
A House That Speaks
The Hunter family home is more than a structure. It’s an autobiography told in lathe and lead type. Nothing here feels staged or precious—yet everything feels intentional. In one corner of a parlor-like room, two full-sized human skeletons stand upright, watching silently over the space. They aren’t Halloween props. They’re medical specimens acquired by Dard’s grandfather, who—like a more modern Leonardo da Vinci—believed in studying human anatomy to better understand proportion and design.
“Cool,” I said when I first saw them, though I couldn’t think of anything more articulate in the moment. Dard chuckled. “My wife, Karissa is not a fan,” he admitted.
Every inch of the home bears the mark of human hands. Elaborate crown moldings near the ceiling were installed by Dard Sr. when he acquired the home in 1919. The stained glass windows in the library were designed and made by Dard’s grandfather, each one illustrating a scene from the history of printing—typesetter, printer, papermaker.
The newer wing of the house—a warm, open kitchen and living space—was designed and built by Dard himself, down to the cabinetry and furniture. “Karissa wanted a real living space,” he explains. The television—a rare concession to modern life—sits quietly on the wall, but its screensaver of Japanese cherry blossoms makes it feel more like a framed print than a digital device.
It’s not a museum, not a shrine. Dard Hunter III isn’t preserving the past—he’s living in it.
Dard’s grandfather—the first Dard Hunter—was many things: papermaker, typographer, printer, traveler, philosopher. A Roycrofter turned rogue visionary who set out to revive the lost art of handmade paper in America. And then took it further. He made the paper, cast the type, wrote the words, printed the books. Every part of it—by hand.
“He’s the first person in history to make an entire book—from start to finish,” Dard says, his voice soft with awe. “Paper, type, printing. All of it.”
From Type to Tile
Dard didn’t always intend to carry the family torch. As a kid, he was more into engines and machines. But after a transformative trip with his father—who passed away just two days later—everything shifted. “He always said, ‘Small strokes fell big oaks.’ I think that stuck.”
By the late ’90s, he was making frames for Motawi Tileworks, starting with wide, legacy-style pieces that cradled ceramic like a gallery’s embrace. The Oak Park frame followed—a clean-lined, two-inch profile that’s become a classic pairing for Motawi’s expressive tiles. “Probably ninety-five percent of what we make now are those,” he says. But the frames are just the tip of the story.
The deeper current is one of education, preservation, and philosophy. Dard isn’t just shaping wood—he’s shaping objects of art. He talks about medullary rays and molders like a poet might describe sonnets: with reverence for form and function. “Craftsmanship isn’t just about making things,” he says. “It’s about how you live.”
A Printer’s Soul
In the heart of the house is a room that could double as a museum—but not the quiet, clinical kind. This is a working archive. Lead type, hand-carved punches, Gutenberg moulds. Books composed not just by hand, but by heart—written directly at the composing table, one backward letter at a time.
“There’s no manuscript for this one,” he says, holding Papermaking by Hand in America, the final book his grandfather composed. “He wrote it while setting the type. Rewrote every line until it justified perfectly.”
In the fireproof archive room, every letter his grandfather received is stored in careful order. Many with carbon copies of his replies. “We saved everything,” Dard says. And now he’s digitizing it, slowly, meticulously—because no one else knows where it all is.
Holding the Torch
Dard’s team is small. Five people, including a retired mailman named Billy Neff who’s one of the shop’s essential hands. “He’s core now,” Dard says. “You can replace roles. But you can’t replace the way someone cares.”
The molding business, once a staple of the operation, was recently wound down after the passing of a longtime colleague. “We decided to let that go,” Dard said. With the team now smaller—but deeply committed—he’s turning his attention toward something that’s been calling to him for years: education. “I’d really love to do more educational programming—workshops on typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding,” he said. “We used to. I want to get back to that.”
A Legacy That Breathes
Dard doesn’t have children. But he’s got stories, tools, letters, books, a house, a shop, and a calling. “I’ve started thinking more about legacy,” he admits. “When I’m gone, I want to leave the light on.”
That light is visible in every beveled edge, every hand-waxed frame, every class he dreams of teaching. It's in the ginkgo tree, still standing in front of the house after more than a century. In the quiet echo of letterpress. In the careful way he holds a piece of quarter-sawn oak to the light, looking for just the right shimmer.
As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked him: “What’s it like being named Dard Hunter?”
He paused. “Honestly? It didn’t mean much at all for a long time.”
Then he told me about a moment in Europe—Switzerland, he thinks—when everything shifted. He was in a museum, walking through an exhibit on printing, when he suddenly came upon his grandfather’s work. “Just… right there. Behind glass. And it hit me—this is real. This isn’t just a family name. This is something that mattered.”
That encounter reframed everything. “I started feeling more like a steward than just a namesake.”
And in that, the legacy isn’t just preserved. It lives.
Pictured: Dard Hunter III with his wife, Karissa, and the family dogs.
