Rate My Professor Robert Palladino

Robert Joseph Palladino served as a professor at Reed College from 1969 to 1984, where he taught calligraphy and paleography in the art department. A former Trappist monk born on November 5, 1932, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Palladino entered the Cistercian order after high school and later moved with the community to an abbey near Lafayette, Oregon, where he worked as scribe, choirmaster, and bookbinder. He left the order in 1968 and studied with Lloyd J. Reynolds at Reed before assuming Reynolds’ part-time calligraphy classes upon his retirement. Palladino also studied Roman majuscules and related arts with Father Edward Catich in Iowa. He taught approximately eighty students each year drawn from all academic disciplines at Reed.

Palladino influenced numerous students who went on to careers in art, design, typography, and other fields, including Steve Jobs, who credited Palladino’s instruction with inspiring the use of multiple typefaces on the original Macintosh computer. After the calligraphy program ended in 1984, Palladino pursued calligraphy commissions, served as president of the Society for Italic Handwriting, and helped pioneer calligraphy instruction in Portland public schools. He later resumed priestly duties following the death of his wife, Catherine Halverson. Palladino contributed to the revival of calligraphy studies at Reed through the Calligraphy Initiative in Honor of Lloyd J. Reynolds at the Cooley Gallery and returned as a guest instructor shortly before his death on February 26, 2016, at age 83. Professional Email: null