H. Alfred (Fred) Fowler was born in Kansas in the late 1880s. His family moved to Kansas City, Missouri when he was a child, and there Fowler remained most of the rest of his life, temporarily relocating to San Angelo, Texas during World War II.

Fowler had offices in the Kansas City Board of Trade Building. He was passionate about bookplates and woodcuts, and with a group of like-minded individuals started the American Bookplate Society in 1913. He was also a founding member of the Woodcut Society and the Prairie Print Makers. Fowler died in 1959.

Julius John (J.J.) Lankes was born in 1884 in Buffalo, New York. His father worked at a lumber mill, allowing the young Lankes to become familiar with a wide variety of wood as a child, which would serve his artistic career later in life. Lankes started as a draftsman working with patent drawings and later began working with woodcuts after studying at the Art Students' League of Buffalo and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Lankes illustrated works for authors such as Robert Frost and Beatrix Potter. He taught for several years at Wells College in Aurora, New York, and he served as head of technical illustrating of the reproduction section for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics from 1943-1950.

Lankes married Edee Maria Bartlett in 1914, and together they had four children. Lankes died on 22 April, 1960 in North Carolina and was buried in Buffalo, New York.

The Prairie Print Makers formed in Birger Sandzen's Lindsborg, Kan. art studio on December 28, 1930. This group of artists wished to offer affordable, appealing art based upon the Kansas landscape.

Many members of the Prairie Print Makers were professional artists; others were amateurs learning from the professionals. The group worked in etchings, silkscreens, linoleum cuts, block prints, and lithographs.