Press News: June 2009

Hardships and Vicissitudes in the Lives of Printers

We seem to have established a tradition of updating our press news no more often than once every two years – a habit which we deplore but can’t in conscience promise to amend. All we can say is that we will try. Printing books by letterpress is not an occupation fraught with excitement, so it might be said that updating press news in less that two-year increments might leave us with very little to say.

Then too, it might be said in our defence that one of the delights of this sort of work – printing from hand-set types on hand and cylinder presses – is its languorous quality: in an age when failing to reply to an e.mail within five minutes must be counted an unforgivable social solecism, taking several weeks to produce a small chapbook might be thought positively sybaritic. At all events, ours can hardly be seen as a life crowded with incident, and all the better for that.

As an example, recently we received a news-letter update – what I suppose used to be called an Extra!!! Edition in the newspaper trade – from Martyn Ould at the Old School Press near Frome, in England, in which he told of pulling out a case of Bembo “only to find that it had been home (or at least a dining room) to mice over the winter. They had carted type around the case, mostly managing to haul away all the o’s into other pockets. … Several hours’ work ahead.”

Martyn’s news-letter and my reply, which follows, together provide hard-hitting reportage of breaking news in the private press, and will surely give the lie to those who suppose our lives to be uneventful:

Dear Martyn,

Thanks for the lovely News. I commiserate with you, having had many similar occurrences over the years. We live virtually in the woods, so we do have visitors frequently, especially in the winter when they come in for warmth. They are remarkably adroit at finding ways into type frames, and I’ve become adept myself at foiling them, but they do manage it still. Not to grandstand, but on one occasion I opened a case to discover a mouse’s nest in the ‘h’ box with several little pink babies in it. I closed the case gently and a couple of weeks later, when I opened it again, they were gone – presumably at college by that time. Another time, in our old press room (which was prone to flooding) I pulled out a case near the floor and a small bright green frog jumped out (scaring the bejeezus out of me, I might add) and bounded indignantly toward the door, which I courteously opened for him (or her). I also recall that I once spent a couple of weeks setting type in that old shop next to one of our chickens in a crate with a heat lamp: she was suffering from sinusitis, and I set type to the accompaniment of her companionable croodling and cluckings. Another time, when the barn flooded one night, we tethered our two nanny goats to the super royal Albion. And just last week, using the Hammond saw in front of the big windows which look
into the woods at the back of the present shop, I had a strange feeling of being watched: when I looked up, there was a black bear looking inquisitively through the window at me, about five feet away.

Squirrels are less inclined to pie type, but rather more prone to ruffle the printers: I remember when Jude (our son) was about ten that he and I spent a good hour trying to herd one around the pressroom toward the door. Of course the squirrel became increasingly terrified, poor thing, and Jude increasingly helpless with laughter, so that when the squirrel leapt from the top of a type frame onto his head and thence to an open case of 8 point type, he just sat down on the floor and laughed hysterically, leaving me to carry on. The squirrel eventually escaped and went up the walnut tree beside the pressroom, where it sat for some time berating us in high dudgeon. All in all, we much prefer these quadruped visitors – who are usually courteous and diffident when they aren’t scared to death – to those human strangers who drop in occasionally, uninvited, asking if they can see the “old printers”. My usual response is, “You’re looking at one”, to which I am always tempted to add, “Now sod off!” – but my genteel vicarage upbringing prevents me. Instilled etiquette has much to answer for in lost time.

Codex 2007 & 2009 and Books to Acquire

One of the most heartening new developments in our community of fellow-printers and colleagues has been the advent of the Codex Foundation, established by Peter Koch and Susan Filter in 2006 “to bring to public recognition the artisanship and the rich history of the civilizations of the book.” This foundation has already recommended itself in several ways, including arranging and sponsoring two splendid book fairs and symposiums in Berkeley in February 2007 and again in February 2009, each attended by more than 100 exhibitors. The first fair resulted in an important publication, Book Art Object, edited by David Jury. Over 400 pages long, with more than 700 colour photographs of books from printers all over North America, Britain, and Europe and a splendid introduction by the editor, Book Art Object is a fascinating and beautifully produced introduction to the present state of fine press and limited edition publishing and the artist’s book. At US$75 it is a bargain. (The only fault I can find with it is its mis-spelling of my name in a couple of places – but then what’s in a name? That which we call a nose by any other name would smell as sweet.)

Codex already has plans under way for a third fair in 2011, and possibly for a second book documenting the work there. In addition to this, the foundation has published three pamphlets (the first in what is planned as a series of such publications) designed and printed by Peter Koch at his shop in Berkeley, comprising three essays and explorations of printing and the nature of the book: Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn by Robert Bringhurst; ART : definition five (and other writings) by Peter Rutledge Koch; and each new book by Australian printer and poet Alan Loney. These are produced with handsome letterpress covers, and range in style from Koch’s series of apothegms about the book, through Bringhurst’s elegantly stimulating study of the tangible aesthetic effects of the printed book, to Loney’s metaphysical considerations of the sacredness of text and book.

A further indispensable book about books is Robert Bringhurst’s The Surface of Meaning: Books and Book Design in Canada, published in 2008 by CCSP Press from Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Studies in Publishing. Beautifully designed by the author, and splendidly photographed, the book gives a strong overview of Canadian design from the earliest days to the present. The text, as always with Bringhurst, is scholarly, fascinating, and splendidly readable.

With the advent of Codex and its associated fairs, and with the longstanding Oak Knoll Book Fest (recently changed to a bi-annual fair next occurring in 2010) and the bi-annual Oxford Fine Press Book Fair (next in November 2009), the international community of fine printers is able to continue its developing life. Several generations of printers have become part of this collegium, and one of its most heartening features is the continuing influx of younger printers and designers. The community has grown considerably from the seeds established by Sandra Kirschenbaum’s Fine Print, which ran from 1975 to 1990 and is the immediate parent of the Fine Press Book Association’s Parenthesis, published in alternate issues from North America and the U.K., whose 17th issue will appear later this year.

A notable addition to the work shown at these fairs, now regularly reviewed and discussed in Parenthesis, is the artists’ book. For some time there was at least a perceived sense that the fine press book and the artists’ book were in some way inimical to one another – that fine press books were “real books” and artists’ books were not; that the artists’ book was a destructive force against the codex, and the fine press book the saviour of the best traditions of  literacy, printing, and bookmaking; that the fine press book was a hoary-headed survivor of a dead tradition on its last legs, and the artists’ book the harbinger of a new communicative engagement. All these things, and others far more dunderheaded, were tossed about. It’s clear that such opinions were often uninformed and misguided on both sides, and it is still unfortunately true that many people on each side of this discussion are inclined to be dismissive of the other.

Happily, a rapprochement now seems to be developing, and some of the best and most interesting work of both “factions” is clearly being informed by work from the other. Some fine press books are becoming more structurally adventurous and are taking on some of the thorny aesthetic and social questions posed by artists’ books, while an increasing number of artists’ book are showing the influence of various approaches to text for its own contextual sake as much as for its iconic value. These differences are not going to be reconciled for some time to come, and indeed I am not sure they ought to be: diversity and division of opinion is healthy, provided it doesn’t descend to wrangling. And learning is always a pleasure, especially when self-imposed blindness is cured by an effort of understanding. But those of you who are afraid you might be faced with a Barbarian Press pop-up edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover with a zipper opening need not worry: we intend to continue much as before – only better.

A New Acquisition and an Important New Project

There are always projects to come, books we want to print, and new ideas for possible development. Many of these go right back to the beginnings of the press, and a little black notebook in which many grand plans were made; some of these we have already realized, and others (like our present edition of Pericles) are ongoing. But sometimes a new book idea falls from the sky, which is what has happened this spring.

In 1984 the Curwen Press, the most important letterpress trade printer in England through most of the 20th century, finally closed. The Curwen Press not only designed and printed a huge number of books for most of the best literary English publishers, but also published books themselves, for which they developed a stable of illustrators and designers. Oliver Simon, their director since the 1920s, himself contributed a great deal to their work, and their illustrators included Edward Bawden, John Piper, Claud Lovat Fraser, Eric Ravilious, and many others. Their pattern papers, designed by these and other artists, became almost iconic in the bindings of many British books between the wars, and were themselves the subject of a 1987 publication by The Whittington Press, A New Specimen Book of Curwen Pattern Papers.

Recently, in their excellent Design series, the Antique Collectors Club has published Brian Webb and Peyton Skipwith’s Harold Curwen and Oliver Simon: Curwen Press, which is well worth reading as an introduction and overview

Among the many features of Curwen style, particularly in their jobbing work, was their use of magnificently designed borders made up from printer’s ornaments, or “flowers”. Many of these flowers were historical revivals of typographical ornaments devised from the 17th century onwards for use as decorative material on title pages and as head- and tail-pieces, but printers had long become engaged with the fascinating problems of combining these into elaborate patterns as exercises in typographical play. The late Richard Hoffman in Van Nuys, California, published a book in the 1980s devoted to his own considerable collection of ornaments called When a Printer Plays, and two private presses, Leonard Bahr’s Adagio Press in the United States, and Mark Arman’s Workshop Press in England, made something of a specialty of publishing books about ornaments. A compositor at Curwen named Bert Smith became noted for his ability to devise wonderful compositions, often in two or more colours, for use as borders for menus, cards, advertisements, posters, and other trade work which came the way of the Curwen Press. For some of their larger clients, most notably perhaps the British Transport Commission, these borders became a signature.

In April this year we were approached by Ian Mortimer, a designer, printer, and publisher at his private press, I. M. Imprimit, in London. Ian has been renowned for many years as a fine printer, and was awarded the Premio Felice Feliciano (the “Oscar” of book design) for his book on Ornamented Types. His work with wood type (of which he has an immense collection), his inserts for the Whittington Press Matrix, and special commissions for Fleece Press, among much else, have made his name widely known in fine press circles. In 1984, when the Curwen Press closed its letterpress shop, Ian was able to buy their entire composing room – all the type and associated materials. Included in this was the Curwen collection of Monotype ornaments and flowers, and Ian wrote to ask whether we might be interested in acquiring them.

Working with ornaments has always been a pleasurable part of designing and setting our books, and we have planned for many years to produce, at some future time, a book or a portfolio devoted to printers’ flowers. More than that, I have always had a strong interest in British printing between the wars as seen in the work of the Pelican Press, the Fleuron, and the Curwen Press – so we were decidedly interested in trying to add the Curwen ornaments to our composing room. Although there were time constraints, and the price (well into five figures) was quite beyond us, it seemed wilfully wrong-headed simply to pass over the opportunity without trying, so we turned to our subscribers and patrons, who have supported us for many years – some since the first publications of the press. We wrote an e.mail to all of them, explaining the situation and outlining the costs. We explained why we wanted to buy the archive, and outlined our immediate plans for it. Growing to a point, we asked whether any of them would be willing to lend us any sum they could afford toward the purchase. Remembering that this was in tax month, and in a recession, it is all the more wonderful to report that within eighteen hours we had the money we needed pledged to us: enough to pay for the archive, the shipping, and the taxes and landing fees. We are deeply grateful to all who helped, and still slightly thunderstruck!

The archive consists of three parts. The first comprises about two hundred packets of set ornamental borders in pages, composed for specific jobs and then tied up and stored for future use.

The second part is made up of the Curwen Press composing room stock of ornaments, comprising fifty-eight half cases densely packed with unused ornaments from 6 to 36 point, and nearly one hundred packets of ornaments from the foundry, never opened.

Last, there is a large carton of printed proofs of all the borders and other jobbing work: the composing room records of printed jobs, marked up with compositor’s details of dates of printings, number of copies printed, and so forth. And so …

The Curwen Project

In 2011, we plan to publish a book on the Curwen Borders. The book will reprint the complete range of hand-set borders still standing from the time the Curwen Press closed in the 1980s, printed in similar colour ranges to the originals. A possible deluxe state will also show some borders no longer standing newly set from the Curwen Press ornament collection after proofs in the archive.

The book will include an historical survey of the press, a critical essay on the press’s use of ornament and decorative material, and a Foreword describing the acquisition and saving of the archive. There may be a photographic section showing some of the original proofs. We are discussing the idea of publishing this in two states, possibly even three, with the best state including some original proofs from the press.

Details of this edition will appear in the “Books Forthcoming” section of the website as soon as we have a better idea of what the book will look like.

Codetta

Recently I have been revisiting the great jazz players of the 1950s and ’60’s, particularly Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Pepper, and Gerry Mulligan. I am surprised and delighted all over again at the excitement, the grace and intelligence of their best work, and the camaraderie and interplay between the musicians as they play. Hearing Mulligan and Clark Terry trading eights in the Concert Band version of ‘Blueport’ is like listening in on a witty conversation between friends, pursued as much for the shared affection between them as for the jokes and observations arising from the notes themselves. Hearing Davis play his burnished open horn solo on ‘Sid’s Ahead’, the plain melancholy draws me to recall those moments of true understanding which come to us only occasionally, but which continue to bring a ‘certain slant of light’ to apposite ideas.

I mention all this because the work on Pericles has very often inspired the same thoughts. Recently we received a new shipment of blocks from Simon Brett, and one of them shows a beach scene in Ephesus after Thaisa’s coffin has washed ashore. The figures are distant, and they are dressed in large hats and cloaks. I was reminded of the Dutch genre pictures of the 17th century, and realized that the universality of Shakespeare (or of any great art, like those Dutch paintings) is really a reflection of the universality of ourselves and our ability (should we care to try) to bridge any gap between human affairs and, almost instinctively, to understand their essential humanity. And more … the glassy serenity of the slow movement of Bruckner’s 8th turned by Uwe Scholtz into transcendent movements in dance; catching sight of a particular light in a glade of bamboo and laurel between the pressroom and the house which has me taking down a book of Ivon Hitchen’s paintings to discover the same light – almost the same leaves.

If it is true, as I believe it is, that somewhere all knowledges meet – arching upwards from some initial distance to intersect at the point of a great window, the overarching of trees over a path, the clasping of hands, and at those immense connections we form as metaphor and then breathe in as truth – then Simon’s block flows outward and speaks to an essential understanding of the meanings of Pericles in any moment within the play. I have that feeling even more now as I continue to set the text, stopping to look at the type lying so full of potential in the cases: cases which are not, in any significant way, different from those looked at and handled by Wynken de Worde, or Manutius – or by one of the compositors of the Pericles quarto who, I have come to believe, had a particular delight in leaving key words uncapitalized, making the text fleet and mobile to the eye, as a deliberate contrast to the earlier comp from whom he took over, who capitalized heavily. I imagine one as a younger, the other an older, man. They have become quite real to me.

Returning to jazz … Benny Goodman recounted this anecdote somewhere, and I wrote it down:

I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying ‘How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult.’ I told him, ‘I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going. Because one way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find them. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of them. But if you want to do something, you do it anyway, and handle the obstacles as they come.

And, I might add, the rewards are everywhere, if you pay attention.

Warmest best wishes to all,

Crispin and Jan Elsted
June 2009