Category: Letterpress

Spring Fever

spring feverThe weather has turned warm here in Northern California (that’s the magnolia tree in my front yard) and I’ve been outside as much as possible. But no one ever seems to want to enjoy the season at hand — my mailbox is full of enticing summer bookmaking programs, making me want to skip right to July.
The Wells Book Arts Center in upstate New York has three week-long sessions, with intriguing titles like “Moving Parts: The Book as Kinetic Sculpture” taught by Dolph Smith and “Considering Text and Image” taught by Inge Bruggeman. A brochure is available here.
A new intensive debuts this year in England, at Wellington College in Berkshire, organized by two teachers well known here in the Bay Area — Dominic Riley and Michael Burke. You can find out all about it on their website.
Anyone know of any more?

Mind Your Ps & Qs

Mind Your Ps & QsNo one seems to know exactly where the idiom “mind your Ps and Qs” originated, but I’d like to believe that it came from advice to typesetters. In letterpress printing, words are composed metal type letter by metal type letter, left-to-right, with each letter inserted upside down. For beginning typesetters, backward-facing letters are confusing, especially the mirrored lower-case letter pairs p and q, and b and d. And thus the advice to be alert and watch the details (“mind the ps and qs”).
In addition to the typesetting theory, there are many competing explanations — my favorite: an admonishment from a French dancing master to perform the dance figures pieds and queues correctly. Others include a variation on the typesetter advice, but to small children learning to write the alphabet, not to mix up p and q.
This article gives some more possible origins and then clears up the mystery: “Investigations by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007 when revising the entry turned up early examples of the use of Ps and Qs to mean learning the alphabet. The first is in a poem by Charles Churchill, published in 1763: ‘On all occasions next the chair / He stands for service of the Mayor, / And to instruct him how to use / His A’s and B’s, and P’s and Q’s.’ The conclusion must be that this is the true origin.”
In my current project to feature my large wood type in my printing, my newest broadside uses only Ps and Qs. That’s it above.

The Artist’s Survival Kit

baddayguy.jpg
Keri’s drawing of when you might need her Artist’s Survival Kit

Most Januarys I’m off and running, full of ideas and energy for the new year. But this month I’m dragging and feel more like reading a book than working in my studio. Okay, I did make up new batches of my most popular books for my Etsy shop, but I can’t seem to get started on any newer projects.
Keri Smith to the rescue. This weekend I stumbled across her Artist’s Survival Kit, a set of free downloadable PDFs meant to help you when you don’t want to do art but would rather lie in bed and eat chips. The kit includes a set of “What to do when you’re stuck” cards, lots of tips, and in general will make you laugh — and hopeful, in my case, get me into my studio!

The Stable and Calming Aspects of Blue

Pantone Colors of the YearIn a recent post about colors and names, I mentioned that I mix colors using the Pantone (nameless) color system. Well, turns out I was wrong about the nameless part — Pantone does name their colors. And even gives them attributes. An article last month in the New York Times reports that annually Pantone annoints a “color of the year,” and for 2008 it’s a purple-blue hue they call “Blue Iris.” The Pantone press release says “Blue Iris combines the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, and satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement”.
To the right are their color choices since 2000, although I’m surprised by the lack of green, as my green wood type prints are always my most popular.

Collector of Typefaces

Lloyd Schermer’s artworkDouglas Morgan, a Collector of Typefaces, Dies at 75

That’s the intriguing title of the obituary in the New York Times last Monday (written by Steven Heller).

“Mr. Morgan began acquiring antique wood types in the 1950s… These woodblock letters and fonts were commonly used in the mid- to late-19th century for advertisements, posters and handbills. Darker and larger than more delicate metal typefaces, they are familiar today as the bold lettering on vintage western wanted posters. Yet many classic wood type variations were intricately ornamental, used to grab the attention of passers-by in an increasingly cluttered advertising environment.
But simply being a connoisseur of the wood type letterforms was not challenging enough for Mr. Morgan. In the late 1950s his company sold the type to designers, inspiring the rise of an ornately Victorian retro style in the graphic arts.
Among the designers that acquired the letterforms was Push Pin Studio in New York, which at the time was rejecting the cold uniformity of Modernist designs in favor of more eclectic revivalist styles. A studio member, John Alcorn, interpreted the Victorian decorative pastiche in his “Wood and Foundry Type” catalogs, which are now collectors’ items.
The Morgan collection, including type and printers ornaments, is housed today at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, in the Hall of Printing and Graphic Arts.”

I collect wood type myself, so Mr. Morgan is a kindred spirit. A bit of Google searching reveals that the “Hall of Printing and Graphic Arts” at the Smithsonian was put into storage in late 2003. Very sad. But in my search for more info on the Morgan collection I happily stumbled upon Lloyd Schermer’s wood type sculptures (that’s an example above).