Whiffs of Gramarye

Earlier this week I came home from my studio with an armful of just-finished broadsides (that’s it to the right). It needed a title, but that had to wait until I read my email. In my inbox was a blog comment from Juliet Doyle, who had read my letterpress adventures and said “I played around a lot with my dad’s old Adana as a kid, so the smell of ink is ingrained in my nostrils somewhere…” I could still smell the california wash I’d used to clean my press, so her comment made me smile.
But back to the task at hand: a title for my broadside. I pulled up my saved list of quotes and poems to use for titles, and there was the poem “Smells” by Christopher Morley, with the wonderful lines “And printer’s ink on leaden type” and “These are the whiffs of gramarye”. ‘Gramarye’ means magic and certainly describes how I feel about the results of printing on my press. So I had my title: Whiffs of Gramarye.

WHY is it that the poet tells
So little of the sense of smell?
These are the odors I love well:

The smell of coffee freshly ground;
Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;
Or onions fried and deeply browned.

The fragrance of a fumy pipe;
The smell of apples, newly ripe;
And printer’s ink on leaden type.

Woods by moonlight in September
Breathe most sweet, and I remember
Many a smoky camp-fire ember.

Camphor, turpentine, and tea,
The balsam of a Christmas tree,
These are whiffs of gramarye. . .
A ship smells best of all to me!