Previously I wrote about Hamilton Wood Type Foundry’s new digital font—HWT Catchwords. Then I saw that Letterpress Daily is selling letterpress prints that are “a tongue-in-cheek examination of the evolutionary impact of technology on language.” The prints are combine hand-cut linoleum blocks with foundry metal type numerals. See them all here.
Last February I asked 2 friends here in Santa Fe to do a monthly word-based prompt challenge with me. One of us would select a word the first of the month and then we’d get together toward the end of the month to show the books we’d made, inspired by the word. I was first to pick, using the OED word-of-the-day:
mim, adj. and adv. Reserved or restrained in manner or behaviour, esp. in a contrived or priggish way; affectedly modest, demure; primly silent, quiet; affectedly moderate or abstemious in diet (rare). Also (occas.) of a person’s appearance.
I read quite a bit of poetry before finding this early (1858) Emily Dickinson poem:
Snow flakes.
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town–
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down–
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig–
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
(It’s also one of only a handful of poems that Dickinson titled.) I liked the idea of counting snowflakes, which seems like such an impossible task. I imagined Dickinson keeping a ledger book of snowflake tallies, but getting carried away as she starts to do her little jig.
Here’s my book, made to look like a ledger and using the Emily Austin font I bought several years ago. This font comes with ink blots, which you can see in the final picture below, as I imagine Dickinson getting more and more excited about the snow flakes.
A friend sent me this picture of a steam powered letterpress he saw at the Bay Area Maker’s Faire last weekend. It’s built by the Kinetic Steam Works, “a Bay Area nonprofit organization dedicated to steam powered kinetic art.” Here’s a video showing the press working:
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Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice was published 200 years ago last January. To mark the occasion, my friend Cathy sent me the OED’s online word of the day.
Collins, n.1
A letter of thanks for entertainment or hospitality, sent by a departed guest; a ‘bread-and-butter’ letter.Pronunciation:/kɒlɪnz/
Etymology: < the name of a character, William Collins, in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (ch. xxii). 1904. Chambers's Jrnl. 27 Aug. 611/2. When we do not call a letter of thanks for a visit ‘a board and lodging’, we call it a ‘Collins’. 1907. Lady Grove. Social Fetich. 74 The ‘Collins’ letter I had dutifully bored my hostess with. 1911. W. A. Raleigh. Lett. (1926) 375. This is only a Collins, and a Collins should not wade into deep places. It should be loving but neat. 1926. R. Bridges. Henry Bradley ii. 19. Wherever I can I shall let him speak for himself, and..group the quotations from his letters under subjects..This first Collins will serve to prelude them. 1940. W. de la Mare. Pleasures & Speculations. 327. The amateur composer even of a Collins or bread-and-butter letter realizes that his mother tongue is a stubborn means for the communication of gratitude.
I get several “words of the day” in my inbox, but I didn’t know about the OED one until Collins arrived. I quickly subscribed and look forward to their odd-ball words every day:
periplus, n. An account or narrative of a circumnavigation or other voyage; a manual of navigation.
statuomania, n.Excessive or passionate enthusiasm for erecting statues. Chiefly with reference to France.
genethliacon, n. A birthday ode.
akathisia, n. Inability to sit down or to remain seated, resulting from a subjective need or desire to move, frequently accompanied by sensations of muscular twitching, and often occurring as a side effect of the use of certain psychoactive drugs; an instance of this. Also in extended use.
I could go on and on. Subscribe yourself from the link on the right column of the OED home page.
Today, Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom” looks like the picture on the right, with blue walls. But a modern analysis of the sorts of paint he used suggests that the red pigments have disappeared or faded over time, so that the picture really looked like the one on the left when he painted it. Read more here.
