My monthly update & justifying justification

While blundering around in the files looking for images to post, I came across a shot of the little Kelsey press before Craig Black restored it. Here it is:

Just a little on the rusty side, but not so bad as to become scrap. I’m delighted with the results taken off of it so far.

Time for a short lecture. In contemporary word processing, justification is noted in tool pallets as tiny icons like this:

Just click and all your text flips left, right, centered or full justification, creating a neat block of text. Setting justified text in monotype is interesting for a number of different reasons. Those six of you who have been following my bi-monthly updates will likely know that setting little bits of lead with a reversed letter on top is a laborious game. The easiest forms to set are called ‘jagged right’ or left justified text, or right justified if that’s one’s desire. You can use a uniform letterspacing in this instance, then filling in the end of the line with spacing material (i.e. pieces of lead that are shorter than the type, so they don’t print).

Centering text is a little more complicated, but still very simple. The compositor simply uses the same width of spacing material at each side progressively, until the line is tight and the text is centred in the composing stick.

To create full justification, or straight on both sides of the text block, is a bit more of a chore. First, have a look at the tools of the trade when it comes to compositing:

At left, there the plastic tackle bin full of metal word spacing material for 12 point type. These spacers are of varying thicknesses, ranging from quite thin to quite fat, and they are proportional to the size of type, so a quad (perfectly square spacer) for 12 point is a different size than a quad at 24 point, but they are relatively the same proportionally, in relation to all other spacers. Don’t worry about it; there won’t be a test.

At the back is a little case I use to store what I call ‘thins’ or spacing material that is, you guessed it, really thin. These range from thin lead spacers on the right to very thin brasses (second drawer from left) to super thin coppers (left drawer). On the galley tray is a whack of glorious type set and fully justified. In the left foreground is the composing stick, the tool used when working over the type tray to set all these words and paragraphs, also used to create typographical errors. So without getting too technical, setting cold type involves lots of bits and bobs.

When I go to set a fully justified text, I first set the line with equal word spacing, but I don’t finish off the line by filling the end in with spacing material, as I would for left justification. Instead, I flip up all the word spacers, as shown below:

You’ll note that I have a quad at the beginning and end. It’s a habit I learned from Margaret Lock, and having the quad there, I’ve learned, makes life a lot easier when the form is standing on its own on the pressbed. Also, when a letter, like a capital ‘W’, or quotation marks have to extend beyond the justification line, the quad gives you some wiggle room. But I digress….

The space at the end of the line between where the text ends and the quad is the space that I must spread absolutely evenly throughout the nine spaces available between words. Apparently, there are printers who can measure that gap, and calculate (in their heads, probably) the exact size or combination of sizes of spacing material needed to fill out the line. Envious though I may be, I am not one of those printers. Instead, I frig around with various combinations until its close, then load them in. Nine times out of ten I’m bang on. The other times I have to try again.

No matter how you do it, it takes a bit longer, but even without the ability to calculate the proportional size of the universe in my head, I found that after I had done 30 or 40 lines, I began to develop an instinct about the spacers and what would fit, and my odds improved. What would happen to me if I shifted to another size, I don’t know. Maybe the instinct would shift over as well.

The dangers of sloppy justification are evident in lead as in digital composition. Who of us hasn’t seen columns in the newspaper with two words and an uncomfortable canyon of white space  separating them? And then there are rivers, those lines of white space that run down the length of a page like, well… like rivers. Our minds search for patterns in the text. Ideally those patterns are letters and words, but who hasn’t been distracted enough when the subject matter is perhaps a wee bit dull to follow the white water down through the gray? Rivers can happen with any text if the word spacing is too generous, and/or the leading (line spacing) insufficient.

End of lecture.

Kelsey up and running

It would be almost two years ago that a very kind veteran antiques dealer of my acquaintance gifted me with a small, luggable platen press (chase size 5×8 in). When I received it, it was just a tad rusty, needed new rollers and a couple of replacement parts. About a year back I sent it to Craig at Don Black Linecasting, Ontario’s letterpress mecca in Scarborough. He cleaned it up, replaced some bits, gave it a paint job and some new rollers, and voila! Good as new.

It has taken me almost as long to put it to use, but today I did just that. First I have to thank Gina from the Ottawa Press Gang for giving me a set of sheet guides — these are little pins that slide into the tympan paper on the platen (? I’m still a bit weak on platen press terminology. Is the platen the part that folds up to the type, or the part where the chase rests? On the Vandy, I call it the drum). Anyway, here’s a close up:

The press shown here is after clean-up, which was a breeze when compared to cleaning the big press. I’m glad to have this little platen because it makes doing labels, promotion cards and press demostrations very simple. For example, some may recognize this recurring title. I did a book or booklet treatment of this story last year, but used the type already set to print a second edition of 50 on a long sheet sans illustrations for my Ottawa Press Gang collaboration contribution. This little red label is a nod to the blood red endpages in the book version. It seems crazy to ink up the Vandy 219 to do such a tiny job. The whole process, including cutting stock and proofing material, took just over an hour, then maybe fifteen minutes to clean up.

So now my Press Gang contribution is nearly finished, just folding and gluing down 50 of these bloody labels.

To tie up another loose end, I’ll be doing up a special card or something for John Holyer, the dealer who gave me the press. Soon.

Kilburn & company

Work progresses on what I have been calling the ‘Kilburn Portfolio’. More proofs of the blocks have yielded more signatures, proving that the collection of blocks really is a mixed bag of work by different hands. The engravers that I have identified, or at least assigned attribution, seem to be from Boston or New England. It may be after the portfolio is pubished, others will be able to identify the makers. Of course, I’ll be marketing the work amongst New England institutions and libraries.

But back to production. I’ve cut Fabriano Accadema paper for the prints and am ready to produce the dummy, including a pamphlet which will contain a short essay on how the collecton came to light and what (little) is known about the blocks to date.

There’s a monogram that very likely belongs to Abel Bowen, Kilburn’s master, and another block is signed Matthews, a Boston wood engraving who spent a brief period of time in Montreal, the only Canadian connection so far.

This week I will begin to produce the plates. Some of the blocks are very straightforward — quite remarkable when one considers that they are well over 100 years old. Others did not age so well, and printing these warped blocks will be a challenge. It will require an enormous amount of ‘make-ready’ or custom setting the press to print one specific block. It is very. very fussy work and in the end, it achieves evenness of impression, but it cannot replace cracks and lines caused by composite blocks separating. This can really be heart-breaking work sometimes, but the benefits far outweigh the heart-breaks, in the end.

I received my second cheque from another institution for books on Thursday. Gotta love that!

Monthly update

My, how the time does fly! In the intervening month since my last blog, I have done a number of printing related tasks. I completed my submission to the Grimsby Wayzgoose anthology. The Grimsby Wayzgoose is the venerable book arts show held in Grimsby, Ontario every year in April. ‘Waysgoose’ is an old word to describe a printer’s party, but it has evolved into a show. Participants are invited to submit a signature (one or two 8.5 x 11 sheets folded in half to create a 4 or 8 page signature) which are compiled and collated into bound anthologies.

Back in December, Hugh Barclary of Thee Hellbox Press asked me to work with him on a collaborative Wayzgoose contribution with another printer, on the theme ‘alternatives to war’. I had to bow out of this for a number of reasons, but decided to carry on with the theme. For a while I was going to do the old hippy chant, ‘Make Love, Not War.’ I had even set up the type for the ‘Not War’ portion:

with ‘Make Love’ done in calligraphy by Holly. I considered doing a vaguely erotic block print to go with it, or perhaps hands clasped in the ecstatic moment or something, but just couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t, well, silly. The quote was part of the problem. So back to the drawing board, and ended up with a William Gladstone quote that had a similar sentiment, but with a little more…. what? Dignity, perhaps. Geez! I’m getting uptight.

“We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”

An interested statement from a man who periodically ran an empire in the later 19th century, but there you have it. Apparently he was a Dove, and Disraeli was the Hawk. I am a bit cynical about blanket statements and slogans and buzz phrases regarding peace, love and all that. I don’t subscribe to the simplicity implied in Gladstone’s statement, or the hippy chant. If there is a solution to war, I know it’s not going to be a simple fix. All of these things are frigging complex, and as I get older, they seem to get more complex, which makes these simplistic solutions so enticing. I still haven’t ruled out doing a run of a much longer quote on this subject from none other than that master of stirring eloquence, Martin Luther King. Sometimes, in the face of human savagery and brutality, the sentimental refuge of idealism is preferrable to apologetic pragmatism. Sometimes not.

Well, enough waffling. Holly designed the piece, featuring a digitally produced ‘Power of Love’ centerpiece, and two small linocuts based on portion of this text. I used a large board and printed them together — successfully — thus saving a third print run.

Final result:

I used Fox River cotton rag paper, but it is a bit too lightweight. Fortunately, the translucency works for the piece, adding a kind of geometric weight to the inside of the signature. The type is handset in lead in the house font, Italian Oldstyle.

Finding Mr. Kilburn

There hasn’t been a lot of time in the last week to do much on printing or planning, but I did spent a while squeezing more from the internet on the elusive Mr. Kilburn. An intensive web search did indeed yield more leads, and one exciting find. The lead comes in the form of a scarce book, held in various prominent collections (Smithonian, John Hopkins) titled Specimen of designing and engraving on wood, 1876 by Samuel Smith Kilburn. Needless to say, I will be hitting up some of my contacts at the National Library to arrange a possible interlibrary loan.

There are several references to Kilburn as an artist and engraver on many sites, both for institutions and private or commercial interests, since many books have, over time, been reduced to nothing more than individual prints. So he does turn up.

Most exciting of all, though, is a photo in the Tufts Digital Library showing Washington Street, circa 1874, Boston’s equivalent to London’s Fleet Street. Note the name on the upper right portion of the photograph:

Well, that’s exciting for me. That’s my guy, in living B&W. Needless to say, I’ll be in touch with Tufts for rights come time to do a book on Kilburn. For the portfolio I will list a reference only.

Tomorrow, inking up the press and taking more proofs of the blocks. I hope.

Kilburn Page Layout

Every book requires a layout. In this case not so much a book as a small eight page covered pamphlet to go into the finished portfolio. Work begins with the schematic as shown below. Click on the image to see in up close. You should be able to see the faint lines I used to guide my decisions about margins. The technique is the same used since the middle ages. In this case, I did not follow the geometry exactly, but adapted the text block size for leads I have already cut to a length of 20 picas, which will give me a text block about 18 picas wide.

Kilburn proofs

Here is the first of several proofs from the wood engraving case of the mysterious Samuel Smith Kilburn. The blocks probably date from the third quarter of the 19th century, if indeed they are all his work.

The only reason I can make an attribution at all is thanks to this block:

The inclusion of Kilburn’s change of address block is significant indeed, and the style and craftsmanship of most of the other wood engravings suggests a masterful hand.

A very cursory internet search has yielded very little about Kilburn, but he does turn up, and many book collections both private and institutional, list his name as an illustrator and engraver for the book trade. I have found the name of at least one apprentice, and his given and middle name as well.

At some point I’m keen to take a trip to Boston, dip into the archives there and find more about Kilburn. Once I feel I’ve exhausted what is known about the man and his work, I’ll print a book about him using his surviving engravings. The portfolio in production now will be designed to showcase the engravings with a pamphlet showing how they came to light, and into the hands of a letterpress printer. I’ve decided to do an edition of 50, hoping that will not be too few. The plan is to have it done for the Grimsby Wayzgoose and start marketing it soon after.

Kilburn Wood Engravings

December and January are gone, and it looks like February will be a printing month, or at least partially. I’m anxious to try out the newly de-glazed rollers on some type, to see if it makes a difference.

The next project will be the Kilburn portfolio. I can’t remember if I blogged about this or not in the past, but over a year ago, a stalwart citizen of Merrickville visited me in my studio, and showed me a display box of 19th century wood engravings that she picked up at an antiques store in Brockville. One block identified the maker, one assumes, as S. S. Kilburn, active in the Boston area in the mid-19th century. The blocks are stunning, and preliminary experiments printing them have proved modestly successful, although it is clear that some blocks will prove to be a problem, due to warping.

In any event, I’ve decided to move forward with a portfolio of sixteen prints from the Kilburn find. And that’s how I’m going to approach the project: to discuss the discovery of these blocks and to speculate on some of the mysteries that arise from this mysterious case and its contents. The portfolio will contain prints in a limited run of 50, plus a 16 page 8 x 10 booklet with text on the find, the blocks and attributions. Several of the smaller blocks will be printed in this as well. In a few years, after more thoroughly researching Kilburn, I will assemble the blocks again and do a hard cover edition. I realize this is doing things a bit backward, but there it is. The portfolio will serve to get work out about Kilburn, and if there is any information on this Boston tradesman, hopefully it will surface over time and come to my ears. At some point, when I am more flush, I will trip down to the US and rummage around the libraries and archives there. In the meantime, an internet search and some inquiries have turned up some scant information on the man.

Last week I blocked out the page size for the booklet. It’ll be a double column deal, since the booklet will open landscape rather than portrait. I haven’t yet designed the packaging, but it would be safe to expect a nod of some sort to Victorian style. I’ll be using papers at hand in the studio, so it might be a bit of a mix, but all good papers.

Here are some of Kilburn’s engravings:

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

One of the interesting and frustrating effects of using broad graphic strokes to draw and print is that sometimes the line between understanding and incoherence is just, well, just a line. One old fellow looked at the St. John’s print in my previous post and said: “What do we have here? A pirate ship?” People often pick it up and look at it sideways. Well, what can I say? If an image isn’t readily understood, is that the fault of the viewer or the artist? Is it deliberate act to challenge the viewer or the the result of an untrained hand. Sometimes it’s a muddle of all these things.

This print is very much in that muddle, yet it is probably the most intimate and personal print from the entire series. Most people who see it for the first time struggle to comprehend the jumble of white and black lines on the left. And that’s fine. The subject is very much about a struggle for understanding and coherence. It is based on a photograph I took in the early 1990s, on a trip to Halifax. Meg must have been nine or ten years old, and she’s shown here looking down one of the stone corridors that riddle the citadel in Halifax. I saved the photo, and when I looked at it I would see in it a questing soul, peering into the unwritten future, full of hope. Now, I like to think of it as a reflection: that Meg is the observer, seeing herself out of the darkness, and in the daylight beyond the tunnel.

It is a first take. Next year I’ll tackle it again, possibly as a wood engraving. I hope there will be more light and less darkness in it by then.

Back Porch, Queen’s Road, St. John’s, Nfld.

This is the centerpiece of my 2008 series. It measures about 9 x 11″, making it the largest print this year. I based this cut on a drawing I did back in 1988 when I spent a brilliant summer in St. John’s, Newfoundland house-sitting for my sister and writing a ghastly novel. Marie’s townhouse was on located on Queen’s Road, a central artery in the city, but still part of the distinctive jumble of brightly coloured houses that step along the steep roads climbing up from a lovely harbour. From my third storey window, I could see Signal Hill.

I smoked in those days, and as much as possible I took my bad habit out onto the back porch, which looked over an alley and what little remained of a lane from earlier decades. The back view had a lot of character, so I did a sketch which worked out well, and I presented it to Marie as a gift on her return from Toronto.

I liked all the angles and roof lines going hither and thither, with telephone lines and clothes lines criss-crossing every which way. In the original, there was only the lower line of laundry; the rest I have added in homage to the three lovely young nurses who shared the townhouse next door, and had a laundry line that went right across Marie’s back porch. So, whenever I went out for a smoke, I was frequently treated to a display of their skimpy underthingies, along with the usual apparel one finds on a line. Is there anything less unselfconscious than a clothesline? They kept strange hours – an occupational hazard, I suppose – and so did I, so our paths rarely crossed.

The original drawing is far more representational; the block cut is warped to convey, I hope, the character of the time and place, and the cooling winds that ever blew in off the Atlantic Ocean.

Not a very Christmassy post, but there you go. Best wishes to all, and hopes for a wonderful new year.