The Third & Elm Press

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Business and good fortune had us visiting Newport, Rhode Island a couple of weeks prior to Hurricane Sandy. The weather was extraordinarily beautiful and temperate, literally a calm before a storm. When I travel with Holly, I try not to schedule too much press activity, which can easily usurp a timetable. But destiny took a hand. While visiting a photography gallery called Blink, we learned that the owner’s mother ran a letterpress in the heart of Newport. On our last day there, Holly and I made sure to visit The Third and Elm Press, named (as you probably surmised) for the corner on which Ilse Burchert Nesbitt’s shop is located.

The home of the Third and Elm Press, located at Third and Elm in Newport, Rhode Island.

Ilse came to America from Germany in 1960, and set up the press with her husband, a calligrapher and book designer, in 1965. There are details and sample of her work on her website at www.thirdandelm.com. She is now 80 years old and not showing much sign of slowing down.

Isle has a very nicely organized studio. It is not large, but it holds an early 19th century “acorn” iron press, a good sized floor standing platin press, a cutter and several banks of type. While she has printed several books over the years, her primary focus these days is in making wood cut prints. In the long-established German tradition, she cuts her blocks using knives, as opposed to gouges and gravers.

A relief wood cut carved with knives on the plank.

The style of knives that Ilse uses for cutting her blocks.

Close-up of the plaque on the ‘acorn’ iron press.

A close-up of Ilse’s work-horse platin press, with a rainbow hue of inks on the underside of the inking disk.

I admired Ilse’s cutting desk, which folds down elegantly when not in use. Most print studios need space-saving solutions like this. (Mine certainly does!)

All the type drawers have beautiful calligraphy labels. Since I live with a calligrapher of some note, I have put Holly on notice that I would like this treatment for my type cabinets as well.

I make a habit of carrying samples of my books and prints with me where ever I go, so I was able to show them to Ilse and recieve a critique. She was refreshingly frank, or perhaps I should say refreshingly Teutonic. She thought my lines might “open up” and become more naturalistic if I abandoned gouges and gravers and adopted the knife as my principal tool, something I will certainly try when I turn my hand to cutting on the plank. She felt that my lines were too clean, that they followed each other too closely, that I needed to “loosen up.” All good advise, and in a sense, that’s the direction my linos had been going prior to my jump into wood engraving.

We spent a very enjoyable afternoon visiting with Ilse, hearing her thoughts on the ‘business’ and dropped some money in her gallery upstairs on a book and two prints. Most of all, it was simply inspiring to meet a fellow printer and print-maker who is steadily pursuing her passion and not letting anything, least of all aging, get in the way.

The Idle Fool / Is Whipp’d at School

When my friend and letterpress printing colleague Jason (of Three Bats’ Press) announced a couple years ago that he was seeking artists to illustrate an upcoming project, naturally I took interest. He had taken the text from an early New England primer designed to teach children their letters by infusing the little tykes with a healthy fear of God, or in other words, scaring the holy snot out of them. Artists could choose a letter and with the associated rhyme for the letter. For example: A = “In Adam’s Fall / We sinned all.” Or this for J: “Job feels the Rod / Yet blesses God.” Or Y: “Youth forward slips / Death soonest nips.”

Cheery, is it not! Jason was clear in saying that he wanted a “re-interpretation” of these poems, and by handing off to a bunch of recalcitrant artists, I’m thinking he’ll get his way.

I chose F: “The idle Fool / Is Whip’d at School” out of a sense of personal irony (as a student I was neither devout nor studious) and envisaged a period engraving showing the enraged schoolmaster, a la Dickens, taking his fury out on some hapless kid.  But as I thought more, the extreme violence and fear overtly suggested in the statement and insinuated in the other quotes, and the religious extremism implied in the the whole primer, I conjured the impersonal image of great big meat-hook hands clenching a heavy barbed-studded leather strap, with all the menace of impending violence that seems to go hand in hand with extremist ideals. I may go that route, or I may throw it back in the puritans’ faces and do something associated with that odd cast of kink enthusiasts who have an entirely different attitude toward the whole question of whipping. With all the popular fervour for Fifty Shades of Gray and similar works, called “accessible erotica” or less generously, “mommy-porn”, that might be the right choice.

A first attempt at turning the quote on its head, so to speak, played with the curve of a back to create a lower case ‘f’ from a whip and a belt for the cross-stroke. It had the uncomfortable look and feel of something out spiny out of Predator. Another quick effort incorporated a similar stylized letter ‘f’.  I’m really not entirely sure about pursuing this route.

Perhaps my discomfort comes from a certain reserved nature, but it also has to do with the violence implied for the woman in the picture. Making it a male back, or elongating the drawing to show the woman holding the whip would certainly change the dynamic.

No matter what, there will be a stylized letter “F” formed from the coils of a whip.

Jason tells me that he is expecting some very extreme submissions for some of these puritanical aphorisms, so perhaps I’m worrying needlessly.

Tintern Abbey in the Autumn

Frontispiece printed on St.Armand Old Master paper.

Tintern Abbey is a summer poem, and we view it very much as a summer book, even though it was conceived in the autumn of 2008, work initiated on it in the winter of 2011 and the first copies were only available in the spring of 2012. Now, with September here again, goat skins and Japanese papers are in the talented hands of Christine McNair who is commencing work on the deluxe binding. Gathering materials for the deluxe edition was an education in understanding the distinction between goat skin and calf skin, and the nuances of Japanese paper.  And as the work carries on, I hope this book will bring the warmth summer with it, no matter how cold and stormy it may get in the months to come.

I intend to produce another dozen regular edition copies to satisfy orders and to have some available for the Merrickville Studio Tour, happening over the last two weekends of September.

So, September will be a month dedicated to Tintern Abbey, and things got underway with the printing of the suite of engravings from the book that will be included with the deluxe edition. These were printed in a run of 15 of each of the seven engravings on St. Armand Old Master handmade paper – really lovely stuff.

While I was cranking away, I printed another 20 copies on white Byronic paper, which will be sold singly, framed or unframed. The one very small engraving could have been done 2 up on a sheet, but I didn’t have another small engraving in book, so it got it’s own entire page.

It’s one thing to offer prints additional to a deluxe edition; it is another to house them safely and sympathetically with the leather bound book in its slip case. I may have seemed unseemly to pounce (as I did) upon a fine press deluxe edition brought to the OPG gathering a couple weeks ago, but it contained a chemise style wrap for the gathering of prints and I was keen to see how they had done it. Mostly, it was what I had in mind: an unadorned paper folded and scored to fit around the prints and slip closed through a cut slit.

For Tintern Abbey’s gathering, I’ll be using Canson Mi-Teintes, which is of a weight almost perfect for the task. My first attempt had it opening top bottom, then side to side, but this would show the flaps along the edge when seated inside the slipcase, so the final version will have it opening from the sides, which still works fine and will look neater along side the book in the slipcase.

 

Announcing Tintern Abbey

Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks
of the Wye during a
Tour, 13 July,
1798

by
William
Wordsworth

~ ~ ~

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a sweet inland murmur. —Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

Which on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

~ ~ ~

A letterpress limited edition of 80 copies, 40 pages, hand set with cold type in Goudy’s Italian Oldstyle, with calligraphy rendered digitally to magnesium plates by designer Holly Dean. Illustrated with seven engravings by Larry Thompson. Printed on a Vandercook 219 onto St. Armand Canal paper. Dimensions: 9.5 inches tall x 5.5 inches wide.

REGULAR EDITION: Half bound in cloth with painted papers created by Holly Dean. $160.

DELUXE EDITION: Copies numbered one through fifteen quarter bound by Christine McNair in leather with painted papers created by Holly Dean, in slip cover. Complete with set of engravings printed on St. Armand Old Master paper. $260. SOLD OUT

Shipping and handling additional. Discounts to the trade.

Orders welcome at studio@greyweatherspress.com

~ ~ ~

More than five years have passed since Greyweathers Press published its first book, Coleridge’s popular poem Kubla Khan. Once again, we return to the Romantics to celebrate our first half decade and to commemorate a visit we made to the Wye Valley in the fall of 2008.

William Wordsworth wrote ‘Tintern Abbey’ to be the thoughtful and serious end-note for the poems assembled in Lyrical Ballads (1798), which included the work of his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We are pleased to present ‘Tintern Abbey’ on its own, featuring an introduction by Professor Mark Jones of Queen’s University, Canada.

~

Tintern Abbey Rolls Off the Press!

A binding in green

I finished printing Tintern Abbey early on Wednesday, April 25, marking almost four full weeks of setting type, dissing it again, proofing pages, changing colours and running the edition. Another month or so prior I spent cutting the illustrations, with some trepidation but with satisfactory results. And in the end, it all came together as a book.

I tasked myself to have at least one copy ready for the Grimsby Wayzgoose; in the end, I managed to bind up four. Three sold at the show, I took orders for two more as well as two deluxe editions. the next step is to get the deluxe copies under way, and binding up more regular copies and publicizing them. I’ll put all the details of the edition in both states up in a subsequent blog entry.

The small title page with engraving.

Normally when I print a book, I keep a notebook handy, or record my adventures and mis-adventures here in this non-substantial space. With the Grimsby Wayzgoose always looming ever closer, the production became a rush… not the most ideal of situations. However, the benefit of a deadline is that a project gains momentum and gets done on time.

I’ve been looking back on the project and trying to remember the bits and pieces of either rewarding or peculiar happenings. From the start, TA was a considerably more ambitious project than any of our previous books. The whole would be printed on St. Armand Canal paper, and would be our longest book at 40 pages. It would be illustrated with wood engravings… not such a great technical feat after printing Graven Images, but cutting the blocks myself proved intimidating, especially with all of Thomas Bewick‘s prints around me while I worked. Let’s just say I gained an intense appreciation for the master’s work. This is the first book using Holly’s calligraphy rendered to plates, and a substantial use of a second colour that is not red.

The title page spread.

Beyond these firsts, there are the usual matters: the nature and quality of the type, the work of setting and dissing it, the functioning of the press, the varying degrees in ink and how it interacts with paper, and the paper itself. I’ll make these subjects of upcoming and more frequently regular posts over the next couple of weeks while I work on finishing more books.

Engravings, text and calligraphy working together on a 2-page spread.

To start with, I’ll finish off my thoughts about printing the wood engravings (the making of them has been dealt with earlier). They printed very well, and without much of the anguish I had from the blocks in Graven Images. Granted the latter were 130 year old or more. I found the Resingrave blocks printed very well, as did the engrain maple. Make-ready was minimal and, in one instance of robust energy or desperation, I printed three engravings in one day (on separate sheets). It went well, thankfully.

Tintern Abbey page spread with engraving on wood and calligraphy on magnesium.

The engravings have been well received, and I have been forbidden from staining them my own jaundiced eye. The answers to my own complaints, I know, lie in practice, practice, practice.

Colophon

Tools of the Engraving Trade

About five years ago, I went out on assignment to cover the Tools of the Trade show, near Toronto. About 30 or 40 dealers had tables covered, selling everything from your grandfather’s screwdrivers right up to plough planes worth thousands. I’d covered the show before, but that year I went with a mission of my own, to find wood engraving tools. I didn’t have much hope, but asked each dealer until I found one who handed me a plastic bag filled with the familiar “chopped” mushroom handle. It was literally a mixed bag, to say the least. The tools were very old. The handles showed either considerable airburn from the passage of time, or a lot of handling – probably both. I bought them.

Spitsticker showing the "shaved mushroom" handle.

Once home, I realized I had spitstickers and tint tools, perhaps a lining tool or two, but no burins. Clearly some had been better cared for than others: the angle of the points on some were absurd, and others had bowed faces, meaning they would need to be ground to the proper angle again. I ordered two burins from McClain’s, along with a Crocker sharpening jig, because I had no idea how to sharpen the tools, and they must be very sharp to work properly.

So here is my wood engraving kit so far:

Engraving tools.

At the top left, coarse and fine grain ceramic blocks for sharpening the blades. I use the Crocker sharpener prior to beginning work on another block to get the shape back on the top of the blades. While working on the block, I return fairly frequently to the stones to give the blades a touch-up. The Crocker jig works, but it’s not terribly well manufactured, so I’m keeping my eye open for something similar that has been better milled, perhaps in brass. I’m still having some trouble sharpening, and that’s causing some problems in my engravings.

Through the middle are the tools themselves. From left to right; a flat graver (with a full mushroom handle), a rather hefty scorper (or round graver), two spitstickers, a square head and a diamond head burins (from McClain’s), three tint tools (the second and third have points in need of reshaping), and finally two very odd looking tools that might be for stippling. At the bottom are some carving chisels that were in the bag, and one mushroom headed flat graver that needs some work,

The books say that gravers must be cut to fit the hand, and based on the early work I have done with these tools, this is most assuredly true. I’ll have to contact McClain’s or Lyons to see if they can cut the tools to my hand size.

Scorper or round graver

Scorper

Square burin and diamond burin

Spitsticker

Tint tool

Tint tools with badly shaped points.

Stippling tools (I think....)

 

Three Down, Five to Go

Finished the third block for the Tintern Abbey edition today, although I haven’t proofed it yet. This sequence should show the creative process. I liken it to sculpture, where the form seems to be freed from the stone or wood in stages. Likewise, as I cut, I push back the black (sometimes too far back). It’s no surprise the early wood engravers carved their names in the block, followed by “SC”, the abbreviation for “sculptor”.

As mentioned previously, with this series of blocks – the first that I have attempted – I am attempting to at least interpret the feeling of the work of the great late 18th century wood engraver, Thomas Bewick. Wordsworth was enough of a fan of Bewick’s work to mention him specifically in one of his poems. So here is the work of some one from the Bewick school of engraving (click on images for a closer look):

One can only admire the detail in the foreground figures, the graduations of tone in the hills and mountains, the fulsome texture of the trees, the clever use of “shades” of grey and the overall balance of dark and light, one defining the other. And this is by no means a masterpiece, but the “lofty cliffs” and gentle river reminded me of the Wye River valley.

So, I did my own rough, in pencils:

And began to cut, this time using endgrain maple block prepared for me by a friend. (I spend an entire day sanding a couple dozen of these blocks perfectly flat, and to a glass polish finish.) I washed the block with India ink, then used a white colour pencil to rough out the drawing. I had the finely worked period illustration before me as I worked.

I realize now I should have had my own sketch, then referred to Bewick’s for technique. As a result, I have lost some of the definition of the “hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows” or clumps of brush and foliage clinging to the hills. What Bewick makes look so simple is incredibly hard to emulate!

It’s coming along. I like the cliffs, and the plume of smoke coming up from the homestead. I decided to pursue the background, since I judged that to be the more challenging area. I used the lozenge graver to cut the horizontal lines in the sky. One of these days I’ll get a lining tool, which will help create those neat parallel lines scene in the Bewick print. But I like the cluttered messy look of the hand drawn lines; it’s less clinical, more natural, and after all, this is an interpretation of period work, not an exact copy.

Once again, on the right I’m struggling to understand the need for dark to define light. In my efforts to emulate Bewick I over lighted these stands of trees. There is something about the graver that pulls me into the mid-tones. It’s odd, because I have no problem with this concept in my lino work. However, the patterns create the suggestion of pastoral business at least. I think I’ll go back in and lighten or remove entirely some of the tone lines around these bushes and trees. It may help define them.The old rule of block cutting: you can always take more away, but it is very, very hard to put back again…. It involves cutting the entire block again.

Now, here again, like with the first one I did, I really like the deep black of the river just like it is, but it unbalances the design, so….

The finished block, keeping the middle dark in homage to the original period cut. The foreground was supposed to possess more floral elegance. But leafy will suffice. The end result does have a certain charm to it, I think. Of course, it will print in reverse.

Back Lane Cafe

Some while back a restauranteur asked me to cut a block for his new place, The Back Lane Cafe. I struggled for a while, gave up and sent him one of the experimental proofs, not really like anything we had discussed, framed up as a gift, or more an apology, for failing to deliver. Well, “Back Lane – Study” proved to be exactly what he wanted, and I was delighted to see the business cards his designer produced.

Back Lane Cafe business card, 2-sided.

Lovely font  combination, nice tension between the roman and italic, and the size of the reversed text at bottom more or less begs for sans serif. And a very fine choice of green. I particularly like the square configuration – a great design. The designer could have cropped the image down to the standard business card profile, but the square shape makes the card immediately stand out from the rest.

And if you are in Ottawa, definitely check out this restaurant. The food is fabulous and reasonably priced (yes, I can afford to eat there!) But do the reservation thing; it’s not a huge place, and it has become an instant hit, so busy busy.

My friends Laura and Jaimie at Rusty Nail Reclamation Design did the turn-of-the-20th century urban-meets-country interior design, and they’ve been getting a lot of acclaim for it.

Wood Engraving Part 2 – A Subtle Knife

Continuing on with the wood engraving (not on actual wood, but rather Resingrave, a synthetic plastic that emulates the nature of English boxwood), I worked up the background and puttered about with the middle foreground, more or less composing on the block. Reminding myself that this was supposed to be “play,” and that it was a first effort, I kind of let loose.

Next I tackled the ruined arch on the right. Initially I intended to just cut masonry blocks, but oh no! had to go for a carved multiple column with a mid break leading into a carved riser, and I experimented with marks that would define these features. This is the finished block:

It looked OK on the block, but would it print? Here is a decent proof, done on the same paper (St. Armand’s Canal paper) that will be used for the Wordsworth book.

Still more work to be done, clearing some of the white areas and lightening up here and there. It ain’t Bewick, but I like it. And I am totally and completely hooked on wood engraving, and gearing up to try out some engrain maple.

Here are a few things I learned, in no particular order:

1. While working on the block, the stress level increased the further I got into it. Wesley Bates once told me that he starts with the toughest parts of the block first, and finishes off with easy areas. Makes sense.
2. Handling the tools is tricky. It takes a while to get in the zone: not holding the graver too high or too low.
3. Sharpening is essential. I’d return to the sharpening stones after about 15 minutes of cutting. And there’s a knack to learn about that too. The angle of sharping has to be pretty much dab on, or the blade and cutting point can be damaged.
4. White marks define dark areas. That’s it. Bend your brain around that and you’ve got it made. Do enough of this kind of work and suddenly your brain will go “Click!” and it all falls into place. I’ve been there. I’ve done a lot of this type of work on lino, but I’ve still got a lot to learn about defining light and dark with engraving tools.
5. “This little cut makes a tree. This little cut makes a stone.” Hard metal tool, hard flat surface, but a master can make it seem as though a semi-substantial ghost is emerging from a design. The whole idea of different marks for soft things as opposed to hard things in the illustration introduces a sea of technique possibilities. Very exciting!
6. As you may have deigned, I am in a little bit of awe of wood engraving. It is a very subtle art. In many respects, I was over-heavy with the graver, doubting that some marks would even show. But even the tiniest prick on the surface shows up in the printing. That is a lot of potential. And I only really used three tools: graver, spitsticker and a small chisel for clear the white areas.

The graver is indeed a subtle knife!

*

Note: I’ll print a limited edition hopefully in March, when the book is complete, and will offer it for sale at that time.

Wood Engraving for “Tintern Abbey,” Part 1

I’m working this week on Resingrave, a synthetic compound that emulates the effect of engraving done on the end-grain of boxwood, a la Thomas Bewick, the great English wood engraver from the late 18th century. English boxwood is now scarce and expensive, so here in North America it is common to substitute end grain maple. (More on that later).

I’ve been fretting for some months now as to what I would do for the illustrations in Greyweather’s upcoming edition of Tintern Abbey. Illustrations done in the manner of Thomas Bewick would certainly be ideal, but probably well beyond any skill I have developed though working with linoleum cuts. Perhaps something more interpretive, less literal?

Click on the icons to see the remarkable skill of Bewick (from his own hand, or perhaps from his shop of apprentices):

It is really unbelievable what could be cut by hand!

So, it turns out Wordsworth grew up in similar rustic environs to Bewick, and that the poet even praised the engraver in the same book of poems in which Tintern Abbey was published, saying:

Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine / And the skill which he learn’d on the banks of the Tyne / Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose / For I’d take my last leave both of verse and prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand! / Book-learning and books should be banish’d the land / And for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls / Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

I could not agree more. Well, perhaps all that book banishing business I could do without, but the rest…. sure. It did settle the question as to the manner of illustrating the book. After the manner of Thomas Bewick, then.

Easier said than done. Bewick’s work sits comfortably in the public domain, so I briefly considered finding existing period prints and rendering them into magnesium plates…. a few high res scans and voila! But where’s the fun in that? So began my first serious foray at wood engraving.

I have made attempts before, with varying degrees of success. This time I used the gravers on a piece of resingrave , the white surface treated with India ink. I created a rough drawing directly on the block from a variety of sources, including Bewick and 2oth century illustrators such as Buckland-Wright and Canada’s own home grown cutters, like Wesley Bates, Alan Stein and George Walker. Mostly Bewick though, spending a long time studying the way he did his bushes, trees, leaves, shore lines etc.

A cliff on the left, a ruined arch on the right, the bucolic Wye River in the middle.

After the first tentative cuts, I liked where it was going, but I was still making the illustration up on the fly more or less, and as time went on, the white watercolour pencil would wear off, leaving room for even more interpretation.

The broad ferns and foliage originally planned at the bottom morphed into tree roots, but I had already started a work on the bottom of a cliff face.

From stone to wood, then, as the cliff face morphed into a tree. I loved the striking look of the white leaves on the black background, but Bewick never worked like that. He used tone, and a lot of black line work, especially around the top of the drawing.

And as far as I had gotten yesterday:

I had pulled out a copy of Kubla Khan yesterday, and realized this design resembles somewhat the linocut I did for that book, seven years ago now. Weird.