Roots

I’m still assembling notes on why art and books often get slammed together in the same phrase, but in the meantime, I thought I’d talk a bit about some other printing-related projects that I have on the go. First up, a labour of love that has had me occupied in spare moments for about fifteen years.

In 1905, my great-great grandfather, Joshua Thompson, then well into his dotage, finished a 250 page hand-written monograph and presented it to his son at a family reunion in Clinton, Ontario. This remarkable document details in biographical sketches what Joshua could remember about his grandparents in Ireland, and his parent’s journey to Canada in 1821, the lives of his brothers and sisters and their pioneer life in Eastern Ontario. Later, around 1850, Joshua moved his family to southern Ontario and so the story continues, with detailed prose essays on the lives of his children, and some later inclusions and notations about grandchildren.

Sample page - Joshua has a pretty fine hand for 82 years of age

The remarkable thing is that Joshua, then in his early 80s, undertook to make four – possibly five – copies of this monumental work for his each of his surviving children.

Photo of Joshua Thompson from the Family History

I don’t want to go on and on about the contents, other than to say that Joshua’s primary literary reference was the bible and being himself a rather stern Methodist of the fundamentalist variety, the Family History can be a bit heavy going – not exactly light reading. Nevertheless, the information held within is remarkable, and naturally, the book is a rather highly regarded family treasure.

About fifteen years ago, I borrowed the book from my father and began to transcribe the text into that new-fangled machine, the computer, the intent being to distribute the information therein to anyone. With the advent of print-on-demand (POD), the project has evolved into creating a small number of hardbound books (digital type set, in case any hand-setters were wondering) for family members, complete with a DVD containing scans of the actual manuscript pages, images and the text again in a ASCI text file. I think for now that is the best I can do to disseminate the information on Joshua’s book. This should be complete over the summer.

Now that my work with the book itself is finished, it is in dire need of restoration. Enter Natasha Herman of the Redbone Bindery who will stabilize the structure and build a box to house the book and the associated bits of paper that have been shoved in over the last century. Then the original will be donated to an archives, probably and hopefully at the Lennox and Addington Museum in Napanee, not far from where the family first settled.

I began it for selfish reasons; I wanted a copy of the History. I’ll be glad when the project is finally finished, because it has stretched out over so many years. But procrastination, in this case, has allowed Joshua’s great labour to be perpetuated throughout his descendants. I think he would be pleased.

Finishing off the prospectus

Still in double duty mode, printing the prospectus for Graven Images and the first sheet of the edition at the same time. Next, printing the drop cap:

Printing the red drop cap.

After struggling so much with the text type, it was nice to print one, simple perfect letter.

Drop cap 'W'

The next job was the first of three halftones. These are, in two cases, shots of blocks from the collection that were not cut, or only partially cut, and a large one of the open case. Owosso Graphics produced the images from magnesium plates, and the quality is exceptional. However, I had to use a Dremel to bevel the edges on two of them, to prevent them from showed up in the proofs. But this first one, a halftone of a block prepared with an illustration but not cut, was perfect in the proofs.

Magnesium plate inked on press.

The challenge with halftones is to balance dark and light with not too much impression. When your paper is stiff and has a rough surface, printing halftones can be very trying. It tried to use enough impression to eliminate the moiré pattern generated by the textured paper, but not so deep as to eliminate detail.

With type, I slowly add ink until I feel there is enough on the rollers, then carry on with the run until I detect the ink becoming faint. I add a tiny bit of ink to the rollers, and let it run for a bit to distribute the new ink, to prevent it over inking some parts and not enough on other parts of the form. With the halftones, just adding micro elements of ink caused initial over inking. I learned well into the prospectus that I had to stop, clean off the block, run a few proofs and start again. This seemed to clean up most problems. In the end, it printed well, but I wonder if I should have given it just a bit more impression. We’ll see with others that are on the press for today, and later next week.

Printed halftone of an uncut block, featuring a sailing ship in rough seas. A tiny portion - the topsail - has been engraved, but the rest is just India ink. You can see the pattern of the textured paper bottom right.

Tabula Rasa

Desktop cleaned and ready to receive work on Graven Images.

Press cover popular with the cat

As I expected, Tennyson the cat found the new press cover (or ‘press cozy’, as someone called it on Facebook) to his liking, as I expected. Heck, he’s part of the reason why I had the thing made. At least he won’t lie directly on the rollers anymore…. At least, not when it’s at rest.  And I would never admit to the temptation to turn the press on while he lying on it….

New Press Cover

Our studio is dusty, and windy thanks to a ceiling fan and a forced air wood burning stove. And many of the crafts we do involve feathers and sequins. And we have a hairy cat and a big black dog who both shed enough in a year to make two more like them. So you will understand when I say that I have always had press cover envy.

Well, now I have one. Made on a trade by a local seamstress (and artist extraordinaire, I might add) using some tapestry-like fabric I picked up for a song at an antiques auction a few years ago. I photograph it now, before oil and grease have their wicked way with it.

New Type!

That’s what it’s all about. Is there anything more exciting than brand new, never-before-used type? Lead never shines so brightly, and laying down the first skin of ink and taking the first impression with it… there’s nothing like it.

Getting it from Swamp Press in Maine to my humble abode is another matter. In spite of Ed Rayer’s heroic efforts to fortify the packages, two of the four split open, and it appears that one size, 36 pt, lost some of its weight on the journey. No lower case ‘l’s, and three missing upper case letters. Geez! I got that size so I could set titles in large type, so I will probably need caps B, K and R at some point. Good thing I didn’t order it for Kubla Khan! uba han? Sounds like a Star Wars character.

Whatever the case, in spite of messed up packages, most of the order arrived pretty much whole. I got 2 more 1/4 strength lots of 12 pt in lower case, since I have plenty upper case in that size; 2 more 14 point, 18 pt, 24 p, 30 pt and 36 pt Italian Oldstyle Roman. The roman portion of the house font is starting to look nicely filled out now; I’ll work on building up the italic over the next few years. It means that I’ve got enough of this book face to do some fairly serious projects, utilizing the large bed of my press. And that is exciting.

Lead isn’t the only way to get ink into paper. Photopolymer and magnesium plates offer the whole array of opportunity that digital design can offer, with a letterpress result. Several noted book artists work this way now. Because lead type is so difficult to acquire and really very expensive, I can see moving that way for some projects. But having one complete metal font in various sizes, in roman and italic, gives a certain freedom as well. Just make sure you choose a font you can live with for years. For me, that would be Italian Oldstyle.

12 point Italian Oldstyle at the bottom, or foreground, arrived in fine form. The same could not be said for the 14 pt and 18 pt above, or the 36 pt which arrived a week earlier in a great jumble.

A litte bit of press maintenance

January is blistering by and there is some progress on the wood engraving portfolio. Holly finished her design for the title page and interior, and it called for halftone plates as opposed to tipped in illustrations, which means several hundred more passes on the press before this job is finished. It will be interesting to see the quality of the plate done for the wood block that broke on the press. I made a high resolution (1200 dpi) scan of a crisp proof I took long before the block began to decay, then spent an entire day cleaning up the image on Photoshop at tremendous magnification, especially tedious on the lined background. In the end, I saved some work by scanning a slightly darker proof and used a patch help an area that was too light. While I was at it, I eliminated some old scratches and cracks. Since what I’m printing is a digital rendering of the original, I’m not so fussed about its ‘integrity’. If the collection proves popular, original proofs of ‘The Reader’ will be something of a prize, since I only managed to print a dozen or so before the block cracked.
Meanwhile, I’ve been looking at my press and acknowledging that it is high time for a thorough cleaning, which means a partial dismantling. Definitely after the Portfolio…. Definitely!

Closing out the year at Greyweathers Press

Yesterday I spent a few hours creating a demo binding for the never-ending portfolio project. This is the first trial at how the book will look, once it is an actual book, as opposed to a hair-brained idea. And here is the result (click to enlarge all):

Portfolio version 1.0

The boards are covered in Canson paper, light brown outside, red inside and bound in the Coptic manner.

Here’s a close-up of the stiching:

Book, face down to show stitching

And some spreads to show our solution in presenting the prints:

I like it, but I don’t love it. Because of the direction of the paper grain, I end up with a lot of waste from the covers, as opposed to using hand-made paper, more expensive, but no grain so I’d be able to make it extend twice as far…. and nicer than Canson? Oh, yeah.

I’m satisfied with Holly’s solution to displaying the prints, and the cream Canson is fine for that. I may use Arches or Fabriano for the cover page and introduction etc.

I like the binding, but it takes a hell of a long time. It worries me that the heavy back cover is literally only attached to the last signature, which in this case is a single sheet of paper. Hmmmm.

It all seems a bit lacking in unity.

Whatever. Setting of type begins in January.

Happy new year to all.

Printing 19th century wood engravings

Work has begun on printing the collection of 19th century wood engraving blocks loaned to me about a year and a half back. I’ve already taken proofs of the blocks, and will illustrate results in this blog as they come up.

I started out with the first block I proofed, a large engraving of a mouse or, more likely, a rat — an unlikely subject, but brilliantly executed, the engraver has defined every hair!

Unlike the initial proof, I spent over two hours on make-ready for this print. Make-ready is the preparation work designed to create a clean and even print. In letterpress plates, forms, block cuts and illustrations should be, in a perfect world, all even, all 0.918 inch thick. Alas, the world is not perfect, so if falls to the printer to make it so, if he or she cares about the quality of his/her work.

Early proofs identify areas of the print that are light. These areas are highlighted and very thin tissue is cut in the shape, and applied to a master sheet which will eventually underlay the sheet proceeding through the press, hopefully correcting the unevenness of impression. Make sense? Probably not.  Here’s my workspace for the make-ready on Ratty:

And here’s the end result, after about half a dozen applications of tissue on the underlay:

I know, it doesn’t look like much, but in the end, Ratty printed beautifully thanks to this corrective measure.

I can’t always be so smug. Today I printed the large ‘Willow’ block. The 150 years that have passed since this block was first cut have not been kind. It’s a composite of six small blocks, and each of the six parts printed differently, and the sections have shrunk ever so slightly leaving gaps that no skill of my own could repair.

Here’s an early proof to show you what I mean:

The make-ready on this block took close to four hours, and I printed the run, although I’m less than thrilled with the results. I increased impression to compensate for some areas that required just massive build-up, but that ended up causing loss of fine detail in areas around the edge of the block after adding more ink to the press to better define the interior. It’s like trying to capture quicksilver!

Here’s the Willow make-ready:

And the final print:

I may buy paper again and take another stab at this one. The make-ready is done, it’s just trying to balance the ink and the impression to maximize the details, and let me say, this block has details, baby. I spent an hour on proofs, lost in the lines, trying to find out why there were so much white in the middle, even though I had lines printing solid. I now realize that it was all the device of a highly skilled artist, now dead for over a hundred years, who cleared white space from the block to create the illusion of the sun-dappled willow fronds hanging from the tree. Okay… impressed! I don’t know what the wood engraver thought of his work, or if he gave it any thought at all, but it is fine work which deserves to be printed properly. So I’ll leave it fallow a bit and revisit it again next week.

Of all the 16 blocks in the collection, ‘The Willows’ is in the worst condition; I don’t expect make-ready on the rest to be so difficult.

He says, tempting the fates….

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.