Grimsby Wayzgoose 2013!

“Wayzgoose” is one of those old words of mysterious origin, but what is certain is that it was a time of celebration for printers, and printers are people who particularly enjoy celebrating! Today, the term is applied to  book artists to exhibit and sell their beautiful hand crafted work. And yes,  to celebrate as well.

The Wayzgoose in Grimsby, Ontario is a venerable book arts show, founded by the renown Bill Poole, and one we’ve exhibited at for the past five or six years. Once again, we’ll have a table there offering books and prints. Hope to see you!

 

The Third & Elm Press

Click to view larger

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.

Sight Lines – A Greyweathers Press sampler

I’ve been thinking about printing a comprehensive type sampler for a while. I’ve been  pulling out drawers untouched for years, squinting at the characters cast in reverse and searching through reference books for its identity. When I got my press (2004) I did not require corrective lenses to see, and then the notion of  arranging the type samples as Snellen eye examination charts came to me.

The problem with this is that most of my type, with the exception of Italian Oldstyle, is one size only, meaning that to create charts I’d have to mix up the fonts. I did indeed do this for one of the type ‘illustrations’ in the finished sampler.

I printed 100 copies, with 60 destined for the OPG collaboration (delivery tomorrow!) and final 40 to be offered for sale at the Merrickville Studio Tour, the last two weekends in September.

 

500 shades of printing presses

 

One example of the infernal device, from the early days of printing.

After the last post, I thought it might be considerate to write about presses, but fortunately others have already blazed that trail. Here’s a link to the Five Roses Press letterpress online hub, with descriptions of all the different kinds of printing presses with a bit of historical context, and a slant on how a press should fit the kind of work one desires to produce. For the record, my own press is a Vandercook flatbed proofing press, described at the end. The examples in my previous post are antique iron presses. Five Roses is a veritable endless scroll of information that will excite the spirit of anyone eager to learn more, and boggle the minds of those who do not. Also, it is rather North American-centric.

Printing on Old Iron at Massey College

Finally, I’m getting around to putting up the following photos, taken during a letterpress & typography symposium at the University of Toronto’s Massey College held this spring. This relatively young college possesses a fine, small library which comes complete with a veritable museum of a press room. I counted half a dozen iron presses, all seeming to be in working order. The print room was open and an Albion was set up for demonstrations. (Click on the pictures for a larger view).

Visitors to the symposium taking proofs off this fine old iron press (an Albion, I believe).

 

A Columbian iron press

An Imperial iron press, with another table-top iron press in the background.

A Washington iron press (apologies, a little fuzzy) of the size that would have done broadside sheets.

The Robertson Davies Library also had some fine examples of pages under glass from the days prior to the printing press, which were a treat to see.

And it was wonderful to see this elegant alphabet carved from stone, marble most likely… the letters are truly beautiful.

 

Stinky Reglets

The reglet case shoe-horned into the studio, looking like it always lived there. In front are my slug (leading) cutters, and to the right, part of the metal press furniture. I shot this standing right at the press drum, so all this equipment is handy to the press bed.

As mentioned in the previous post, this past weekend I acquired to cabinets of reglets, these being hundreds of pieces of thin pieces of wood in two thicknesses and approximately 40 different lengths. Think of them as shims that help hold the type and block securely  on the press. These little guys are actually hard to come by, and combining the two sets would make for one fairly complete, and the left-overs could be cut to make up a lot of the difference. They are easy to loose and also get mangled, so complete sets are hard to come by. Over the years, I’ve managed just fine without reglets, but if I had a dollar for ever time I wished I had them, I’d probably be good for a nice holiday. They are just handy to have about.

I also mentioned in the previous post that these ENTIRELY WOODEN press accoutrements had been stored in a dank basement. The cases are not very large, so they both fit in the MINI with ample room to spare. All was well, until the day warmed up and I closed the window and put on the A/C. That funky smell? Yup, stinky reglets.

I left the cases for two days in the blistering sunlight – UV light kills mold – while I thought about how to proceed. A good bath in anti-fungal detergent might do the trick, but wood swells and warps when wet, and the reglets are rather thin pieces of wood. Regardless, I dumped the contents of one case into a tub of warm water and detergent, which removed visible signs of mould and fungus blooms. The case was also thoroughly scrubbed and hosed down, then everything left in the sun and wind to dry out. Hedging, I dry wiped the reglets from the second case, but scrubbed down the cabinet in the same manner.

Excepting four or five pieces, none of the immersed reglets warped after everything was thoroughly dry. There may have been some slight swelling in some, but everything went back into the case as it came out. Even after all that, it still had a faint musty smell, but nowhere near what it was.

All the cabinets and reglets went into large, heavy duty plastic bags with charcoal, which seemed to help further. The second set of reglets are still enclosed with charcoal and as I bring them in to fill the studio case, I’ll have to wipe them with a spray of anti-fungal detergent.

Reglet cabinets bagged up with odor-eating charcoal.

 

 

Binding Tintern Abbey

Part One: Folding, Piercing, Sewing

When printing is finished, the press room converts into a bindery. A custom made table top is fit over the press bed providing more table space. It is difficult to make the conversion smoothly, since a press room and a bindery are very different environments, but one adapts.

The above photo show the aftermath of the first phase of binding. I have used the piercing cradle to stab holes in the signatures, then sewed up the signatures on tapes into book blocks. After this, I’ll glue on the endsheets which pretty much hold the book to the covers. Once that is done, they go under weight for a few hours, as below:

Signatures weighted between boards.

I use almost nothing that would be considered professional bookbinding equipment. Even the needles I use for sewing aren’t “official” bookbinding needles. I do use a bone folder which is a traditional bookbinder’s tool, and I own a nipping press… very handy for nipping the cases after cloth and/or paper has been glued down on them. But most everything else is purloined or conscripted from other purposes. The boards I’m using to press the glued endpages are thin plywood, leftover from a rough shelving unit; they are a far cry from the lovely hardwood boards that professional binderies stock. The weight I’m using is a container of lead spacing material for type.

I suppose my point is that everything in the studio must be prepared to serve in two (or more!) capacities, and this works pretty well for the most part. Sometimes I find it a problem when, after many months or even years between a certain conversion, I forget exactly what esoteric object I used to achieve a certain goal or effect. One begins to feel like McGyver.

What I miss most from a professional bindery are high tables that bring the work to just about chest height. In production binding, after many hours stooped over a regular height table, you begin to feel it. Sometimes I’ll drop a computer chair down to it’s lowest, but usually I set an old wooden tool chest up on the workspace, and set the work I’m doing on that, which helps my back and neck immensely!

The work show above is another ten copies of Tintern Abbey under way. the next step will be to glue up the spines, attach end bands and line the spines with mull (a kind of thin mesh) and paper.

 

Where I Work

(Click to enlarge.)

For the most part, the above photograph shows you my little kingdom. (This shot was taken in the midst of printing a keepsake for Canadian Notes & Queries). In the foreground right is a galley tray cabinet, holding fifty trays. These trays are used to move type and material from the compositing area to the press, and let’s admit it, for storing type waiting to be dissed back into the cabinets. There’s the press on the right, with a repurposed kitchen cupboard in the background holding the press “furniture” – or the metal bits that secure type and blocks on the press bed. On the left, is a long banker’s table that came from the office where I used to edit the Upper Canadian. Normally it is covered with detritus that has no home anywhere else. Under the long table I’ve built hasty cabinets to hold type and smaller sheets of paper, and printers waste. Out of sight are a couple of type cabinets to the left, and behind to the left is a big old Westman Baker paper cutter. The space beyond the edge of the press is the creative domain of the lovely and talented Holly Dean, to whom I am eternally devoted…. particularly for surrendering half of her studio to all my heavy metal and bookish dreams. And for other reasons.

And that’s it. I’m not complaining – I’m spoiled for space more than many letterpress printers, who are literally climbing over their equipment to get about their studios. But still, I am thinking…thinking…. More storage would make it much easier to keep the press tidier. A full floor to ceiling cabinet at the back to store more ink and other tools and equipment. Build a galley across the back of the long table to get all the typesetting material in one area. Decide about the odds&sods type now stored under the long desk and use the space for storage. Or build proper type storage there, and begin selectively acquire type that I will use. The back corner behind the bust — those are a couple of booth walls. Move those to the shed outside and build a tall cabinet for holding rolls of book cloth and paper.

We’re not really that far off from having a well-organized space. More on this as the summer progresses….

Type on Tintern Abbey

I print my books using hand set lead type in much the same manner that Gutenberg used over 500 years ago. I would say the similarities end there: he not only had to found his own type, but invent a way to do it to make composing his bible a viable exercise. All I had to do was email Ed at Swamp Press, as I have done every year or so over the past seven years, and order lead type.

My order is always the same: Italian Oldstyle in roman and italic. It arrives carefully packed in a crate, and the process could be likened to unpacking an Egyptian mummy. Here’s an order that came shortly after work on Tintern Abbey finished. There’s an outer shipping box, then packing material in and around the inner sarcophagus…. er, I mean type packets:

Italian Oldstyle type, 10 pt roman and italic in four packages. (Note rule and Olfa knive to the right for scale)

Excitement builds as the outer layer comes away to reveal:

Kind of like Carter opening up Tut’s tomb. Then, the moment of truth:

A body of type.

There’s a reason for all this extraordinary packing. Ed and I have found, over the years, that lead type packets crossing the great divide between the USA and Canada tend to be violated… er, examined by curious border authorities of both nationalities, I presume. After fatally disrupting the packaging, the authorities send my type back out into the postal stream unsealed! This has happened on two previous orders. This time I asked Ed to send it via UPS; it costs more, but my type arrived in perfect order.

Swamp Press sells monotype which is somewhat softer than foundry type; the latter is an alloy, but there’s not much foundry type being made anymore. Monotype is really meant to be used for a while, then ultimately melted down and recast again, with some always kept on hand in the cabinets for small jobs and corrections. Monotype is fine for my purposes; I’m doing mostly book work, and very limited press runs. However, my 12 point roman takes the brunt of the press, and has been used repeatedly now over the last six or seven years. And it’s starting to show in certain of the most frequently used letters: e, l, r, g, h, i, s,  and t. Hairlines, breaks, wear-out, broken serifs, worn tails and balls etc. I’m spending a lot more time at the proofing stage stooped over the press, tweezering out offenders, tossing them in the hell box and replacing them. The problem is that after the book is finished, and I’m with a collector or at a show perusing the book, that’s when I see the broken piece of type that I missed during production! It’s frustrating, but it is a risk when working with even gently used type. The older and more worn the type, the more vigilant the printer must be.

Swamp Press has an amazing library of monotype faces available. Check out their site here.

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.

~