Hand & Eye in Ultrabold

The current edition of Ultrabold, the journal of the Friends of St Bride, includes an article Phil wrote based on his talk at Letterpress, A Celebration last November. We’ve put the text online here, but we’d like you to get the real thing if you haven’t already. That way you help to support the library and get the photographs in a larger size and higher resolution.

New shop sign

We never got round to putting a proper sign in our window when we moved here to Pinchin Street. We had a print of our logo in 72 pt which we stuck to the door with Sellotape. That was ok, but recently we noticed that the red had faded to a pale orange.

Now we’ve had it changed, as you can see. We rather like it.

Whittington Summer Show

We will once again be at the Whittington Summer Show this year. It takes place on 5 September, and you can see the gorgeous poster here. The illustrations were hand stenciled by Miriam Macgregor, and we think it’s worth going just for the chance of picking one up.

As last year, we’ll be on the proofing press. We are currently putting together some type for a poster which we’ll be taking with us so that those who want to can print their own copy. We’ll have other posters too, as well as books and cards.

36 pt Gill Cameo Ruled

We bought this fount of 36 pt Gill Cameo Ruled on ebay this week. It’s not the sort of thing we usually go for, but this was irresistible. We don’t have a use for it in mind, but we’re confident that it’ll be just the right thing for a job one day.

Eric Gill, whose name it bears, was a purist – ‘Letters are things, not pictures of things’, ‘A is A and B is B’. We’re curious to know what he made of the many variants of his type face that Monotype released. It’s easy to imagine him condemning them, and just as easy to imagine him justifying them as the inevitable consequence of machine made things.

Gill Cameo Ruled was one of a great number of types sold by Mouldtype Foundry when they were still going. If a fount wasn’t needed they’d sell display sizes (18 pt and above) as individual sorts. We still have a line of 36 pt Pepita bought that way. We only bought type when it was needed for a job in those days, but looking back it’s a shame we didn’t get any Festival Titling. It’s hard to imagine using it very much, but what lovely letters.

Busy, busy, busy

There’s a lot going on here at the moment, hence the infrequent blog entries.

Phil has been frantically printing Richard III, the latest in the the Letterpress Shakespeare series for the Folio Society. His attempts to meet the production deadline haven’t been helped by an ink problem. We used to buy a black from Shackell Edwards that was made to our specification. It was wonderfully stiff and dense, and gave a terrific sharp, rich result. SE went out of business earlier in the year, and when we asked another manufacturer, who will remain nameless, to provide a match what they came up with was so thin and runny that we’ve had to reprint five formes.

Our usual practice on the Shakespeare is that Nick imposes the formes and Phil prints them. The impositions don’t take nearly as long as the printing, and in between times Nick has been working with Rosa on the proofing press. They are printing a short extract from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for the Oak Tree Fine Press. It is only 48 pages, but they are all in two colours and there are ten or eleven wood engravings to print from the original blocks too. The type was set on a Mac and made into line blocks, which need careful positioning on the press. To add to the fun, some of the edition is on hand made paper which has very irregular edges, a nightmare for maintaining register.

The job has had its problems and it’s going much slower than we had hoped, but the printing’s looking great.

Nobody’s Perfect

At the end of Some Like It Hot Tony Curtis tells Joe E Brown that he can’t marry him because he’s really a man. Brown replies that nobody’s perfect.

We’re put in mind of that scene when we come up against one of the few disadvantages of our wonderful Pinchin Street premises: when the sun shines we’re almost blinded by reflections from the cars parked over the road.

As well as being about as close to cinematic perfection as possible, Some Like It Hot is the name of a fabulous CD by Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums featuring Carmen Getit.

Cropper treadle platen

This Acme Cropper treadle platen used to be in Bruton Museum in Somerset. They no longer have room for it, and Lucy and Robert Carter have given it a temporary home. They would like to pass it on, together with some type, to someone who can use it.

If you’re interested please contact Lucy.

Tipoteca Italiana

The weekend before last Phil had the good fortune to visit the Tipoteca Italiana in Cornuda, northern Italy. This remarkable museum, founded by Silvio Antiga, is built around a large collection of historic Italian printing material. For the last fifteen years or so Silvio and his colleagues have been traveling round the country, talking to printers, photographing them and collecting type and machinery. This is restored magnificently in their own workshop, and some of it is on display. The building itself is a former rope works that has been restored and adapted with wonderful taste and sensitivity.

One of the things that shines through is a high a regard for the printers themselves, as well as for the tools of their trade. The place is a must for anyone interested in printing and its past. It has the added attraction of its location in the Veneto, close to both Venice and the equally spectacular plain and Dolomite mountains.

For those who can’t get there the museum have published A Story of Character, a book of their first ten years. Written by Sandro Berra, their genial director, it has over three hundred beautiful photographs superbly printed on uncoated paper by Silvio’s other enterprise, Graffiche Antiga.

You can see more of Phil’s photographs here.

New edition

Letters Are Letters was one of our first poster, and it has sold very well at Ben Pentreath’s shop. So well, in fact, that it we have reprinted it. The first time round it was in black and red, so we made the second colour green this time.

The text is a quote from Eric Gill’s Essay on Typography, and it’s something that is central to the way we design things.

Letters Are Letters is available now in our store.

Interns on the web site

We’ve updated our web site with a page about internships. Although we haven’t mentioned it here for some time, our programme is going very nicely. We have had interns with us for most of this year, and we’re currently booked up until the middle of October. Most participants are from the UK, but Johannes Languste joined us from Austria in January and this month Jeff Benjamin came over from New York state.

We get a lot of pleasure from having new people around, and an extra pair of hands around the place really helps.