I’m currently assembling a show on Book Arts at Hamilton
College’s Burke Library. The show is
drawn from the holdings in the Burke’s Book Arts collection. The collection is incredibly varied. Curation of this collection has changed hands
several times, and the vision for the overall collection has therefore changed
several times as well. To assemble a
show out of this set of holdings, I’ve had the awesome opportunity to simply
walk the stacks and pull or open anything that looked interesting. As I see it, the collection divides into at
least three major categories: (1) historical, academic, or instructional
resources related to printing and book making; (2) book “objects” with
unconventional bindings, inclusions, or other elements; and (3) experimental,
craft, or fine press printing of literature.
This last section divides into two subsets: reprints of canonical texts,
and original works. In the show, I’ve
tried to draw evenly from each of these three emphases, focusing in the last
upon original poetry in a book arts context.
All told, the show will have about 35 items on display. I’m sending the greatest hits—10 amazing examples
of printing and book construction, or the items from which I’ve learned the
most—to The Dinsinhibitor, along with the exhibition text. The collection is actively seeking
acquisitions; for those printers reading this, consider sending a catalog or a
prospectus to the Director of Special Collections and Archives (contact info
here: http://www.hamilton.edu/library/collections/specialcollections)
(1)
A Ludlow Anthology
Compiled by Steven and Meryl Chayt. Winter Haven, FL: Anachronic Editions, 1986.
The Ludlow Typograph was one of several hot-metal
typesetting systems that developed in the first decades of the twentieth
century. Unlike cold-metal typesetting,
in which a compositor selected individual characters from a drawer, the various
forms of hot-metal typesetting involved setting molds for on-the-spot founding
of single characters (Monotype), lines of characters (Linotype), or other
variations, such as the Ludlow system, from which A Ludlow Anthology was printed.
As the editors of this anthology note,
“…The earliest printers were their
own typefounders, but this handicraft eventually became a separate trade. And it was not until after the long uphill
struggle to mechanize the operations
of typemaking and composing in the 19th
century that the printer again became his own typefounder. Because of a few highly workable systems;
Linotype, Monotype, and Ludlow, the printer of the 1920’s could be independent,
if he wished, from the monopoly of the type foundry. These machines continued to provide service
throughout their tenure until they were all but replaced by the photographic
based systems that accompanied the industry wide switch to photo-offset
printing in the 1960’s and 70’s…”
The Ludlow system was unique in that it combined traditional hand-set type with a hot-metal system. Unlike Monotype or Linotype systems, which used keyboard systems to select and set type, the Ludlow system relied upon a skilled compositor to select and set type-molds in a composing stick. The composing stick was then inserted into the Ludlow Typograph; hot lead would be injected under pressure into the mold to ensure a clean casting, producing a single line of new type. Among the advantages of the Ludlow system were that it could accommodate a wide variety of typefaces and point sizes in a single line, and that it made printing multiple colors far easier than cold-metal or other hot-meal systems. The Ludlow was thus ideally suited for display applications such as ornaments, newspaper headlines, and more experimental forms. This anthology was set and printed entirely from a Ludlow system (though no longer being manufactured, they are still widely available and easily serviced), with images printed from photopolymer plates or silkscreen. To illustrate some of these features, display of this volume will alternate between pages 16 and 17, which demonstrate the advantages of the Ludlow in color, style, and size of type, and pages 50 and 51, which demonstrate the use of the Ludlow in printing ornamentation.
(2)
Anansi Company: a collection of thirteen
hand-made wire and card rod-puppets / animated in colour and verse
Ronald King and Roy Fisher. London: Circle Press, 1992.
Dedicated in part to “the Caribbean community of Notting
Hill,” and derived from Walter Jekyll’s 1907 Jamaican Song and Story, King and Fisher’s Anansi Company presents
an incredible material investigation into the processes of memory and cultural
exchange that constitute the “black Atlantic”:
“In Africa, Anansi the Spider was a god, of the sort easily demoted by missionary theology to the rank of demon or imp: a spirit of ruses, deceits and evasions, of compulsive activity unimpeded by ethics. Abducted by slave traders and shipped to the Caribbean, he there developed as a folklore character, the not-always-successful mover of hard-nosed comic and satirical tales whose tellers would habitually close with the disingenuously polite formula, ‘Jack Mantora, me no choose none’ - ‘Mr Listener, don’t think I’m getting at you’.
In these stories, Anansi still speaks with a shaman’s spirit
voice, high and hoarse, and in a disheveled language that’s a travesty of
whatever dialect he might be supposed to use.
But in this rural setting populated by creatures with suggestively human
habits, he’s usually more of a man than a spider…”
The work is silk-screened, hand stenciled, letterpressed, collaged, and includes thirteen articulated hand-bent brass wire and paper puppets (also silk-screened, letterpressed, and stenciled). The puppets, each in their own booklet, illustrate the collected anecdotes, and each puppet is secured within a set of brackets. These brackets further allow either easy removal from the booklet or—more interestingly—operation of the puppet within the booklet, during which the booklet acts as a sort of stage or backdrop. An Introduction and Colophon, each in their own separate booklets, accompany the thirteen puppets. Non-paginated, and with no clear narrative arc across these fifteen items, like cultural myth and collective memory these booklets (including the framing Introduction and Colophon) may be shuffled and arranged at a reader’s or performer’s whim. The entire bundle appropriately closes with a string.
(3)
Alphabeticum
Werner Pfeiffer.
Red Hook, NY: Pear Whistle Press, 2006
In an “Addendum,” Werner Pfeiffer explains the rationale
behind this fine-press reissue of a series of experimental prints dating from
the 1960s:
“The idea of publishing Alphabeticum after a hiatus of over four
decades was born out of a desire to make these pre-digital experiments
available to a new and select audience… By issuing a small, limited edition it
is possible to retain a sense of the handmade intimacy, which was part of the
original concept. It is a quality that
is so often missing in the slick and glossy output of commercial
productions. The deckle edge, the print
embossment, the smell of ink, even the occasional smudge are all part of this
experience…”
In addition to these exciting explorations of the
letterform, Pfeiffer gets at precisely the appeal of book-arts more broadly, as
well as to the difficulty inherent in curating a show of this sort of
work. That is, the pieces beg to be
picked up and turned over; the letterforms ask to be traced with the tip of a
finger; and the prints are a visual, tactile, and even olfactory experience.
(4)
Ornamented types :
twenty-three alphabets from the Foundry of Louis John Pouchée : the
specimens printed from the original wood-engraved blocks in the St
Bride Printing Library :
with two additional alphabets from other sources.
Introduction by James Mosely. London : I.M.
Imprimit in association with the St Bride Printing Library, 1993.
The collection identifies a transitional moment in type
history. In the 1930s, following the
refinement of modernity (represented in this show by the works of Frederic
Goudy and Eric Gill; examples of their work are on display on the third floor),
there was a renewed interest in the ornate typography of the early 1800s. “In the late 1930s,” Mosely writes,
“…a new interest was developing in
the robustly selfconfident [sic] type
designs of the early nineteenth century.
Only a decade earlier, they had been denounced by Stanley Morison, who
asserted that ‘The types cut between 1810 and 1850 represent the worst that
have even been.’ The vigorous fat faces
of the 1820s which had seemed the nadir of bad taste were more admired in the
1930s, perhaps partly for that very reason, by the new generation of designers
for printers and publishers.”
Ornamented Types
emerges from the collapse of one foundry (that of Caslon, which was much
praised by Goudy) and the selling off of its holdings; among them were the many
typefaces that are represented in this book, and it was eventually discovered
that many were designed, cut and cast by Louis John Pouchee.
Aside from this sort of material-textual history, which
traces printing practices at the beginning of the nineteenth century and is
suggestive of the ways in which those practices influenced late modernist
practices a century later, the decontextualized, collage-like aspect of these
catalogs in a more general sense produces a particular sort of visual poetry.
5)
Book-Making on the Distaff Side.
Various contributors.
New York, NY: Distaff Side, 1937.
As an ad hoc publication assembled to
celebrate a gathering held by the Distaff Side (an association of female
printers), the book reflects its occasion.
With contributions from dozens of printers working in their own shops
with their own equipment, the volume contains multiple paper stocks,
type-faces, levels of production-value and skill, and a wide variety in tone
and aesthetic. As noted in the
“Introduction,”
“…Ever since the days of Mrs. Gutenberg, women have been involved in
the art of printing; and now, more than ever, they are to be found in the
offices and factories concerned with the making of books. Yet never before, to our knowledge, have they
been organized into a group for the express purpose of producing a book by,
for, and concerning themselves. Bookmaking on the Distaff Side is the
product of their writing, their designing, their type-setting and their
printing; and while it has sometimes been necessary to call in the men for the
more menial tasks of the printing-office, it remains essentially a female
book.”
Among other items,
the book includes a remembrance of Bertha Goudy (wife and type compositor of
Frederic), numerous essays (historical, critical, and comic), several printers’
manifestoes, poems, and images created using type elements. Like the Worthy
Papers sale catalog in this case, the form of this volume reflects the need
to present an array of material practices.
Here, however, structure serves a critical rather than commercial
purpose. By presenting a highly varied
material surface and a polyvocal text while omitting such standard
organizational devices as an index, table of contents, colophon, and
contributors’ page (though these all could have been added at any stage of the
volume’s production), the Distaff Side publication suggests that these
structural conventions of organization are bound up with the imbalances of
gender, commerce, and aesthetic and cultural authority that the book takes for
its object.
6)
A Landscape with Cows in it
Clifford Burke (poem) and Ruth E. Fine (linoleum
cut). West Burke, VT: Janus Press, 1987.
Known for his own Cranium Press, closely aligned with the
Beat writers and with West Coast social and political activism, and his later,
more ecologically oriented Desert Rose Press, Burke’s slim pamphlet with Claire
Van Vliet’s Janus Press combines his own overt social and ecological concerns
with Van Vliet’s structural investigations.
Like the Turnbull and Carson books on display in this case, Burke’s poem
is a variation on the accordion fold.
The poem begins by recording the speaker’s occasional glimpses out his
window of cows in a field, along with a barn, a row of fir trees, and a
powerpole lighting the barnyard. Much of
the poem remarks upon the various daily configurations of the cows in the
field: “The cows come down / from the barn / to the lower pasture, / arrange
themselves / differently each day / … // Early cows and / late cows dark cows /
and light cows all / alter / day by day.”
From these pastoral observations, the speaker shifts to outrage as he
observes the culling of the herd for slaughter: “With the clarity of madness,
or of rage / I know who’ll pay for those dead cows / … / They’ve slaughtered
all the steers / or driven them off in trucks…”
At the same time, occasioned by this interruption and this outrage, the
smooth linearity of the accordion-fold is transected by a small sheaf of
unevenly sized leaves that perform a material and thematic intervention upon
the pastoral continuity the poem sought to record. After asking what in a poem can be done
against the slaughter of those familiar cattle, the last of these leaves turns
to the act of writing itself:
“wanting to avoid the tidy ending the wrapup
tat tum tum tum. A lyric is the best I can do
each
day in a long ribbon of writing that dis-
appears
into the soft earth filling my grave.
So
where’s the ending?”
And then the writing moves back to the original “ribbon” upon which the poem began, and concludes as something of the status quo is dubiously restored: “Did I imagine [the cows] and their raw plaint / create them for a movement / in a scene as frozen in the mind / as dark frost on this late fall ground? // The same light pervades / Now I can see the cows / now I can see them moving.” Yet the accreted rage and skepticism of those inserted leaves disrupts the continuity of experience, and also stitches the poem text closed in such a way as to obscure the image that accompanies the poem. The result is an object that meditates upon the illusory continuity of either life, writing, or (especially) an accordion-fold book that takes these as its subject.
7)
Collation of specimens
displaying the types and typography of broadsheets and some
other ephemeral printing all
now hung out to dry
Graham Moss and
Kathy Whalen. Oldham: Incline Press,
2007.
Presses often issue specimen catalogs of offprints, proofs,
and samples, often for commercial and archival purposes. Though Incline Press primarily produces book
works, this volume collects broadsides, handbills, leaflets, and other ephemera
produced between or alongside those more substantial projects. More than most, this catalog exceeds its
purposes as a catalog, and serves as a remarkable design primer for the
contemporary printer of broadsides. For
this reason, the pages displayed from this volume will be periodically changed,
to present the contours of the work.
8)
Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)
Continued, Part Three
John Cage. New
York, NY: A Great Bear Pamphlet from Something Else Press, 1967.
As a piece with comparatively low production-value
(commercially printed on cheap paper, and then staple-bound), Cage’s Diary stands in sharp contrast to much
of the material in this show. Known
mostly for his radical approach to music (and especially his 4’33”, a “silent” piece for piano in
which the lack of conventional musical sound is designed to draw the audience’s
attention more closely to the ambient surrounding and their own biological and
psychological “noises”), the choices of Cage and his publisher here present
something similar.
“…This pamphlet is an attempt to
realize another of Cage’s ideas as closely as possible to his intention. Dick Higgins, acting as printing technician,
described the uses and limitations of the two-color process we have used and
suggested feasible potentials, and in effect he provided Cage with an
instrument on which to perform a visual realization of his idea. Cage entered into the proposal gladly,
employing color-changes which, like the indentations, type-faces and number of
words given a single story or idea, are the outcome of chance operations…”
The resulting shifts in typeface, color, and margins do not
correspond to narrative transitions, anecdotes, or even linebreaks, and the
effect is that one must pay closer attention to the text—the
partially-attentive reader, accustomed to the homogenous surface of
conventional texts, risks losing the already-tenuous thread of continuity in
Cage’s Diary.
(9)
The Alphabet: Fifteen Interpretive Designs Drawn and Arranged with
Explanatory Text and Illustrations.
Frederic W. Goudy, New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1918.
Frederic Goudy (1865 – 1947) was and remains an enormously
influential American type designer during the first half of the twentieth
century, developing more than a hundred typefaces before his death in
1947.
This book is divided into two major sections. The first of these presents a history of
letter-forms, from engraved capitals to the development of scribal forms and
their national variations, to gothic or blackletter forms to moveable type in a
variety of faces to, finally, Goudy’s own prescriptions for type-design. The second half of the book presents fifteen
discrete forms of each letter (several of them designed by Goudy himself),
offering a visualization of the history narrated in the first half of the
book. In addition to representing their
historical development, each letter in this section is also accompanied by a
few sentences describing the letter’s relationship to the languages and
speech-sounds it was meant to indicate.
For example, with regard to “A,” Goudy writes that it “corresponds to
the first symbol in the Phoenician alphabet and did not represent a vowel, but
a breathing, the vowels not being represented by any symbol. This breathing not being necessary in the
Greek language, the Greeks who adopted the Phoenician alphabet, used it to
represent a vowel.”
(10)
Type Specimens of Caliban Press, on the occasion of its sixth
anniversary
Mark McMurray (Class of ’76). Montclair, NJ: The Caliban Press, 1991.
After years of receiving and restoring donated, purchased,
and abandoned type, McMurray’s Caliban Press assembled this catalog, which
includes sample pages of works published through the press as well as notes on
the historical and aesthetic mission of the press. Despite being almost entirely contingent upon
circumstance and accident, the Caliban type collection is, if inconsistent,
also exceptionally varied. And McMurray
has assembled a catalog that reflects these exciting eccentricities: the volume
includes an array of printing stocks (including vegetable-fiber papers and
synthetic Tyvek); pages are often hand-decorated (utilizing stencils, spray
paint, and paint splatters); and there are several bi- or tri-fold pages
throughout the volume. In addition to
these structural acrobatics, the volume showcases the Caliban type by printing
quotations from numerous sources, including Lord Byron, William Carlos
Williams, Mick Jagger, Jorge Luis Borges, Captain Ahab, and (of course)
Shakespeare’s Caliban. Throughout, the
Caliban catalog offers a stunning verbal, visual, and structural collage that
illustrates the remarkable potential for letterpress and book arts in an era
when it could be argued that both are obsolete.
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