#handset type
[image description: photos of proofs of handset type for letterpress printing, displaying all the letters in a given font, and the range of sizes available, and also photos of the formes set to print the proofs. Fonts displayed: Legend (a script) Libra (an uncial), Fortune Light, P. T. Barnum, Playbill, and Egyptian Bold (all slab serifs). End description.]
A bit of a weird mix at the back half of this cabinet but we do not have all that many slab serif cases and so they all live under the scripts together. Libra is also—I don’t know why the Libra is here. Last time I moved all the cabinets, I was very careful to keep things in logical groups unless that meant putting a heavy case very low to the ground. I like my spine the way it is.
Larger runs of book faces next—impramatur!! Caslon!! Garamooooond—which are mostly cleaner because they’re frequently used & checked. But still nobody’s just combed through the whole of them yet.
[video description: recording of printing a pattern of letterpress decorative materials in an irregular but specific shape. the repeating purple pattern of dotted arches and diamonds is set up to print a larger area, and then is printed through a hand-cut mylar frisket to protect the paper from impression and ink outside the boundaries of the desired shape. end description.]
purple pass for this piece
[image description: Photos of the front and back side of a letterpress-printed business card, and the formes of handset type used to print it. The front side has the business name (“Ritual Birth”) and a logo consisting of four bold black circles, decreasing in size, set inside each other and all pushed to the bottom side of the circles. In the printing forme, the logo is built from four separate brass or copper rings. So that the forme can be picked up and held vertically in the bed of a clamshell-action press, the curved spaces in between circles are partially filled with many pieces of rectangular spacing material. When the forme is put under pressure from the sides, the forme can be carried unsupported despite the gaps. End description.]
Got to work from a sleek design from the customer on this one!
Univers & printing the feet of these circles, since all my small ones are double-lined on the face.
[image description: photos of a letterpress-printed business card and the forme of handset type used to print it. The card is for artist @plazaartista, printed in metallic copper-gold on dark brown paper, with an art nouveau tree decorating the left side. End description.]
Gosh I love these tree pieces!! I have a few more pieces that can extend its height but the minimum is the perfect size for a business card ✨✨✨
piranesi bold italic & palatino
[image description: 3 photos of a business card letterpress-printed from handset type, and the forme of lead type used to print it. The contact info is set in Garamond; beside it is a simplified graphic of a piece of machinery for decryption. It’s circular, with the implication of all 26 letters spread around the outside circle by placing the A, J, M, and S at its cardinal points. Inside that ring is three-quarters of a circle, and a diagonal pointer from the center instead of the last quadrant. In the forme, each letter and space is an individual piece of lead, assembled into the custom shape. The circle is a single ring of brass, and all the rectangular pieces of type and spacing around it have to be assembled to accommodate the curves and touch its edges at several points, so that gentle pressure at the sides of the forme will hold all the pieces together and lift upright into the press bed, with nothing supporting its feet. End description.]
i had no idea what this little device was until yesterday, but it was VERY fun to build out of some simple colorets.
it’s one of the individual drums for a bombe, a cryptography device—whole banks of these things, crunching possibilities!! the backsides look like a whole rotating maw of shark teeth, but it’s all delicate wire brush contacts for input & output signals. and there it is, we’ve exhausted my understanding of both cryptography and early computing, that’s all I’ve got.
[video description: recording of lifting upright a chase of handset relief type for letterpress printing. The chase is a rectangular cast iron frame that holds any printing material for printing in a clamshell-action press. Formes of type or relief printing blocks lay inside it, and are held in position inside it by gentle pressure from quoins, metal wedge-devices that expand between the forme and the chase. Once under this pressure the chase can be lifted upright without any individual piece of type falling out, and carried to the press, held vertically in its bed, and pressed into the sheet in the clamshell-closing motion that brings type and paper together. End description.]
I probably would have to tighten up this forme a bit more to put it in the motorized C&P, doing speed & a thousand impressions, but for a hundred on the baby treadle I could trust it!
[image description: 3 photos of a letterpress-printed business card, and the forme of handset type used to print it. The job description is in Computational Imaging; beside it is a graphic which the customer explained to me and—I didn’t totally understand what it means, I’m sorry. A long-legged bird, stork or ibis type thing, stands at one point of a triangle. The other points are labeled P1 and P2. The lines from the bird are solid and the line between Ps is dotted. In the forme of type, the triangular shape has to be approximately filled with clusters of rectangular spacing material so that pressure can be applied evenly to its legs and keeps it standing stable in the upright bed of the press. End description.]
Apparently an armadillo, rabbit, or fish would’ve done also, but the bird won. For OBvious reasons I hope.
(Set in Invitation & Bodoni)
[image description: 3 photos of a small broadside of an excerpt from Dracula, letterpress printed from handset type, set in Garamond. full text under cut. Text in black, with a floral decoration on one side in pale green. The third photo is of the forme of lead type used to print the text, each letter and space an individual piece arranged by hand. end description.]
I have not read Dracula before and you know what. Adaptations have all lied to me, making Harker such a tasteless saltine cracker of a guy. He’s got some uuuh weird opinions of course but the text, and the way it’s being delivered in bits as letters to ME, and the big book club party happening here on the hellsite—it really brings me a whole lot of sympathy for him. This castle business has been wild but buddy, I get it, I too find great relief in the spaces worn down and the tasks done & re-done by the people before us. Reading this old book together with our contemporaries & otherwise.
also it’s been way too long since I got to set a little bit of TYPE-type, I missed it :) wanted to do a quick thing to shake some words out of my fingers.
“This was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more air of comfort than any I had seen. The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth. … I found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last.”
[video description: recording of handsetting lead type for letterpress printing. Each letter of a line of text is set one at a time, taken from a cabinet of the font, divided into compartments for each letter and figure. End description.]
Guess who signed up for dracula daily
[image description: 4 photos of proof cards of various sizes and fonts in the Garamond family, printed from handset type for letterpress printing, and the formes of type used to print them. Each proof card shows all the letters, figures, and symbols available in the case of lead type, and what sizes of the font are available to typeset. Each type forme is assembled from individual letters and figures, which are redistributed back into the case after printing so they can be set again in a completely different forme. End description.]
14.5 cabinets down 9 to go
Garamond was a bit tough to clean—it’s in use quite a bit which helped some things but tended to leave the spacing extra messy. I did it in a bunch of little bursts, which feels pretty unsatisfying. AND this is the point where I have to admit, I simply cannot barrel through the type cabinets exclusively and ignore the galleys until that’s done. There isn’t enough cabinet space to lay out all the good book stuff accessibly; some larger Garamond & single sizes of titling and such have to go in galleys so that the still-wrapped Century Schoolbook italics can come out of the stone; etc. I feel more disorganized by doing little bits of different cleaning jobs all over, but it’ll all come together into a better typesetting space & catalog eventually. I think.
[video description: recording of taking fresh lead type for letterpress printing out of its packaging and distributing all the individual letters in a type case. The type case is divided into separate compartments for each letter, symbol, and figure. When taken out of the package, several individual pieces might be stuck together, and to safely separate them without damaging the printing face of the type, you tap the feet of the type against the wood of the type case. End description.]
Fresh type goes tip tIP TIP
(Stymie titling)