#letterpress
[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
[video description: compilation of process recordings of making a 5x7 inch combination letterpress & hand-inked print. 1 - timelapse recording of a digital drawing with thin lineart. 2 - layering two proofs of letterpress-printed patterns on tissue paper to check the alignment of rows of chevrons, on top of rows of arrows. 3 - copying over the shape of selected parts of the drawing to prepare for typesetting. 4 - with the reference copy, setting a handset forme of letterpress type that will print rows of chevrons approximately across the selected areas. 5 - locking up the printing forme in a frame, to lock it in position and carry it to the upright bed of the clamshell-action press. 6 - printing a pass of yellow chevrons through a hand-cut mask, so that when the press closes on a hinge the form only contacts in an irregular area. 7 - after several passes, an irregular shape has been printed tightly with rows of yellow chevrons, and rows of pink arrows. 8 - timelapse recording of hand-inking the linart back onto the print, on a light table, with the original digital drawing as reference. 9 - the finished print, an illustration of a person on theiir phone, in a heavy jacket printed with the pattern. at some seams and fold line boundaries, the pattern changes angle to distinguish parts of the jacket. end description.]
was not sure i would love inking the toothy Copperplate paper but it is fine & the printing texture is worth it :))
[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)
[video description: compilation of process recordings of making a small combination letterpress & hand-inked print. 1 - timelapse recording of assembling two handset formes of lead-cast floral pieces for letterpress printing. Each forme is a scattering of many different flower designs; one forme will print blue and the other pink and some of the flowers repeat in each forme so they’ll print both colors on top of each other. 2 - putting pink ink onto the circular ink distribution plate of a tabletop clamshell-action printing press. 3 - inking up the press, where each time it’s hand-cranked the rollers pass over the ink plate, and then the plate rotates a few degrees to refresh the ink distribution. 4 - pulling an impression in the press, where the press closes on a hinge and presses the relief lead pieces into the paper. 5 - changing out the pink forme for the blue forme inside the chase, the iron frame that holds each printing forme upright in the press. 6 - tearing away parts of the backer for a masked printing process, which allows the letterpress floral pattern to print in an irregular, selective area of the print. hand-tearing parts of the backer between impressions feathers the edges of the pattern, because it decreases pressure and ink transfer at the torn edges. 7 - pulling further impressions of the letterpress, which is gradually printing a three-color floral pattern on a skirt that fades away at the bottom edge. 8 - applying hand-inked lineart to the prints on a light table. a mockup on a separate sheet behind the print functions as a sketch. 9 - the finished print, illustrating a woman wearing the pink and blue three-tiered skirt. The print is mounted with a mat board laid on top, with a grey lining around the inside edge of the mat board opening. end description.]
[image description: 2 photos of a small combination letterpress and hand-inked print, a photo of the relief letterpress materials, and the Chandler & Price Pilot press used to print it. The 3x4 inch print is an illustration of a person from behind, head shaved and hands out, wearing a bell-sleeved tent dress, skirt flared out wide. The fabric in the print is selectively letterpress printed with tightly barred rows of alternating colors: half the rows transition from yellow-orange to red from the shoulders to the bottom of the skirt, and the rows in-between are a consistent light purple. The print isn’t framed with glass, just mounted and matted, and the inner edge of the matboard opening is bordered with a soft beige piece of handmade paper. The letterpress printing forme is made from rows of barred lead slugs intended for printing borders; the Pilot press is a clamshell-action press, small enough to sit on a table, each impression applied by hand with a large lever on the side. end description.]
revived the Pilot for this one!* I wanted to see if it’s useful especially for these small-run, several-color kinds of things. Makeready is usually weirdly easy on the pattern-printing projects since position is determined by the masking system more than the sheet’s registration, so it’s not so disproportionately loss-y to only do an edition of 5, but it isstill very annoying to clean the bigger presses of several colors for just 5 hits each :// but i felt pretty free to mess around with colors on the Pilot, with washup being so much faster. Did a little hand-brayered roll from yellow to red on the ink plate. I’ll have to work on that to get used to how tight the scale of the press is! It’s SO small. I was trying for a more saturated yellow and red at the ends, but it all got a bit over-mixed trying to hit the right part of the chase with even inking.
*revived is a strong word. the only thing that was ever wrong with it was the spring-back on the hold-downs got broken, so they would get snagged underneath the rollers when the press opened. i just took the whole rig off and now there’s no hold-downs, but it’s perfectly usable again!