The rules of the universe don't always apply at and around HM. For example, today: a leaf frozen eight feet above ground, outside the studio door.
Back from the Seattle book fair. A comparatively muted affair this year. One fun treasure: a folio-sized pamphlet titled "A Typographic Divertisement" for a joint meeting of the Roxburghe and Zamarano clubs, 1966.
The paper is an unidentified but beautiful handmade. Goudy's type is well-suited and attractive. Veblen's comments, taken from The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), are the usual whinings of someone who objects to books being treated as anything but pottage for "the people." One great line, however: "The claims to excellence put forward by the later products of the book-maker's industry rest in some measure on the degree of its approximation to the crudities of the time when the work of book-making was doubtful struggle with refractory materials carried on by means of insufficient appliances."
Insufficient appliances; and excellent motto for HM. And the pamphlet is a perfect companion to our copy of The Kelmscott Golden Legend (Yellow Barn Press, 1990), which also includes a sample leaf.
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