A Future History

Spent the past week printing up an 8-page advance history of HM's anticipated doings for the next two years. Will be sending copies out to our regular booksellers this week. Ended up with forty-some completed; some will be available to purchase for a nominal sum.

Most were printed on off-cuts of the afore-mentioned Golden Hind, along with a sheet of Arches Wove (about the best over-the-counter text sheet for letterpress around these days, in our opinion).

Had some slightly larger offcuts of BG Bodleian 80 g handmade from some previous project (Metal Types? dunno), enough to make up 12 copies, so I did. These "large paper" copies include a leaf from the Deluxe edition of XI LXIVMOS hinged in.

The cover paper is Roma Fabriano. It's a bizarre sheet in a patently non-HM color (pink), purchased for pennies on the dollar at the bankruptcy sale. The laid sheet (probably machine-made, doubtfully mould) has an exaggerated screen side that makes it useless for printing. It's been in the studio for ages. But the color matches nicely with HM's newly acquired stock of bronze ink, which will be re-appearing in the upcoming Harold Budd project.

An Anticipated History

Printing a 12-page pamphlet chronicling HM's plans for the next two years. First out will the XI LXIVMOS, copies of which are being bound up by Sarah Creighton as I type. As soon as the pamphlet is finished I'll start printing a new book by Barbara Hodgson (see image below); more about that next week. Then a new collection of poems by Harold Budd, to be issued early next year. I tried out my can of very expensive bronze ink for the first time (and yes, there was a titling figure mixed in with the ranging two's)...

Unrelated, I was going through a stack of old Type & Press that David Clifford gave me years ago, copies 84 to 100 (the last issue published, Summer 2000). Tucked into a couple of the older copies were elaborate promotional broadsides from Phillip Ambrosi. Based in Regina, Saskatchewan he was a job printer who also specialized in (Linotype) rule casting. The broadsides are beautifully printed on an onion skin-type paper. He closed his shop down just last year; there's a brief article about him on the last page of this paper.

This stack of Type & Press makes for great reading. Nothing precious or "fine" about it, just old-school job printing, with headlines like "Moving Printing Equipment Easily!" (but no mention of handpresses in that one) and "The Pearl - A Jewel of a Press." One headline that caught my eye was on the front of issue 94 - Who Designed Times Roman? The article detailed American typographer Mike Parker's research & claim that the face had been "designed by an obscure American artist and produced by the Lanston Monotype Co. of Philadelphia, and not by the British Monotype Co., which for over 50 years had claimed credit for designing this famous face."

I particularly enjoyed this paragraph, in which the odious Giampa™ appears:

"Parker's interest was ignited when Canadian designer Gerald Giampa, owner of the remnants of the Lanston Monotype Machine Co. of Philadelphia, showed him a set of letters representing a familiar roman and an unfamiliar italic. Together they discovered that the letters were linked with a W. Starling Burgess, better known as a 'naval designer.' When Giampa found documents that bound him to silence of the subject of Burgess and his typefaces as owner of the Lanston remnants, he was forced to bow out."

Whatever reason Giampa had for bailing, it wasn't respect a contractual requirement. A summary of Parker's research is included in this history of Times Roman.