Look Up, Way Up...

Twenty-three is the steel letter aniversary. Some cool old letters now adorn the archway leading to HM Central. A foot tall, made of sheet metal, & heavy. Designed to fall on the noggin of anyone outside the clan who comes by without calling ahead.

What news....Oliver Clark, over at Collinge & Clark, recently issued a newsletter featuring some kind words about Types/Paper/Print. He also welcomed the first copy of Jim Westergard's Oddballs to cross the Atlantic (at least, as far as we know). Be interesting to hear what they think of Jim's unique sense of humor over there...

 

Saw the deluxe issue of the catalogue for Charles van Sandwyk's recent exhibition of books held at the University of British Columbia's Rare Books Library. Designed & produced by CVS very much in the style of his own trade publications, it features an original, signed etching sewn in, issued in an edition of 100 copies. These are $300, available from the library or (probably more easily) this shop. There also is a trade edition of the catalogue (different jacket, no etching)...

Eyeball Calibration & Nuisance Printing

Last April we started printing the text pages for Oddballs. After a few weeks, when we were about a quarter of the way through, we looked at the six completed sheets and decided the printing was consistently too light (impression good, ink weak). Friends said they thought we were being fanatical again, and they were right, and so were we in being fanatical. So, the completed pages were put aside & the whole thing begun again.

When cleaning up the project last fall, we couldn't bring ourselves to throw away the first run pages. All of them remained in the order they had been printed, last back to first. Flipping through any given one, it was interesting to see where the color started, what we adjusted it to, and how well we maintained that color (this being particularly challenging when inking by hand). Even though the pages were printed too light in color, that in itself can be a useful reference. Overall, we found flipping through a set of the sheets an effective way of calibrating our eyes before a printing session. But only if each set of pages remained in order they were printed. So, we chopped the sheets down the center fold, leaving us with two leaves, each printed verso only: a pile of Frozen Dead Guys, a pile of Bill Miners, etc etc. About 60 sheets (pages) in each pile.

We did a quick perfect bind with some sunken cords, and used odd sheets of heavy handmade paper for wraps. Just before sticking each glued-up set in their wraps, we wondered, what would someone think this is, if they stumble upon it in a hundred years? (Besides a waste of time & good paper.) We were committed to doing a few days of long-overdue nuisance printing, and so made up a simple title sheet to go in the Oddballs pages, and a spine label. More on the nuisance printing to follow...

Cervantes Gets Corked, & Other Oddities

Boston's storied Bromer Booksellers were sufficiently inspired by Jim Westergard's Oddballs to create an entire catalogue around the concept. From the introduction to the just-released e-catalogue #19:

"Odd is interesting. Not only is this true in human society, in which the eccentric and extraordinary are examined as objects of curiosity, but it is especially true of the vehicles for human expression. That last term was used with great deliberation, as the assortment of oddities in our latest offering are not limited to books: indeed, they do not even have to be on paper, as the set of erotic porcelain lithophanes demonstrates. Optical devices such as lithophanes, and zoetropes seem odd to us now, but were some of the only forms of entertainment available to a world without electricity; from this perspective, one can easily imagine that current trends in entertainment will seem equally odd to future generations.

"The books found within our eccentric gathering work just a little harder than their straightforward counterparts in trying to gain our attention. Witness, for instance, a two-volume edition of Cervantes' stories printed on cork [shown above; why would anyone do this?]; a miniature panoramic alphabet of insects etched so finely, one would mistake them for actual specimens; or the book that lent its title to this catalogue - a beautifully printed and illustrated work by the Heavenly Monkey Press [sic] on those characters from history whose personalities and antics keep us from averting our collective eyes."

We won't get too worked up about them appending the word "press" to the imprint's name, because Anne, David, Phil & the gang are our friends; and because we appreciate being considered sufficiently odd for inclusion. They also have a good (but tempting, so be careful) blog.

Oddball in Toronto

Oddball's author & artist Jim Westergard takes his show on the road this weekend, appearing at an event in Toronto tomorrow (Sunday 27 November). Jim will take part in panel discussions with author Jon Evans, whose book Beasts of New York Jim illustrated with original wood engravings; and with Toronto printmaker George Walker, about the art and craft of wood engraving. Details can be found here.

Beasts of New York was published by Porcupine's Quill, with the wood engravings reproduced offset. Fans of wood engraving, and Jim's wood engravings in particular, should note that copies of the original prints, pulled and signed by him (in editions of 25), are available. He also assembled ten complete sets of the prints, along with an original drawing, in a slipcase. A few of these are still available directly from Jim.

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves

Another post from last weekend's Wayzgoose printing fair, this one all about us (mostly). Jim Westergard and his wife flew in from Red Deer to accompany Oddballs' first (& only, at least by us) exhibition in Canada, and it was brilliant to have them on hand. As previously mentioned, we printed up 10 copies of a poster ganging all 40 (plus one) of the oddballs together, which Jim signed and numbered with assistance from the HM devil, before the doors opened. These are 22 x 30 inches (image area is about 12 x 21 inches), giclée printed on 180 g all-rag paper. A few copies of these remain, priced at $60. 

Barbara Hodgson was on hand to discuss The WunderCabinet, a display of which occupied most of HM's second table. As shown above, she didn't get a minute's rest all day, in large part due to an interview with her about the project which aired on CBC Radio's North By Northwest show that morning. As proven in previous years, a mention of the wayzgoose on Sheryl McKay's show assures a significant boost in attendance at the show, and this year was no different: many people came in specifically to see the book and meet Barbara, having heard the interview that morning. A podcast of can be found here.

Jim was diligent about pulling his weight as an exhibitor, but he did manage to make a few circuits of the room over the course of the day. Below he's talking to HM's secret weapon, Reg Lissel, who was demonstrating how to make paste papers. 

Jim brought along a number of the trade books that feature his artwork, and lucky people snapped these up (and got them signed). Jim's off to Toronto in late November for an event organized by Beasts of New York publisher The Porcupine's Quill. It will be an evening's discussion between/among Jim, author Jon Evans, and Toronto printmaker George Walker. 

Get Your 'Goose

The bi-annual Alcuin Society Wayzgoose in Vancouver this coming weekend. Seems to be some attrition among the local printing scene, never a good thing but most particularly unfortunate here that it's among the younger (i.e. under 40) members. But HM will be there: Barbara Hodgson will be laying out a mini-exhibit with a copy of The WunderCabinet on one table, and Jim Westergard will be traveling in from Red Deer to show off Oddballs. Our Oddballs poster (10 copies, signed & numbered by Jim) will be on display & available. The New Leaf Editions crew will be there, pulling copies of an original etching created for the fair, and showing copies of a new book created by artist Kitty Blandy. Reg Lissel will be there, showing people simple ways to create paste papers. Saturday 22 October, main branch of the public library, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.. Free admission to all.

Oddballs (sold) Out

The first tranche of the Oddballs edition - about 20 of the 35 copies - was retrieved from Claudia Cohen's bindery last weekend. Half of those were immediately taken down to the Seattle Book Fair and delivered to exhibitors who had ordered copies. It was strange having no time to digest the completed, bound book - after over two years of planning and work - before placing it in the hands of our customers. But it was also fun flipping through it with them, watching reactions and seeing how different oddballs stood out to different people.

The binding, as previously described (but not as initially described, way back when) is full Japanese cloth over boards. Befitting the book's size, and to act as a counterpoint to the binding's simplicity, we wanted an imposing spine. It actually is a leather label, which Claudia managed to match very closely with the blue of the cloth. The endsheets are Guarro laid, like the text, but in a blue-gray color. As Claudia pointed out, the book becomes more monochromatic as you get into it (with the exception of the title page, the book is entirely white and black).

The tipped-in prints required building up the spine with paper shims - a total of 26 per copy - to even things out. It's still an awful lot of tip ins, and not our preferred approach, but as described in the Publisher's afterword, it was the only way to combine Jim's paper preference for his engravings, with HM's preference for printing text. The size of the book also required strong hinges, which were made of the same cloth. For the pastedowns, Claudia used a generic sans serif D to echo the book's double-D design in gilt.

In our last post we reported that a few copies remained available from the edition. Since the book's debut in Seattle, we're happy to report that it is now sold out. Most copies, however, went to our regular booksellers, and copies are available from them.

A final note: the book was issued with a glassine wrap. This should not be considered part of the book proper; it's intended only to protect the book while in transit to a new home.

Oddballs Creeping Out

The Seattle book fair is this weekend, and copies of Oddballs are being picked up from Claudia Cohen's bindery on Saturday morning and taken directly to exhibitors who have placed orders. So we'll have the drive from Claudia's chateau to downtown to become acquainted with the completed project before sending it out to the world. (Even Jim Westergard and Barry Moser won't get their copies until next week, by which time it'll be too late to remove their names from the thing.) Most of the edition has been spoken for, but we'll still have a couple of copies on hand available at the publication price of $1,800.

A copy will be on exhibit - along with the artist himself! - at the upcoming Alcuin Society Wayzgoose, to be held in Vancouver on October 22. It's a one-day printing and book arts fair, open to the public. We also plan on having a few copies of the print shown above available for purchase. The print expands on a preliminary concept for the book's title page, abandoned for a variety of technical and common sense reasons. But it works as a print, and so we're doing a few up, printed a la giclée (French for ink jet) on rag paper. The image measures 10.5 by 21.5 inches (about twice what it would have been in the book), on a sheet 20 by 30 inches.

And so the very long road travelled by the Oddballs, starting with a visit to Vancouver by Jim and his wife Carol in the summer of 2009, is coming to an end. Next in the press: the third volume in Claudia Cohen and Barbara Hodgson's colo(u)r series, Occupied by Colour - The Palette at Work.

Done Like Dinner

At exactly 2:34 p.m. last Saturday we finished printing Oddballs. Above is one of the Heavenly Babes holding the last sheet (recto is the title page, verso is second half of the contents listing). Red was the last run. The day before we printed the black and pale gray (not really evident above, but maybe it is in the close-up below). Those two colors were done simultaneously, with the gray section being inked up separately and dropped into the form for each impression.

After a night, day and night of celebration and relaxation, we're into collating the sheets and tipping in the engravings, 41 in each copy (the 40 oddballs plus Jim's self-portrait frontis). With luck, copies will be ready for the Seattle book fair in early October, and the Vancouver wayzgoose later that month.

Printing Oddball Stories

There's been a lot of whining on this blog in recent months about the work of printing Oddballs. Visitors - which HM's Webmaster reports now total in the several - have asked about the process of printing a sheet. So, in an effort to avoid the work we've been moaning about, we took some photos to illustrate the sequence of events. Each sheet is printed over a period of three days: on the afternoon of the first, we wet the paper. On the second day, we print the inner form, and on the third we back it up. 

We're using an abbreviated form of Gabriel Rummonds' recommended method for damping paper (which is to stack the sheets between dampened pressing boards). We need 37 good copies of the book (the edition is 30 plus six hors commerce and one binder's dummy), so we're printing 48 sheets. This takes between five and six hours, which is exactly how much time we have for work while HRH is at school.

We wet a sheet by running it through a vat of clean water, shaking off the excess and then laying it down on a dry sheet to start the stack. 

Then two dry sheets are smoothed across the wet sheet. The Guarro laid paper we're using doesn't cockle and react as violently to the water as many well-sized handmades would, so smoothing the dry sheets across the wet one is not difficult.

Once the stack is completed, it is put into a heavy garbage bag, put under light weight, and left for a few hours. Before going to bed, we restack the paper, simply starting at the top of the stack and moving each sheet over in turn to make a new stack. This reverses which sheet faces which, and helps disperse the surface water from the wet sheets. The stack is then wrapped again and pressed over night. 

Below is one of the four platen bearers on the bed of the press (this one manufactured & sold by Steve Heaver of the Hill Press). The bulk of Oddballs consists of the one-page biographies, which appear on versos. We're printing all of these first, so that the bearers could be adjusted to even the platen's fall on the one-sided form. This is done using Rummonds' "zero packing" system, adjusting pieces of the packing material between the back of the tympan and beneath the bearers. When it comes time to print the frontmatter (spreads), we'll return the bearers to a more level setting.  

In the morning of the second day we roll out the ink and leave it standing while getting the press ready. We use a piece of half-inch glass as an ink slab (on a non-slip mat) and a 60-dur roller from Takach Press. 

The text to be printed is set in place and a position proof is taken, plus a few impressions on tissue for makeready. The pages we're printing are pretty consistent in length and shape, the only difference being the number of lines, so makeready is straightforward. The hinged Mylar window that covers the makeready can be seen (with some text offsetting) on the left side. 

In addition to makeready, we make some adjustments to the roller bearers with tape, to ease the transition on to and off of the text block. (The bearers are locked up above and below the type, as the roller must pass perpendicular to the lines when inking.) As many as six pieces of tape may be required, arranged in a narrow band across the vertical area occupied by the first and last letters in the lines.

A few proofs are then pulled on newsprint to check impression and the roller's ink coverage. Then we tuck into the stack of dampened paper. After removing the stack from the plastic bag, it is covered in a thick layer of dampened cotton cloth. The stack is uncovered and a sheet removed only when the type has been inked and is ready for printing.

When properly dampened for printing, a sheet of paper should feel cool to the touch but not wet on its surface, and it should be completely relaxed (i.e. floppy).

Before being printed, the sheet must have holes pricked in exactly the correct position, to fit on the press' points.  We use a thick piece of foam core covered in plastic (so that it doesn't react to the papers' dampness) as a base. A piece of Mylar the same size as the printing sheet, with holes pierced in the proper spots, is then laid over the printing sheet, and a needle is used to make the holes. This all happens in less time than it takes to describe, so that the paper doesn't start drying out.

A mould-made sheet like the Guarro will expand almost entirely across the grain and very little (if at all) vertically, so it would theoretically be possible to prick the holes before damping the sheets, but we believe this creates too much potential for error. A handmade expands equally in all directions, between 2 and 4%. We once tried to gauge this expansion with test sheets, so that we could prick the holes before damping. But even the slightest error will ruin the whole point of printing on points, which is to achieve the most precise registration possible. So we make the holes in the dampened paper before printing the first form.

The sheet is then laid on the points. Between it and the Mylar window covering the makeready is a slip sheet, which is most important when backing up: if not used, the printed side will offset to the packing, and then transfer to subsequent sheets. But to ensure impression is consistent throughout, and to not "burnish" the verso against the Mylar when pulling an impression, the slipsheet must be used even for the inner form.

The frisket is lowered.....

the bed rolled in, an impression pulled, and voila....

The image above shows the impressions from the two roller bearers along the frisket (smeared here from various cleanings). Strips of tape are laid along the frisket in these areas, to prevent the ink from soaking through. Pieces of tape covering the area where the frisket contacts one of the platen bearers (top left) can also be seen; this tape is simply to help the paper withstand the repeated impressions (it will wear there first).

The slipsheet showing some cockling caused by the dampened printing sheet. It is replaced for each impression.

On Day One, the printed sheets are placed in a second stack, under a damp, heavy cotton cloth. If deemed prudent, each is lightly misted as it is laid on the stack, to maintain the ideal dampness.

On Day Two, after the last run (outer form), each printed sheet is interleaved with a pressing board, to wick out the moisture. When printing is completed, this stack is pressed tightly overnight. It is then restacked with fresh pressing boards the next day and pressed again, ultimately yielding dry, flat sheets. (When printing on handmade paper, we remove the sheets from the boards before they are completely dry, and press them very hard overnight, then restack them to complete drying. This pressing while still slightly damp gives the paper a wonderful crispness, but the process doesn't seem to yield the same results with mouldmades.) For Oddballs, the printed sheets are tucked away under the bench, the entire stack left under medium weights. The book will consist of 24 printed sheets; in the image below you can see we have completed 15 of the 24.  

When all the printing is completed, copies will be collated, and the engravings will be tipped to the rectos facing their biography. Here's Unn, awaiting her text...

It's Good for Breakfast Too

While HM toils away printing the text for Jim Westergard's exhaustive study of interesting characters from recent & long past, the artist has moved on to new projects, such as studying aspects of Irish culture in the glass shown here. Another is his ongoing series See What I'm Saying, exploring how "words and phrases can sometimes suggest images that are either variations of their meanings, or totally different." He's just posted a new addition to the gallery: "God willing and the creek don't rise." As with his studies of oddballs, Jim supplies a brief history lesson with humor & irreverence.

About Oddballs, we have reached the 50% completion point, which means 12 of the 24 folio sheets have been printed. The project is going to be a few months later than originally promised, because HM decided to start over after printing the first six sheets: a number of factors that combined to leave us feeling dissatisfied with things. The right decision. Progress on Oddballs v.2 has been much better.

Handpress Library 1 - Gabriel Rummonds

When looking at your own printing for eight hours every day, one can quickly lose perspective on issues like color, impression and consistency. While slogging through printing the text pages for Oddballs, we often turn to our small collection of handpress books for inspiration, confirmation, and solace. Eric Gill provided one of our favorite quotes about the challenges of inking and printing entirely by hand:

"The press and method of inking, and sometimes the paper, which the craftsman uses are such that the colour of his work, at its best, is balanced on the very razor edge of accuracy. On either side his tools force on him a very slight margin, so that he is a tight-rope walker whose deliberate balance gives a different delight from that of the mechanical gyroscope."
Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography (p. 103)

And so, we thought we might share a few images and notes about the books that constitute our core reference library for printing with a handpress. First is Gabriel Rummonds' Printing On the Iron Handpress (Oak Knoll Press, 1998) which should be required reading for anyone interested in letterpress printing, including collectors. We know of no more comprehensive single resource for information about all stages of printing, from press set-up through design, paper selection, inking, right through to binding. While the detailed technical directions are based on using a handpress, much of the book's content is applicable no matter what kind of letterpress is being used. The book is broken into 33 chapters, essentially breaking down the printing of a book to the sequential steps; and each chapter then provides detailed directions, in addition to historical contexts and comparisons, and Rummonds' own comments and asides based on his decades of experience. Any beginning printer should gladly pay the book's price just for the chapter on recognizing (and thus diagnosing) the many different kinds of printing flaws one will encounter, each one illustrated with a photograph.

For gearheads who really want to delve into the arcana of handpress printing, Rummonds followed this work up with the two-volume Nineteenth Century Printing Practices & the Iron Handpress (Oak Knoll Press, 2004), which essentially compares, contrasts and explores details included in the major printing manuals upon which printers had relied at that time. But for most people - anyone interested in any aspect of the book arts - Printing On the Iron Handpress should be a standard reference. And don't just buy it; read it. Or at least skim through, which will inevitably lead you to drill down in the areas of most pertinence and interest. Be warned, however, that this could lead to an overwhelming desire to begin collecting Gabriel's own works from the Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia.

Next installment: Lewis Allen's Printing With the Handpress (& a discussion of why facsimiles just don't cut it for this kind of thing)