First Project

Wednesday, our instructor brought in some samples of letterpress work from simple invitations to two-sided trifold pieces with justified type that had been set on a Monotype machine. When you receive type from a Linotype machine, you get a lineful of type at a time (called a slug); when you get type from a Monotype machine, you get a letter at a time, which you then put back together in a composing stick, letter by letter. I don't want to even think about the amount of time all that typesetting took up.

Then came a demo of printing from a linoleum cut, which, as with a photopolymer plate, is secured to a base to bring it type-high so that it will print. Interesting, but I can't imagine myself cutting either wood or linoleum blocks. One needs the right tools. And some skill. Still ... maybe ... at some point I'll give it a try.

Then finally we dug into some projects of our own devising. I had brought some quotes with me to set into type for bookmarks. Time flies, they say, when you're having fun, and it turned out I had time for only one. I chose an apt quote -- one of less wordy ones but still a few lines long on a bookmark-narrow measure -- then, having decided on an appropriate recipient, hunted up two decorative initials for the top and looked through a couple of drawerfuls of cuts for, I hoped, something bookish. After several minutes of this, I was beginning to despair of finding anything useful when I came across a lady joyfully splashing in the water in her birthday suit, deemed it appropriate to the quote, which I placed it beneath.

Inked up the press. Inked the type. Set the lever to print & walked the rollers over the chase. Three things were immediately apparent: the initials were badly off center, there was a typo in one of the words, and the type itself was not in good shape. Argh. I spent some time mucking around with the initials but still couldn't get them to center; with time (and my patience) running short, I decided it was *charmingly* off center and left it. Then I corrected the typo, replaced a really poorly-printing smashed-up "d," adjusted the spacing between sections, re-inked the type, took a deep breath, and pulled another proof.

Much improved. Not perfect at all but better and, with the clock ticking madly away, I decided it was good enough. I had brought some greenish-gold cover stock, so I switched to that and ran off a few copies. Then I found some lovely gold-colored stock that had been left over, no doubt, for someone else's project. Ran off a copy on that, loved the effect, and quickly ran off 2 more. I was running out of time.

Broke everything down, distributed the sorts (i.e., put the type back where it belonged, but why say it plain when you can use the jargon), cleaned the press, washed my grimy hands, and proudly left with my first project in my hands.

At work the next day, I ruled out the bookmarks and cut each, with razor blade and straight edge, by hand. Not exactly the professional way to do it, and again it's hardly perfect, but I think it's .... um .... charming.

They will find their way -- my entire limited edition TR "She is too fond" bookmarks -- to their intended owner tonight. I rather tremble, as they are a bit on the rough side, but, hey, what are friends for if not to receive your heartfelt school projects, especially when your mother is no longer around to receive them?

Lesson The Third

The third week of the Letterpress class brought us more up to date with a modern method of letterpressing (photopolymer plates), then took us back a bit to a description of a Linotype machine (which I have seen in operation; the young 'uns of the class were as agog at the description as I was way back when I, too, was young, and had a gander at a line up of them all busily at work), the description of some work done by a couple of the artist-students at Cooper Union last year, the tale of along with a promise of a field trip to a fellow, Theo Rehak, who gathered up, by hook or by crook, the typecasting equipment of the American Type Foundry as it went out of business and continues today to cast type the old fashioned way (we fondled his book, "Practical Typecasting") ... and then we were introduced to the composing stick and the mysteries of the California Type Case layout.

By that time, the class had only an hour or so left in it, but I was determined to go ahead and set at least a line of type & print it off. You would think an hour would be enough time for that. And it was. Just. I set my name and the date (off by a day, however; I'd forgotten whether it was the 18th or the 19th, decided on the 19th, I was wrong), put the words HER WORK in all caps above that and found a couple of ornamental capitals of my initials to place on the bottom.

Directionally challenged as always, the lines ended up upside down -- what I'd wanted on top was on the bottom, and what I'd wanted on the bottom was on top. Arrrrgh. However, the type itself was set correctly right-reading. Well, except for a couple of letters, which I carefully corrected after the first pull through the press. I left the line-order as is, though, found some beautiful, soft paper, and pulled out two good copies on one sheet. Then there was time left only to put the letters away and clean up the press (actually, the instructor cleaned the press for me while I slaved over the type case).

I was mighty proud of that simple line of 16 pt. Garamond Italic, and packed it up to show around at work. Which has its own story: my employer, Frank, was not very impressed. He'd gone to printing high school, he said, and he just couldn't get excited about this stuff. Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot. So I also showed it to Frankie (not to be confused with my actual employer), who has the printing shop, and *he* was ... well ... surprised. And pleased. And said how he just got in a big letterpress job for which he'd be making his own photopolymer plates (I never knew he did this!), and said he'd hand me over to one of his pressmen to show me how it's done in the real world.

I'm gonna hold him to that.

Wow.

Two (count 'em!) Two Colors

The piano and piano player were no longer in the lobby Wednesday night as I arrived eager and early for class number two at the Cooper Union Foundation Building.

Two apparently was the number of the day, as on the agenda was learning the two separate techniques for 2-color printing on the letterpress. (Although, actually, the techniques would be the same for any number of colors.) One technique, the classic method, calls for two runs through the press, once per color. The other technique, an artist's "cheat," lets both (or more) colors print on a single pass.

Elizabeth, my partner in printing, did not arrive for class, so I was alone on the press. This let me "do my own thing" on the one hand, but made things go truly painfully slowly as there was only one pair of hands rather than two available to lay down the type, figure out the furniture needed to keep everything aligned, ink the press, clean up between colors, re-arrange, re-ink, and so on.

And then, after pulling out the first impression, I realized the wooden letter "P" I'd used was just too broken up to work. I supposed (hoped) it looked a bit artsy and wouldn't have changed it out, but the instructor came by and frowned at that poor pitiful P. So I went searching for a better one, with no luck at all because apparently that font had only the one cap P. I had arranged things just so and was NOT looking forward to unsettling everything, but that P did have to go. I settled on a P (same width but not as tall) from a different font and just called it artistic necessity. Not that the piece was anything but practice anyway ... but it cost me some grief and some time.

I took the "cheater's" way out and used the one-pass technique. It wasn't as easy as it had appeared at first. What you do with the 1-pass is remove (carefully, meaning this involves gloves, rag, a good eye and a steady hand) ink from the letters you want in the second color, then hand re-ink (with a breyer) those letters in the second color. The inking rollers remain up for the printing pass (so they don't re-ink the lettering on the way back), but you DO have to remember to set the lever to "PRINT" or you'll go through the whole thing and end up with a blank sheet of paper. Which I did. Twice.

So, two senior moments. After that, I remembered!

By the time I'd finished with that one pass and had something reasonable to show (certainly not exactly right but at least I could say I'd managed to get something out of the press), just about two hours had passed. Friendly instructor came by. How about doing it the other way now, says he. Wellllll, I averred, trying my best to get out of it, because I knew I'd be washing down the press, removing type, washing down the press, removing & replacing type ... you get the picture ... it looks a bit daunting, since I didn't do evenly spaced lines like your demonstration. Oh, he says, it's not so bad, you can still do it.

So do it I did. Muttering unprintables to myself. I was not at all pleased with the results: there'd not been enough time to be careful enough, I was hurrying just to get it done, and feeling sorry for my sorry self besides. Still, I was glad I'd done it both ways. And I gained a true appreciation for all those letterpress operators who've gone before who had to do all that for a living; and I told the instructor so.

Oh yes, he agreed, nodding. Like my father and my grandfather. Oho, so that's his connection to the printing arts! In New York? I asked, wondering if perhaps I'd heard of their company at some point in my checkered typesetting/graphic arts/printing career. No, no, in Ohio.

So I wouldn't have known anything about them. But I shall genuflect from time to time in that general direction -- no, no, in all the directions of the compass -- just to honor those who've gone before, journeymen printers who produced cards and billheads and memos and posters and books and all manner of commercial printed matter not for art's sake but just to put bread on the table.

Virgin No More

There were eight of us neophytes in the class Wednesday night, seven young women and one young man. (And I mention young because all, including the instructor, are far younger than I, so I truly felt my age as I entered and took a seat at the table.) It took a while to locate the Letterpress studio on the fifth floor of the Cooper Union Foundation Building but yes I finally found it, identifying it by the row of Vandercook proof presses it held.

A short introduction, then we gather around the first press in the line as the instructor demonstrates: the rollers, the motor used to turn one of the rollers, the switch for same, the grippers, the foot pedal, the bed where the type is placed, how to ink, place the paper, turn the crank and walk it down the bed, release the paper, take it back, and now it's our turn. The lone male, the only student who had allowed as how he'd done some printing before, was first to have a go, then the rest of us in line. I was last -- and almost wasn't at all. As I stepped up to take my turn, the instructor started to explain how we were going to proceed: I stopped in my tracks, startled, wondering if I'd forgotten to remove my +25 Cloak of Invisibility, when a chorus arose: hey, you missed one. The instructor blinked. He apologized. I stepped up. I placed the paper under the grippers, took a deep breath, turned the crank, walked it down all the way, pulled the sheet off the roller, smiled. A virgin no more, and it didn't hurt a bit. So I did it again.

Then we were paired up and let loose among the fonts and cuts. This was the fun stuff: no clients to please, no specs to adhere to, we were as happy as preschoolers in a sandbox. Before us were a zillion choices: what to do, what to do? Mainly I deferred to my partner, an artist with a studio in DUMBO, as she seemed to have some definite ideas, while I would have just grabbed this that and the other thing and mushed it all together without caring about anything but getting to the Vandercook and walking that roller down the bed. So we got something together (I must admit it was an odd sort of something, and anyone who knows me knows I do like odd!), got it placed, though a bit haphazardly, in the bed, chose an ink, inked up the roller and the type. And looked doubtfully down at our handiwork: the "E" wasn't inking up right; how could we be sure where our masterwork would end up on the paper? The instructor came around to ask how things were going. We pointed to the type, asked our questions. He peered at our attempt. Oh, we can fix that, says he, just go ahead and print it first and I'll show you what we do. And off he went to see what was up with another pair of students.

My partner stood at the crank. Paper under the grippers. A doubtful look at the type bed. Hand on crank. I'm scared, she says, ever so softly but looking at me. Oh the paralysis of perfection, how I recognize it! I smile, only slightly alarmed by her hesitation: you gotta do it, I say, it's only ink and paper. Roll it. And she does. Ah, our masterpiece, how horrid it was: it sat in the bottom right of the paper, not all there, and the E barely printed at all. Still, nobody had died, and the instructor soon came along to help us out of our mess. It was not long before we had our very limited "edition" of 2. I'd have done more but that was enough for my partner, she wanted to take a crack at something else. We washed up the type and returned to the drawers for something else. Again, I deferred to my partner as she tried out the really big wooden letters, finally spelling out the word HAY. I suggested some smaller letters above spelling out MAKE. So we were off and running again, except that here we ran into the old A-Y bad kerning bugaboo. This did not sit well with my partner. We hastily reworked the piece into "MAKE HA" and pulled out another edition of 2.

And then it was time to wash up the press -- three hours had somehow passed in the space of, oh, ten minutes or so. And, though we washed up ourselves as well as the press, both my partner and I went home with a spot of bright blue printer's ink on an arm. I wasn't aware of mine until the next morning at work, when bossman says Is that ink on your arm? Egads, I look and there it is, so bold and bright you would think I hadn't washed at all! So, hey, I do work in the printing industry after all -- the pressmen will have something to clean that up, and they do: it's called benzine. Eeeks. But it does the job. This stuff'll kill ya, sez the pressman as he hands me a rag and the evil chemical. Yeah yeah, sez I, I'll take my chances. No, really, he insists, and I walk off toward the bathroom to apply soap & water to my now clean arm. What the hey, a lady's gotta do what she's gotta do: what's a drop of solvent among the thrills of ink and paper? Roll 'em.

Doubt, Get Thee Behind Me ...

Tomorrow is going to be awesome. You know it. I know it.

But doubt sets in anyway. Especially when you look in your checking account and see *just enough* to cover the rent (no more) and then you call up your savings account and you see the grand sum of $7.45 (no, I did not misplace that decimal point; my sanity, maybe, but the decimal point, no) and you start to groan "What was I thinking?? What did I doooo??"

Like I needed another hobby, right? Here's what I emailed a friend:

It's back to really squeezing the pennies for me. I have been going mucho overboard of late. And it's not as if I'm flyin' with any kind of net here. I understand one can actually buy an ancient small hand letterpress for somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 or so. And then there are the fonts. And the cuts. And the paper. And the ink (or you can go inkless and blind deboss instead ...) And I checked out from the library a couple of books about making books (which is how I put it to the young fellow behind the desk at the library so he enters "book making" in his puter's search field and comes up with books about gambling. Har har. It took us a while to finally realize that what was wanted was bookbinding, not bookmaking.) Fancy papers. Bone folders. Yummy textiles. OMG.

What, me worry?

Perish the thought. I'm marching straight on to forever and not looking back.