In Progress

Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese Launch

2012-02-14T10:49:00.001-05:00

I launched the kickstarter campaign this morning. If successful, Micah Currier and I will convert my typefaces Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese into a new proprietary type family comprising over 185 different characters and ligatures. Any support you can give will bring us closer to our goal.

Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese

2012-02-06T06:40:00.003-05:00

In a couple of weeks I will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to have Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry cut and cast my typefaces Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese as a new proprietary metal type family. Here are a couple of pictures of the digital predecessors of the typefaces in action.

Thoughts on Making New Metal Type

2012-01-31T09:23:00.000-05:00

Annie shot this video during my conversation with Gaylord Schanliec and Jane Siegel at the Center for Book Arts, New York. It gives a good sense of my motivations in turning my digital typefaces into new metal type.

Specimens of Diverse Characters Arrives!

2011-10-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

Copies of the deluxe and standard editions of Specimens of Diverse Characters arrived from Book Lab II this week. I realize that I designed the books but I am still surprised by their heft—they are BOOKS. The transformation from loose sheets to bound book always takes me off guard, the final metamorphosis in the chain from concept to sketch to drawing to print to book. It is easy to understand why so many printers and book makers have also been drawn to alchemy.

The books are bound using a modified Bradel binding that opens beautifully flat at every spread. The standard edition has a red leather spine with paper covered boards printed from my foundry Lisbon Ornaments. It is housed in a cloth covered clamshell box with an inset red leather label stamped in silver foil. The deluxe edition uses the same structure but the boards are covered in gray leather with a specimen of Iohann Titling stamped in silver foil on the front cover. In addition to the book, the deluxe comes with a portfolio of progressive state proofs of three complex prints and a selection of five unbound prints from the book. The book and portfolio are housed in a clamshell box with a leather spine and foredges. At the back of the box is an inset window behind which is a setting of Harry Carter's passage Type is something that you can pick up and hold in your hand in a special issue of Iohann Titling foundry type cast on a 30pt body.

The standard and deluxe editions of Specimens.

The deluxe edition with its box.

The deluxe box showing the inset form of type. In the foreground the book sits on

the portfolio of state proofs and prints that accompanies the edition.

A close up of the type form.

The standard edition with its box.

A close up of the patterned paper printed from foundry Lisbon Ornaments.

While waiting

2011-10-14T17:05:00.002-04:00

While waiting for the first copies of Specimens of Diverse Characters and Nocturnes to arrive from Book Lab II next week, I decided to make a little booklet of the new foundry types I made this year with Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry. Copies will be sent to subscribers on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are some angled photos of the pages.

Nicolas

Iohann Titling

Above and below: Lisbon Ornaments

Finishing Specimens

2011-09-28T11:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finished printing the interior of Specimens, which, incidentally, is now called Specimens of Diverse Characters. Afterward, Nancy Loeber, Micah Currier and Annie Schlechter all gathered at the studio to view the book and head to Peter Luger's Steakhouse for a celebratory lunch. Here are some pictures of the final weeks of printing.

The title page in process. Set in Iohann Titling.

The William Morris page. Set in Nicolas with drawn titling.

Aeschylus page masked for smoking.

Aeschylus page masked after smoking.

Final Aeschylus page with unique smoke drawing. Set in Van Krimpen Titling.

Nancy Loeber curating sheets.

The special casting of Iohann Titling cast on a 30pt body to be used for the deluxe copies.

Transferring 50 lbs of Lisbon Ornaments to the bed of my Vandercook for the standard copy pattern paper.

One of the five title pages from the text settings section. Printed intaglio in Evora Ornaments and a variety of faces form my Ventura Family.

Another title page form the text settings. Set in Saturn and Saturn Shadow.

Iohann Titling spread from Notes section.

Agnese 238 and Nicolas spread form notes section.

Russell with the bounty.

Micah Currier with the bread.

Nancy Loeber with the sauce.

Annie Schlechter with the fries.

Specimens and Nocturnes

2011-08-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

It has been a busy month in the shop. After our brief summer break, I had Nancy re-soak the Gustave Flaubert page to flatten it out after air drying at the Center for Book Arts. This second soaking of the paper transformed its surface to such an extent that the original, undampened paper feels like a clay coated sheet by comparison. The twice dampened sheet has the texture and softness of Belgian linen while still retaining the "snap" of a fine handmade paper. The moment I touched it I realized that we would have to put every sheet through the dampening process twice—3,000 sheets of paper each hand dipped in filtered water, blotted, and hung to dry. Twice. We now have two people working full time on this process.

Shortly after the Flaubert re-dampening, Micah Currier brought by the first castings of my Lisbon ornaments. Inspired by, but not based on, the calligraphy of Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva, the Lisbon ornaments are meant to work in combination to form diaper patterns. Although Ventura da Silva did work in Lisbon, I chose the name for the ornaments because of the patterned paving stones throughout Lisbon, pavings that work similarly to the ornaments. One set of the ornaments will be used to print the patterned papers for the covers of the standard edition of Specimens. The other set were used on the J L Carr page of the display settings. After publication, the Dale Guild will release a limited casting of the ornaments for sale.

While I began preparing the final files for the text settings of Specimens, we took two weeks to print a small book of 23 short prose pieces by Mark Strand in my new Strand Serif typeface. Nocturnes will ship to Book Lab II in a week or so for binding & a prospectus will be available soon. Five pieces from the same series will appear as one of the text settings in Specimens.

Back on Specimens, I've now printed three of the five text settings: The Planning of Temples by Vitruvius; On the Profligacy of Marcus Antonius by Cicero; and On the Usefulness and Invention of Writing by Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva. I will finish up the remaining two this coming week.

Finally, thinking that one new foundry type might not be enough, I decided to make a second one. My typeface Nicolas, which was drawn while thinking of the enamel-work lettering of Nicolas of Verdun, has now been cut, fit, and trial cast by Micah Currier. The type will be used for the William Morris page in the display settings as well as most of the titling in the book. Like the Lisbon ornaments, the Dale Guild will be releasing a limited casting of Nicolas for sale at the Oxford Book Fair.

Nancy and Sarah McDerrmott hanging twice dampened paper.

Two of the Lisbon ornaments cut and cast by Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry set up to print the cover paper of the standard copies of Specimens.

Foundry Iohann Titling used for the Harry Carter page.

Baker used for the Jung page.

Baskerville Great Primer with custom titling used for the Baskerville Page.

Two more of the Lisbon ornaments used with Texto Portuguez for the J L Carr page.

Strand Serif.

Doctoring a plate from the text setting of Cancellaresca Milanese Formata.

The first setting of foundry Nicolas cut and cast by Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry.

Specimens: Week Four

2011-06-28T06:37:00.100-04:00

On Monday and Tuesday, Nancy and I removed ourselves to the Center for Book Arts to print the Gustave Flaubert page from Specimens on the Center's Charles Brand etching press. The Flaubert text, which comes from his Sentimental Education, is set in a flourished variation on my Ventura Italic and surrounded by a border of calligraphic flourishes. The type has extremely fine ascenders and descenders, attributes that find their most faithful form in intaglio rather than relief (ie. letterpress) printing. Specimens features six typefaces and a suite of ornaments that were inspired by the lettering in Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva's ca. 1819 writing manual, Regras Methodicas. The Regras is an oblong folio of copper plate engravings and my challenge has been to make typefaces that work as well in letterpress as Ventura da Silva's calligraphy works when engraved. The flourished italic, though, like the Flaubert quote, cries out to be printed intaglio, it simply doesn't work when printed letterpress.

Although I have often used the Center's Brand press, I had never printed an intaglio polymer plate before this week and was a little nervous about how it would turn out. After I made a properly exposed plate (which took a few tries), Nancy and I made a wet pack of 50 sheets of paper on Sunday afternoon and left it to marinate over night. On Monday morning we met at the shop, loaded all our packages into a car, and headed to 27th street. The first couple of tries were not encouraging. The ink looked like it had been smeared on, leaving the lines blurred and spotty. With each print I increased the pressure on the press and, after the fourth bad print, began loading the Charbonnel Natural Sepia ink with magnesium carbonate to bulk it up. Once I changed the consistency of the ink from that of chocolate sauce to something closer to hot fudge, the plate began printing beautifully. The tiny hairlines, the plate tone, the occasional ink swell on the plate edge, all work together to make a page whose process and form are on an equal footing with the text.

Hand wiping the plate prior to printing.

Lifting the sheet after printing.

The finished print. Text: Gustave Flaubert; Type: Ventura Flourish Italic

*There will be no fifth week blog post as Nancy will be off roaming in the great Northwest while Annie & I swim with the dolphins in the Bay of Naples.

Specimens: Week Three

2011-06-26T16:34:00.002-04:00

This week I tackled some of the more complicated prints from Specimens. I started the week with the five color passage from Alice in Wonderland, moved on to the six color trompe l'oeil inspired by Arthur Rimbaud, and finished with the comparatively simple four color Les Jeux Sont Faits. The Arthur Rimbaud page is also printed in a series of state proofs that accompany the deluxe copies. As I learned in Æthelwold Etc., the key to layered printing like that in the Rimbaud quote is beginning with a bright yellow base and then layering successive pencil scumbles on top of it. The yellow under-painting, as it were, prevents the image form getting muddy and helps retain luminosity in the print. For both the Alice and Rimbaud pages the drawings are based on three dimensional models that I fabricated, photographed, and then drew. Whereas the Alice image was developed from intensive original sketching, the Rimbaud image is inspired by the trompe l'oeil painting on the back of Jan Gossart's Norfolk Triptych (ca. 1525-1530).

Also this week, Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry completed the first four of six matrices for an ornament font I have designed that is loosely based on the calligraphic flourishes of Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva. The patterned paper used on the standard copy of Specimens will be printed from the ornaments which will also appear elsewhere in the book. After Specimens is published, the Dale Guild will release the ornament pack for sale.

Next week, Nancy and I will printing only one page of Specimens, a passage from Flaubert's Sentimental Education that we will be printing inaglio from a solar etching plate. A relief proof is pictured below.

Text: Jean-Paul Sartre; Type: a modified version of Saturn

Text: Arthur Rimbaud; Type: Gotica Italica

Text: Lewis Carroll; Type: Ventura Shaded and Ventura Italic

Four matrices for Lisbon Ornaments

Preparing the wet-pack for printing the Flaubert etching

Text: Gustav Flaubert; Type: Ventura flourished

This is a relief proof of a plate that will be printed intaglio, ie. the type will be positive rather than negative in the final version.

Specimens: Week Two

2011-06-19T13:37:00.001-04:00

What a difference a week makes. After Nancy & I figured out our paper dampening procedure, the printing has been moving along at a good pace. The paper is a delight to print on and it is accepting the ink beautifully. After last week's tenuous six press runs, this week we got fifteen printed, including the seven state proofs of the Alexander the Great page for the deluxe copies. Six of the inks I used this week were my own hand-ground inks, made using earth pigments and Daniel Smith tint base.

Text: Marcus Aurelius; Type: Agnese 238

Printed in one color

Drawing with smoke on the Æschylus page

Text: Æschylus translated by H. D. Thoreau; Type: Harlem

Printed in two colors with unique additions in candle smoke

Text: Tom-A-Bedlam's Poem; Type: Hybrid Two

Printed in six colors from four plates

Hand grinding Bohemian Green Earth ink with a glass muller

Text: Alexander the Great; Types: Agnese 238 and Cancellaresca Milanese Formata

Printed in nine impressions taken from seven plates using six ink colors. Five of the inks are hand-ground:

Bohemian Green Earth, Raw Umber Light, Raw Umber Regular, Venetian Red, Ultramarine Blue Very Deep

Text: Democritus; Type: Saturn Shadow

Inspired by relief travertine inscriptions in Rome.

The background color is a hand-ground ink made using pulverized stone

Text: W H Auden; Types: Cancellaresca Milanese Corsiva and Roma Abstract

Printed in two colors

Text: Nicolete Gray; Types: Texto Portuguez and a modified version of Ventura Shaded

Printed in three colors

Windy thoughts on printing with earth pigment inks

2011-06-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

Specimens: Week One

2011-06-11T17:26:00.000-04:00

This past week I began printing Specimens. I am printing on a custom making of Velke Losiny paper, a beautiful handmade sheet made in the Czech Republic. In my experiments with the paper I have found that the print quality differs greatly between solid areas of ink and fine-lined type: small sizes of type print much better when the paper has been dampened whereas large areas of ink print equally well whether the paper has been dampened or not. Dampening the paper dramatically alters its surface quality, though, so even if only some of the paper needs to be dampened for printing, all of it needs to be dampened so that there will be a consistent page texture throughout the book. In making the prototype of the binding, Craig Jensen had expressed serious concerns about the way the paper reacted to dampness and this week all of his concerns have been justified.

On Sunday afternoon, I went into the shop to dampen the first two posts of paper, fully believing that I would be printing on both sheets on Monday. Whenever I dampen paper I first try Lewis and Dorothy Allen's method of dampening every fifth sheet of paper in a stack and leaving them under weight in plastic over night. From the outset there were signs that this would not work with the Velke Losiny. The sheets that I pulled through the water bath began to stretch and contort in bizarre and unpredictable ways—ways that made me doubt that they would flatten out over night—but I proceeded despite my concerns.

At five the next morning I sat bolt upright in bed with worry and by six-thirty I was on my bike riding to the shop. When I arrived, I opened the packs of paper and found something closer to corrugated tin than fine European handmade paper. Over the course of the night the sheets had gotten just damp enough to distort them with neither enough moisture nor enough weight to make them relax. We salvaged the paper by submerging the sheets in a water bath for 20 minutes and interleaving them with blotters under more weight. By the afternoon I had judged a stack of sheets dry enough to print my two first press runs of the book while my assistant Nancy Loeber re-soaked and blotted the remaining sheets. Although the two press runs came out beautifully, over the course of printing the sheets stretched and contracted over 1/2" widthwise and 3/16" lengthwise. The only way that the multi-chromatic pages of Specimens will be able to be printed is if the paper is dampened and then thoroughly dried before printing.

On Tuesday our next step was to construct a wind tunnel similar to one I used at Dieu Donné Papermill in 1996 after I disastrously dampened some of their abaca paper. Each sheet is soaked in a water bath, toweled off, and interleaved with blotter. Each 15 sheets is further interleaved with a sheet of corrugated plastic to increase air flow, every 30 sheets is topped with a melamine board, and the whole post is wrapped in plastic that is taped around a box fan. The fan is left blowing over night and the post is topped with about 60 pounds of aluminum. When we opened the contraption up on Wednesday morning the paper was much more promising but it was still way too damp, and 1/2" wider than the dry dimension. After leaving the paper to air dry all day, I stacked the sheets before leaving and on Thursday morning they were beautiful, flat, and somehow still damp.

Realizing that we would need to dry the sheets further on a drying rack of some kind and that there is no room in my shop for a commercial drying rack of any kind, Nancy and I began further experiments on how to best hang the sheets for drying. After a few tests we set out to the lumber store and began work making some light weight drying racks that could be easily moved around the shop and hold enough paper for two press runs. After a further hour hanging on the drying racks the paper was dry enough for printing.

The Allen Method stacks

The sheets after the Allen Method dampening

Nancy Loeber soaking and blotting the sheets after the Allen incident

Nancy soaking the sheets for the wind tunnel

Toweling off the sheet for the wind tunnel

The wind tunnel

Building the drying racks

Nancy stringing twine on the drying rack

Hanging sheets on the rack

The racks in the shop

Iohann Titling continued

2011-03-10T10:42:00.001-05:00

The Iohann Titling H and leaf matrices with castings

Yesterday, Micah Currier pulled a couple of proofs of the H and leaf ornament from the first casting of Iohann Titling. Now that he has established the correct height parallel, we have to make sure there is no stem distortion before he cuts the remaining matrices. According to Theo Rehak, there is a possible width distortion of up to 10% in either direction when the image is translated from pattern to matrix on the Benton Engraver. After scanning Micah's proof in to my computer I overlaid the original drawing for the H to find that there was considerable condensation of the letter form. This weekend, Micah will correct the distortion and re-cut the matrix.

The proof of the H with my original drawing overlaid on top of it

Specimens: Making Iohann Titling

2011-02-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, Micah Currier of the Dale Guild Type Foundry picked me up for our first day of work on Iohann Titling, the type that Micah will be cutting and casting for Specimens. The day started with a stop by Globe Engraving to pick up a sample pattern for cutting the matrices on the Guild's Benton Pantograph Engraver. After a couple hours at Globe we came away with a well made pattern and headed down to Howell to begin work setting up the pantograph. After a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon that included some complex mathematics and Theo Rehak playing the trumpet in the background, Micah got the Benton set up to cut the first sample matrices. He will cast the first sample characters this coming weekend.

Micah Currier locking a brass planchet into position for cutting.

Micah operating the Benton Engraver.

A tracing of the Iohann H made with the engraver.

The Thomas Edison vintage microscope used for measuring the height parallel of the engraving.

Announcing a forthcoming publication: Specimens

2011-01-21T12:41:00.004-05:00

The type specimen is a curious hybrid in the history of the book. Born of a base necessity—the need to sell type—the specimen quickly took on a life of its own and fulﬁlled a parallel need to delight and entertain. Part portfolio, part brag sheet, the type specimen allows the designer to present the best-case scenario for a speciﬁc typeface, to show off its ﬁner aspects while presenting an ideal method of use. In this way, the type specimen is flight of fancy and style manual combined, an exercise in utility heightened and illuminated by extravagance. Some of the more elaborate type specimens, like those of William H. Page and Co., are suffused with a playful futility, a special knowledge that, once sold, the types displayed will never be treated with the same reverence or care. But all type specimens, to some degree, are conceived in that rare instance in which commerce plays second ﬁddle to imagination, when the demands of industry and utility enhance, rather than diminish, the expression of a creative impulse.

When cast in this light, SPECIMENS is more accurately an exhibition than a type specimen. The alphabets displayed in it are not for sale. Instead, they were designed for proprietary use, often with speciﬁc texts or authors in mind; they were designed, in other words, to only be used in their ideal settings. While borrowing the form and the guise of the type specimen, the motivation, the book’s raison d’être, is to be an object in its own right, rather than a catalogue of typographic widgets.

The alphabets in SPECIMENS, the texts in which they are displayed, the method by which they are printed are all integral parts of a kaleidoscopic portrait. Composed of three sections, SPECIMENS opens with a multi-chromatic display of short texts set in a variety of styles. Following this, a selection of alphabets are displayed in lengthier texts appropriate to their forms: Baskerville’s Great Primer is displayed in a chapter from Candide; a new translation from Cicero’s Second Philippic is set in Cancellaresca Milanese Terzo; Saturn, which was inspired by the inscription on the Temple of Saturn, is displayed in a chapter from Vitruvius on the design of temples; Strand Serif in a selection of new prose pieces by Mark Strand; etc. Finally, the book concludes with a section of notes detailing the alphabetic and textual sources for each specimen.

SPECIMENS will be printed from photo polymer plates and metal type in a wide array of colors, with hand embellishments in ink and smoke. In all, sixteen complete alphabets will be displayed; one of which, Iohann Titling, is being cut, ﬁt, and cast in foundry metal specially for the edition at the Dale Guild Type Foundry. The paper is being handmade with a custom laurel leaf watermark at Velke Losiny in the Czech Republic. The binding will be executed by Book Lab II. A total of sixty-ﬁve copies will be printed. Fifty copies, numbered 1-50, will be bound in quarter leather with pattern paper boards and housed in a cloth covered clamshell box. Fifteen copies, lettered A-O, will be bound in full leather using two different skins, housed in a quarter leather clamshell box, and accompanied by a suite of state proofs selected from the display settings as well as a form of new metal type locked into a chase in the box. 11 x 16 inches; approximately 120 pages. Publication is expected by November 2011.

Ink Diary, 18 October

2010-10-18T16:50:00.001-04:00

After a month of anticipation, I finally boiled my first batch of linseed oil this past Saturday. On the way upstate I was particularly alert to morbid possibilities. Tales of disaster abound in the manuals I have been reading and they have steadily gained influence over my thoughts. Whole sections of London decimated by flames due to a careless ink maker. Certain pots which, when agitated, produce cascading streams of burning oil. Pre-Industrial towns mandating ink works to operate beyond the city walls because of their incumbent danger and stench. The recipes I have read that involve burning the oil put the process in an ominous context: If the oil has not already ignited on its own. Similarly, recipes that do not encourage burning the oil caution against allowing it to auto ignite, which will surely happen unless the ink maker remains vigilant. The basic recipe that I have decided to follow is a three stage process—boiling, igniting while boiling, and boiling some more—and I approached my first attempt with more than a little angst. During the weeks prior to our trip upstate I had regular visions of molten jets of burning oil erupting from my Dutch oven; decimating, at best, a couple of vegetable beds or, at worst, part of my face. To try to contain the imminent disaster I decided to cheat a little. Rather than starting with regular linseed oil I would try boiling a few cups of already thickened stand oil just to see what would happen. I bought myself a handy Mr Max butane burner figuring I could control it better than I could an open fire; and set up a workstation on a metal covered table that Annie had outfitted in the gravel drive. After a fitful night, I set to work. The process was more like running a deep fryer at a county fair than scrambling to contain Vesuvius. In barely 37 minutes the varnish appeared to be ready—a wooden stick charred immediately when inserted into the oil; and, when cooled, the varnish produced strands over an inch long when stretched between my forefinger and thumb—and I was left with a cast iron pot of thick, sticky goop full of discolored bits of burnt oil. I took the pot off the stove and placed it on the gravel driveway where, to my great frustration, it refused to catch fire. Within an hour a hardened skin similar to thick Saran wrap formed over my thickened batch of oil.

A couple of weeks ago, the printer Arthur Larson turned me onto C H Bloy's A History of Printing Ink, Balls, and Rollers 1440-1850. In it, Bloy has assembled sixty-nine ink recipes ranging from a Chinese block-printing ink from AD 251 to an account of William Morris's ink made by Jänecke of Hannover. The recipes are a fascinating distillation of the literature of a craft in that they show the near infinite distinctions possible with so few ingredients. Oil (linseed or nut), lampblack, turpentine, amber, onions, and crusts of bread. Add to these diligence, time, and fire, and you end up with sixty-nine competing arguments for how to proceed. There are few consistent instructions but there are some general trends: the British say Burn the Oil! and the French say Don't Burn the Oil! Onions or crusts of bread are helpful to either 1) absorb the oil's greasiness or 2) allow the ink to dry well, though some Encyclopædists question their effectiveness toward either end. One recipe quoted in de Champour and Malpeyre's Nouveau Manuel Complet de la Fabrication des Encres [Paris: 1856] is very specific: add 2 kilos bread to each 8 litres of oil in small slices, 3 or 4 at a time. One ingredient that most recipes agree upon, and that is pointedly absent from Baskerville's recipe, is turpentine [see below]. I am a little suspicious of Bloy, though. He has dramatically cut and re-written the Baskerville recipe that appears in Hansard's Typographia. This would be fine except that he does not admit to altering the recipe. What else has he left out of other recipes?

The three most common methods for determining that your varnish is ready are 1) it produces long threads when stretched between forefinger and thumb; 2) the crusts of bread you have inserted into the oil have charred; or 3) a wooden stick chars when inserted into the oil. The time stipulated to produce a good varnish for summer printing is consistently 5 hours. In recipes that call for burning, you boil for 2 hours, burn, and then boil for 3 more. Some recipes call for burning 5 minutes, others for 30. Some for burning while boiling, others for burning off the heat. They all emphasize that the process takes time and attention. After preparing Annie for what would be a long day boiling oil, imagine her surprise when after 45 minutes I came in and said, "I think it's done." For myself, I was deeply suspicious. I had assumed that using the thickened stand oil would reduce the time, but 37 minutes? Further, what was now in my pot didn't look like the beginnings of a fine ink. For one, the clinging, darkened skin seemed an inauspicious omen. Perhaps I could lift it off like fat from a chilled broth and beneath find a smooth, thick varnish? Repeatedly throughout the day I rubbed my fingers along the surface, trying to convince myself that this would work.

Most ink recipes of any length make special note of how important it is to not overheat the oil and to stir it consistently with an iron ladle. I threw mine on a burner turned to high and stood back, awaiting disaster. There is simply no way that I have produced a superior varnish. Next time, I will work at lower heat and stir with the same attention I would give a risotto. In the meantime, I spent an hour in my shop seeing what I could make with my first batch of mealy varnish. It is very sticky, so much so that it resists mixing or handling of any kind. After adding some amber varnish, which is 50% turpentine, it loosened up considerably and I was able to get it to accept the lampblack, though it is not fully integrated. The ink is still too tacky to make a proper draw down but I am hopeful that adding turpentine will bring it to a better working viscosity. I will try this later in the week.

Ink Diary, 29 September

2010-09-29T10:10:00.008-04:00

Ink 002

Mixed 29 September 2010

First test 29 September 2010

Recipe:

30ml Ink 001 + 1ml Grove's 16th century amber varnish*

Preliminaries:

I received my 80ml bottle of "16th century amber varnish" from Grove's last week. Although I know the ink I mix with it today will be unusable, I am curious to see the effect of the amber on the ink by doing side by side draw downs with Ink 001 and Ink 002. Grove recommends one drop for a spatula knife full of oil paint. I have know idea what that would translate to in ink. I am starting with 1:30 amber to ink because a 1/4 teaspoon is 1ml and two tablespoons is 30ml (two tablespoons will yield enough ink for my experiments).

Working characteristics:

On working the ink with the brayer it had the same sloppy, splattering consistency of Ink 001. However, on clean up there was noticeably more resistance to the California Special Wash I use. I imagine I'll need to switch to Kerosene for wash up.

Drying:

The draw downs are dry after only a few hours (with the exception of thicker swells).

Odor:

The amber varnish has a good deal of turpentine in it. I guess you come to love what you know: although I can practically bathe in denatured alcohol I have always found the smell of turpentine revolting. I suppose I'll have to come to know turpentine, and love it.

_______________

* I had considered naming this ink "Ink 001a" because it is simply Ink 001 with an additive. I opted for the name "Ink 002" because all of my ink experiments will be variations on only two or three additives. I would prefer that my final ink be named "Ink 025" or "Ink 026" rather than "Ink 001y" or "Ink 001z."

Ink Diary, 22 September

2010-09-22T09:19:00.008-04:00

Ink 001

Mixed 21 September 2010

First test 22 September 2010

Recipe:

Total of 1/2 cup of ink made with 1 rounded tablespoon of lamp black and 450 dPas linseed stand oil. So far, Hebert's Encyclopædia is the only mention I've found of the proportion of pigment to oil. his recipe calls for one part pigment to seven parts oil by weight. I mistakenly mixed 1:7 by volume which will result in a highly diluted pigmentation.

Drying:

Made one draw down at 9:30 am on 21 September. Within 24 hours the ink was dry to the touch with the exception of a few thicker swells.

Before printing:

Many of the 19th century articles on ink manufacture mention the practice of adding prussian blue pigment to black ink to compensate for poor quality black pigment. This practice continues today. Nearly every commercial black ink I have used has a high blue content, making a true matte black impossible to achieve. What I am striving for with my ink is to make a black that reflects as little light as possible, turning each letter into a miniscule black hole around which the white paper shimmers. My first draw down of Ink 001 is a promising step toward my goal. The ink has a lovely matte finish and no noticeable trace of blue.

Working characteristics:

As I had suspected the ink is too fluid—it even splatters a bit when worked with a brayer. I hate to think what would happen if I put it on my press. The consistency and tack is closer to an intaglio than a relief ink. The linseed oil simply isn't thick enough. On Brian Donnell's website I found my first specific numbers for boiling linseed oil. According to Donnell, the linseed oil needs to be brought to 720-750°F before it makes an acceptable ink. That is a considerably higher temperature than stand oil is boiled to. There is no point in continuing until I boil some oil upstate.

Ink Diary, 21 September

2010-09-21T13:28:00.012-04:00

21 Spetember, Progress on linseed oil

I first read an abridged version of T. C. Hansard's recipe for Baskerville's ink in F. E. Pardoe's, John Baskerville of Birmingham: Letter Founder and Printer [London: 1975]. The general vagueness of the recipe either assumes a prior experience of ink-making on the reader's part or attempts to conceal a lack of specific knowledge on the part of Hansard (it was probably a little of both). Baskerville's ink recipe was a closely guarded secret and the information that Hansard relied upon was gathered either from Baskerville's foreman Robert Martin or, more likely, Thomas Martin, the elder printer's nephew. What first confounded me about the recipe was the method of incorporating amber into the ink but, after further reading, my focus has shifted to the preparation of the linseed oil, the base medium of the ink. Here is the complete recipe as printed by Hansard:

He took of the finest and oldest linseed oil three gallons, this was put into a vessel capable of holding four times the quantity, and boiled with a long-continued fire till it acquired a certain thickness or tenacity, according to the quality of the work it was intended to print, and which was judged of by putting small quantities upon a stone to cool, and then taking it up between the finger and thumb; on opening which, if it drew into a thread an inch long or more, it was considered sufficiently boiled. This mode of boiling can only be acquired by long practice, and requires particular skill and care in the person who superintends the operation, as, for want of this, the most serious consequences may occur, and have very frequently occurred.* The oil thus prepared was suffered to cool, and then a small quantity of black or amber rosin was dissolved in it, after which it was allowed some months to subside; it was then mixed with the fine black, before named, to a proper thickness, and ground for use.

*Here Hansard mentions that linseed oil should not be boiled in the printing office because of the ease by which it catches fire.

When I took my first exploratory trip to Kremer Pigments last week, I showed the clerk Hansard's recipe and inquired after fine, old linseed oil that I could boil. In its stead I was shown Kremer's linseed stand oil, which is a pre-boiled linseed oil that they produce in two thicknesses. I ordered a couple of liters of the thicker oil. Today I mixed some of it with finely ground lamp black which is collected in the same manner as it was in the 18th century. Over the previous couple of days I have played around with little bits of the oil on my fingers and, though it is quite thick and tacky, I have a gut feeling that it is still not thick enough. With that said, the only way I can test it is to make some ink and put it through the press. Intrigued in the meantime to learn more about the preparation of the linseed oil, I consulted Hansard's full text on printing inks in, Typographia: an historical sketch of the origin and progress of the art of printing; with practical directions for conducting every department in an office: with a description of stereotype and lithography [London: 1825]. In it, Hansard quotes from the recipe for Black Ink in Rees's Encyclopædia:

The oil is boiled in an iron pot, capable of holding at least half as much more, because it swells very much; when it boils it is kept stirring with an iron ladle; and if it does not itself take flame, it is kindled with a piece of lighted paper, or burning wood, in order to increase its consistence and tenacity, and to diminish its greasiness. The oil is suffered to burn for half an hour or more and the flame being then extinguished by covering the vessel close, the boiling is afterwards continued, with a gentle heat, till the oil appears of a proper consistence; in which state it is called varnish....

The burning of the oil is intriguing. In Luke Hebert's The Engineer's and Mechanics Encyclopædia [London: 1846], Rees's method of linseed oil boiling is repeated, but Hebert asserts that the burning of the oil is necessary for the ink to dry properly. The fact that linseed oil dries on its own, without the aid of additives, puts his claim in doubt. Rees's assertion that the oil burning lessens the inks greasiness—a consistent goal in every ink recipe I've read—and thickens the oil to the proper consistency makes more sense. I have no doubt that Kremer's stand oil is as grease-free as I am likely to find but the consistency worries me. The ink I made today (which is more properly oil paint) is too fluid to print small type well. ¶These issues of ink consistency will simply need to be resolved through experimentation. Despite my knowledge of Baskerville's ink when printed, I know nothing about how it looked or felt in his iron pot. Further, considerations of ink viscosity change dramatically when using a power driven ink cylinder, as I do, rather than a hand-held baren. Time, or more precisely Speed, is the common disconnect I am encountering. I want to print with my inks tomorrow; yet every published description of Baskerville's ink emphasizes the long periods of time he allotted for its maturation. Not only did he allow his oil to "subside" for months after boiling but he allowed his mixed ink three years to settle before grinding it for use. Baskerville's refined and delicate typefaces only printed well because of his mechanical improvements in press, paper, and ink. One of the reasons his competitors (as if he had any) were so critical of his type's fineness was undoubtedly because they knew they could never print it as well he could: Baskerville's type required Baskerville's ink. I suspect that one of the reasons he let his ink gestate for so long was so that it would thicken to the proper viscosity for printing his type.

I will publish notes on the first ink mixture after I test it tomorrow.

Ink Diary Week 1, Entry 2

2010-09-20T08:48:00.019-04:00

20 September, Progress on amber

Since my initial visit to Kremer Pigments, I have felt increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that, on the advice of two of their employees, I was going to put turpentine and amber in a pot and cook it on my kitchen stove. In my twenties I spent a few years working in art supply stores and, if I may be considered a representative cross-section, there is about a 90% chance that the advice I received at Kremer was wrong. So last night I spent a few hours reading and have had some of my concerns addressed. It turns out that the clerks I consulted at Kremer were misreading Kurt Wehlte's entry, Amber, a Hard Resin, in The Materials and Techniques of Painting:

Some amber is exceedingly hard, softening at approximately 250°C and melting between 290 and 300°C. This fossil resin cannot be dissolved directly, even in hot drying oils, but must be fused or "run" first.... Attempts to dissolve amber directly in turpentine succeeded on a small scale in the laboratory, thanks to some ingenious tricks, but these were without practical value.

The phrase that stuck out as most troubling (besides the extremely high temperatures and "without practical value") was "must be fused or 'run' first." There is no mention of melting in turpentine at heat or of the conditions required for fusing the amber. Additionally, I have no ingenious laboratory tricks up my sleeve. After a few internet searches I found a couple of helpful references on violin making and woodworking blogs. This entry posted in May 2007 by someone calling themselves Fridolin is particularly insightful:

I have recently started making my own amber varnish. I have found the descriptions given in Geary Baese's book on the old italian varnishes to work for me. The difficult part is to fuse the amber, which requires A LOT of heat. In my experience 300°C is not enough. I use special lab equipment (glassware and electric heat source). You also get a lot of toxic and smelly fumes (It can not be done inside). Once you have fused the amber, it easily dissolves in linseed oil (at a much lower temperature) and it gives a very thick varnish that dries within 24h in my UV cabinet.

In the 18th century, when amber varnish was more widely used, it must have been obvious that the amber needed to be fused before adding it to the oil. In fact, Fridolin's choice of words, "Once you have fused the amber, it easily dissolves in linseed oil," matches Hansard's Baskerville recipe exactly. Clearly, my little jam jar of linseed oil and amber will never transform into Baskerville's magic ink of its own accord. Quickly, I began searching for Mr. Geary Baese's magnum opus on old Italian varnishes. Google books has scanned one copy but does not have the rights to make it available. They list Baese as the publisher and that the copy they scanned is at the University of Michigan. Searches on bookfinder, abebooks, and Columbia University's online catalogue yielded no copies. Searching for information on Baese I found this foreboding entry from 1995 on the website of Alf Studios Concert Violins:

The pure resin varnishes he uses cost more than $10 an ounce from Geary L. Baese, 610 W. Mountain Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521, but don't bother contacting Geary unless you are a committed violin maker.

Not only am I not a committed violin maker but.... Google searches yielded no further information on Baese. ¶My next search for amber fusing techniques brought William Theodore Brannt's, Varnishes, lacquers, printing inks, and sealing-waxes: their raw materials and their manufacture, (1893) to my attention. After reading this passage on page 45, I began to have some serious second thoughts:

In fusing it [amber] suffers decomposition. It gives off water, succinic acid, marsh gas, and a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons (known as oil of amber), while a more or less dark-colored substance, the so-called amber-colophony or fused amber, remains behind. This amber-colophony is the substance which is especially prepared for the manufacture of lacquers by roasting amber.... The oil of amber, which in fusing amber may be obtained as a by-product, forms in a refined state a pale-brown fluid of a strong, disagreeable odor. The crude oil is dark brown, and possesses a very repugnant odor.

After reading this enticing description, I began searching for where to buy already fused amber rather than searching for how to fuse amber. The first hit was a 10ml (2/3 tablespoon) vial available from Dick Blick for the discounted price of $133 and change. Successive searches found a number of small workshops making amber linseed varnish at a more reasonable price. I have decided to leave that stage of the process to other craftsmen.

Ink Diary Week 1

2010-09-19T18:09:00.008-04:00

19 September 2010

A few weeks ago, after reading too much news about various corporate trespasses, I decided that my small autumnal rebellion against corporate malfeasance would be to manufacture my own printing inks. Looking, of course, to John Baskerville for guidance I dredged up T C Hansard's recipe for Baskerville's ink from F. E. Pardoe's biography. Neither Baskerville nor his widow Sarah would divulge the secrets of his lustrous black ink but various sources were culled together into a recipe by Hansard in 1825, fifty years after Baskerville's death. On the surface, the recipe sounds fairly straightforward—a bit of lamp black collected from furnace burners mixed in with thickened linseed oil—but for the one predictable exception: "The oil thus prepared was suffered to cool, and had then a small quantity of black or amber rosin dissolved in it, after which it was allowed some months to subside..." [my emphasis] On a close reading of the recipe, the problems begin to multiply. First of all, what does a small quantity of rosin mean? Is it one part per ten or one part per hundred? The issue is one of elasticity: too much rosin will result in an inflexible ink which could potentially crack when dried. The only way to discover the proper proportion is through experimentation. ¶Second, although I can obtain all of the ingredients Hansard mentions from Kremer Pigments, the staff at Kremer assures me that amber has to be dissolved in turpentine (which is highly flammable and noxious) at a temperature of over 500 degrees fahrenheit. The resulting mixture is a shellac used predominantly in oil painting and violin making. Considering Baskerville's years in the Japanware business it makes sense that he would be well versed in the use of shellacs. But Hansard never mentions shellac. The rosin is not added to the linseed oil as a liquid but as a solid, it is dissolved in the oil. Which brings up the issue of time and heat. Does, "after which it was allowed some months to subside," mean that it took some months for the rosin to dissolve in tepid oil? Was the oil re-heated to aid the dissolution of the rosin and then allowed some months to subside? Against the better judgement of Kremer's clerks, I am opting to stick with Hansard for the moment. I have added 15ml of solid amber rosin to 150ml of linseed stand oil at room temperature. If the amber has not dissolved at all in a week I will try the same proportions over heat.

The Color of the Tiber

2010-08-20T09:25:00.016-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished printing Swan & Hoop 2: A Roman Inscription on Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio. Like Mediæval in Padua before it, A Roman Inscription features a map that has been paired down to the essential landmarks that are discussed in the book. Unlike the map in Mediæval in Padua, though, the Rome map is entirely black with one red structure denoting Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio and a curving bluish line where the Tiber River bisects the city. All of this seemed straight forward enough until I began mixing the ink. The trouble with urban Italian waterways is that the water in them is green (or brown when it rains). This presents a host of problems when printing maps of Italian cities. I have never considered myself a realist but to print the Tiber in a bright aqua would be visually confusing to anyone who has walked along the river's banks. Despite its status as an ever flowing source of myth the Tiber is simply not blue. And therein lies the rub. To print a river in muddy green ink, however accurate, would throw off the visual balance of the map, disrupting the legibility of the image and causing the viewer to momentarily miss the point. So the goal was to make a color that is at once blue and ambiguous, evocative without being sentimental or misleading. My solution to this was to mix a blue that is actually a blue interpretation of brown, an ink composed of blue, green, yellow, red, black, titanium white, and transparent extender.

April 20th Talk at Columbia University

2010-04-09T11:44:00.002-04:00

The first copy of Æthelwold Etc

2009-09-03T15:39:00.010-04:00

There is nothing that compares to the melancholic exhultation of opening the first copy of a new book. Years of thought and labor that you believed were entirely your own are distilled into an object that, once bound, is no longer yours. It takes time to get acquainted with the whole thing that had previously been separate parts. As you turn the pages, you experience a mixture of déjà vu, recognition, and surprise, as if remembering something that has only just been born.

Book with Deluxe Edition Box

Deluxe Edition Box with Book, Color Diary, and Portfolio

A is for Arrangement

K is for Karissimi

O is for One

P is for Prometheus

Page spread of notes

Pages spread from color diary

Page spread from color diary

Æthelwold Etc. Title Lettering & Inks

2009-07-29T18:57:00.005-04:00

Title page lettering in Johann Titling and Cancellaresca Milanese capitals

29 inks for the final 7 letters of Æthelwold Etc.

Update coming soon. I am currently in the throes of finishing the printing.

R is for Rimbaud

2009-07-10T17:35:00.004-04:00

The letter R from Æthelwold Etc.

P is for Prometheus, F is for Fanciful

2009-06-18T16:47:00.004-04:00

Please Note: Prometheus is spelled wrong in this proof.

Leitura Primeira of Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva

2009-06-11T12:20:00.012-04:00

First Sample Setting

Throughout Æthelwold Etc. there are repeated references to the work of the pre-Victorian Portuguese writing master Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva. Ventura worked in that vibrant period of lettering history between the Romantic and the Industrial eras. While his immediate (Spanish) predecessors, notably Servidori and Torio de la Riva, utilized a thorough pedagogical approach, Ventura seems to have been hell bent on having fun. As such, his work, particularly his manual Regras Methódicas para le Aprender a Escrever, is suffused with an enthusiasm lacking in the work of both his elders and his contemporaries. In the Regras there is a small specimen of Typo Portuguez nestled between examples of Ventura's incomparable Bastrdinho hand and his fantastically ornamented capitals. The specimen is a sober pause in the manual's kinetic exuberance and it displays seven optical sizes of a roman alphabet from the large Parangona I to the minute Breviario Primeiro. ¶Since I first encountered Ventura's manual I have developed a kind of inexplicable lust for his lettering which I allow to play out in Æthelwold. The digital rendering of his Leitura Primeira (above) will be used in the Æthelwold I to set To Ianthe by Lord Byron at a miniscule point size.

General Unifying Theory

2009-06-01T23:46:00.004-04:00

The 26 letters in Æthelwold Etc. are born partly of the belief that the communal form of the alphabet is as responsible for a letter's legibility as that letter's specific form. If, for instance, you were to come upon a basket weave pattern in the Duomo floor, your mind would not necessarily view it as an O even though it is circular. If you came upon the same basket weave pattern printed in a book, preceding a P and following an N, there would be no doubt that it was an O. Further, the disparity between the letter's contextual legibility and the form's alphabetic ambiguity might "open a lane"* to a fresh appraisal of our typographic assumptions. The complex relationship between the letter and it's form might also broaden our understanding of the relationships between communal responsibility and individual prerogative, free will and determinism, heredity and experience – though, admittedly, that is a leap.

*The reference is to Auden's line "And the crack in the tea-cup opens/ A lane to the land of the dead" from As I walked out one evening.

Æthelwold Etc: E, G, and U

2009-05-20T12:52:00.008-04:00

The first 4 pages of the color diary

May 21
When I published Mediæval in Padua last year I was pretty thrilled with myself for having printed a book that had 8 colors in it. Now, only half way through the 6th of 26 letters in Æthelwold Etc. I have used 34 colors (the upper right color on the lower right sheet is opaque white). Yesterday alone I used 14 different colors to proof the E, G and U and I have the 6 color C waiting in the wings.¶I printed the first three plates of the G today, two of which are in nearly identical shades of copper. I let the ink sit in a loose packet for a week to stiffen up and the half tones came off with almost no ink gain.

The finished G

Proofs of the U (for Utopiate), E (for Euclid), and G (for Golden) and drawings in various states on my table

May 20
I am currently proofing the Æthelwold E, G and U. The U is particularly unusual because I am trying to precipitate a mild chromatic nausea without being visually offensive. Inspired by a passage from Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater in which de Quincey first acquires opium, the U is meant to evoke Victorian signage like that which would have been used on the druggist's shop where he made his fateful purchase. The shading in the U is the actual text set in my sans serif rendition of Thomas More's Utopian alphabet.

Proof state of the U for Utopiate

Æthelwold Etc. H & J

2009-05-13T14:55:00.004-04:00

Playing with Fire

2009-04-26T17:07:00.002-04:00

I now have 12 additional letters from Æthelwold ready, or near ready, for proofing. My current plan is to get as much drawing and file preparation done as possible before heading to Los Angeles on Friday. I will then start proofing on the following Tuesday or Wednesday. Below are some pictures of the "drawing" in process for the border of the P (P is for Prometheus).

Æthelwold Etc. Utopiate

2009-04-20T13:21:00.006-04:00

Initial Sketch for UTOPIATE

I am currently consumed by sketching, ordering, re-ordering, and re-assigning ideas, shapes, forms from one composition to another as the remaining 23 letters of Æthelwold come in to focus. I am reticent to show sketches of partial ideas but thought I'd show an early rendition of UTOPIATE from the U composition. The composition itself uses text from De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, set in my sans serif rendition of Thomas More's Utopian alphabet, as shading for a dimensional letter form. ¶As the remaining compositions in the book come together I have been led in many unexpected directions for which the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been invaluable. The Met's collection of hair ornaments form the Biwat people of New Guinea, 5th century Byzantine weavings, and 16th century initial letters of Girolamo dai Libri have all presented new vantage points from which to begin or complete letters. Additionally, I have now been able to work the writing of Keats, Byron, and my beloved Coleridge in, as well as to draw a composition based on the fabulously painterly pavement designs of the Duomo in Sienna. It's all terribly exciting and exhausting.

Saucy Romans take the field

2009-04-05T12:36:00.014-04:00

On Thursday I printed the first two pages of the Pervigilium Veneris (one each of Latin and English) in my new Cancellaresca Milanese type. Printing a bilingual text presents many challenges to the typographer, one of the most difficult of which is whether to pursue a feeling of typographic equanimity or to emphasize the differences between the two texts. In the case of the PV, the solution to this problem was aided by Bruce Whiteman's approach to the translation. Rather than producing a symmetrical syllabic rendering of the Latin, Bruce (thankfully) chose to set the English to his own music. The resulting translation is nearly twice as many lines as the original Latin. One of the pitfalls of using a Cancellaresca Corsiva type (like my Milanese) is that it tends to visually break up when freighted with too much white space. The ascenders and descenders need to be close to their own kind or they hang on the page like forlorn tendrils, disconnected and exposed. If I were to set both the Latin and the English in upper and lower case, the Latin would not hold its own on the page but be subsummed by the empty chasms separating stanzas. As a solution I chose to set the Latin in all caps and the English in upper and lower case. The Latin stakes out its territory with a horizontal epigraphic presence while the English is allowed to flow in a more vertical thread.

Cancelleresca Milanese in progress

2009-03-05T10:26:00.013-05:00

Cancelleresca Milanese Set-Width Drawing Board

In an effort to create a more faithful rendition of Castiglioni's italic I am designing the type so that each letter has a pre-determined set width, just as it would have been designed in metal. By minimizing the number of kerning pairs the hope is to maintain the underlying rhythm of the original. The most typical – and legitimate – complaint about digital typography is that it is possessed of a blasé uniformity, an uninspiring sameness of color, angle, kerning, and alignment. Conversely, most efforts at scribal or (dreadful) hand-written typographic forms present a mere parody of rhythm, usually at the cost of legibility, grace, and flow. With this in mind, the Cancelleresca Milanese type is a study in the middle ground, an attempt to be simultaneously mindful of typographic necessity and calligraphic improvisation. ¶And then the problems begin. I am now on the third drafting of the type. When I proofed the first draft I was struck with fear at what I saw: more Roycrofter than Renaissance, more Goudy than good. Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that the first cutting of the original – the 1541 version that I am using as my model – is actually only a lowercase font that was paired with a pre-existing set of capitals. The capitals, in turn, are German rather than Italian humanist forms. It is fascinating that the printer chose to set a book about trans-and cisalpine inscriptions using a combination of trans- and cisalpine types. Fascinating and frustrating. The first casualty was the R, a letter that stands out as being so unique in the original, a relative of the early Humanist capitals of Donatello [see below]. It was one of the letters that first drew me to the face, but when I printed it I couldn't stop thinking of the New Yorker font or – I was crushed – a Roycrofter book. I can't abide that. Then the q presented a problem. The original used by Castiglioni was an upside down b with the tail, as was the fashion at the time, trailing down & to the left. To our eyes this is an impedement to the easy progression of the narrative, more of an affectation than anything else, and so it must go. As it stands now I am happy with the font but I also understand that it is an interpretation, a digital cousin of the original type.

Æthelwold Etc: Week Five, or Saucy Romans

2009-02-28T14:12:00.009-05:00

Italic used by Giovanni Antonio Castiglioni in Milan, 1541

First sample arrangement after original

First sample setting of Capitals

Most of this past week was devoted to my talk at the Type Directors Club on Thursday and printing an invitation for my godson Coltrane's nursery school. With those tasks complete I have started trial settings of the Latin text of Pervigilium Veneris in 12 didot Romulus. For Bruce Whiteman's translation I have begun drawing a rendition of the upright Italic used by Giovanni Antonio Castiglioni from 1541. [original shown above] This is also the font that I will be using for the notes in Æthelwold Etc.

Color 02

2009-02-28T10:45:00.002-05:00

One night in the summer of 1995 I was sitting in a playground in Brooklyn with some friends. I was on the jungle gym staring at the red swing set in front of me when I understood, on a visceral level, that red was not a primary color and that the mixing of the "primary colors" into secondary and tertiary colors was not an act of creation but one of re-assembly. That red, yellow, and blue are exhumed or extrapolated from pure light or a primal brown and that the color wheel, when inverted, becomes a more accurate chromatic centrifuge.

One Weekend Only: Bodoni, Byron, and Bordeaux

2009-02-25T12:28:00.001-05:00

Bodoni, Byron, and Bordeaux
March 28 & 29
The Center for Book Arts, 28 West 27th Street, 3rd floor
Join me for a weekend of connoisseurship. We will sample beautiful letter forms, romantic poetry, and delicious wine. Visit the Center for Book Arts for more details.

Æthelwold Etc: Week Four

2009-02-20T11:21:00.010-05:00

Fourth and Final State

Third State

Second State

First Experimental State

Original Pencil Scumble for Plate #2

First Sketches of Ribbon & Textura Inglese, with Printing Notes

February 20
This week has been devoted to the Æthelwold T. With each letter it is becoming clearer that the secret to overlaying color is the preservation of luminosity. This probably sounds obvious but with four colors of ink printed on top of one another it is remarkably difficult to maintain vibrancy. For the T, I had thought that by overlaying different densities of copper glazing I would achieve the "inner light" that I was after. Instead, the resulting color was bland and lifeless (State 2). Further, the outline and right reading type was not stadning out the way I wanted them to. For the tromp l'oeil to work properly, I needed the ribbon to feel elevated from the page. In the end, I started with a ground of bright lemon yellow overprinted with a pale hot pink scumble (see below). Over these I printed two different shading plates in copper glazes and the wrong reading type in a pale bronze. Interestingly, all of these colors are roughly the same value. It is the altering of hue – rather than contrast in value – that provides the depth. When the outline and right reading type were printed in a contrasting blue-bronze the whole image stood off the page.

First and Second Plates in Final Colors

Color

2009-02-15T16:26:00.020-05:00

As with static form, a static color composition is either composed of bodies at rest or forces in equilibrium. This is (now) a basic idea and any student of Albers is familiar with it: put x next to y to make it look like z. The purple in this gray draws out the yellow in that green, and they either balance each other or create a friction that, like the best asymmetrical designs, conveys the impression of a whole. So why are color combinations so difficult? Perhaps our approach to color is part of the problem. ¶From childhood we have the tertiary color wheel beaten into us as an unequivocal truth but, however enjoyable that beating might be, I have always held its fundamental proposition suspect. Nothing I have observed in nature suggests that color is an additive process. Although we are able to mix the three "primary colors" into an apparently infinite spectrum, consider approaching the color wheel from the opposite direction. Rather than viewing color as an act of primeval creation consider color as a product of Babel, that once there was a great scattering, a centrifugal propulsion from which we are still returning. When viewed from this perspective, arriving at a harmonious color combination is not a creative act occuring in a vacuum, but a re-assembling of something that was shattered and now is made whole. Consider the possibility that the only primary color is brown, and that red, yellow, and blue are extruded from it as copper ore is from the earth.

Æthelwold Etc: Week Three CODEX

2009-02-13T14:35:00.009-05:00

This week was devoted to the CODEX book fair where I displayed the first couple of pages of Æthelwold Etc. The response was very encouraging, to the extent that five of the eight deluxe copies are now reserved. More than sales, though, the event was a remarkable gathering of people: in the same afternoon I discussed my work with Thomas Ingmire, Nicolas Barker, and Johanna Drucker. Though I had a hard time getting around to look at other people's work, the quality of what I did see was unmatched in my experience. I was surrounded by David Esslemont's calligrams, Carolee Campbell's salt-resist Sumi ink paintings, the obsessive compulsive (in the complimentary sense) works of ARC, Richard Wagener's wood engravings, Ken Botnick's ink jet/letterpress combinations, and Johannes Strugalla's phonetic typography. I came away from the fair cursing myself for not being born rich. And completely inspired.

Æthelwold Etc: Week Two

2009-02-04T17:00:00.010-05:00

February 5
One of the more adventuresome aspects of Æthelwold Etc is that every letter form in it, including every typeface, will be designed and drawn by me. For each letter composition, there is the letter form itself (A, B, C, etc) and then a title drawn in a different lettering style. Additionally, I am designing an inline titling font for the title page (see above), an upright Italic font for the notes, and a variety of other fonts and alphabets that will appear within various compositions. So far, with only 5 finished compositions, I have designed a Greek majuscule font based on a sketch by Eric Gill for the P, a composite textura font for the T, and a sans serif rendition of Thomas More's Utopian alphabet for the Q.

February 4
Finished the eighth and ninth (and final) plates on the A. For the outline of the cartouche I mixed a blue gray to emphasize the different oranges. It reads as the same color as the purple gray that outlines the green letter. The final color of the composition is a rich black used to print the word ARRANGEMENT in letters derived from the capitalis quadrata of Bartolomeo San Vito. Have decided that I don't have the energy to proof the T before leaving for Berkeley Saturday morning.

Æthelwold Etc Color Diary: Week Two

2009-02-04T14:18:00.004-05:00

These are the final 5 colors for the A, all of which were used on the top cartouche. The rest of the week will be spent proofing the T and printing an initial version of the title page for CODEX.

Who/what is Æthelwold?

2009-02-04T13:51:00.005-05:00

Æthelwold was Bishop of Winchester from 963–984. During this time, the scribe Godeman made a service book for him, known as The Benedictional of Æthelwold. The book is lavishly illuminated with an abundance of gold and the text is laid out using the Hierarchy of Scripts developed by the Carolingians: Antique Roman capitals (or a variation thereof) for titles [in this case all in gold]; an insular uncial hand for introductory matter [in this case a strikingly stylized hand notable for it's unmistakable A]; and a Carolingian miniscule for the body text. It is one of my favorite books. The manuscript is in the British Library and is available in facsimile.

Æthelwold Etc Color Diary: Week One

2009-01-30T19:30:00.004-05:00

Æthelwold Etc will be published in both a standard and a deluxe edition. The book itself will be the same in both editions – I don't want anyone to feel that they are getting a second quality book. Instead, the deluxe will have two extras: 1) a suite of prints of all 26 letters and 2) a color diary of draw downs of all inks mixed for the book (estimated at between 100 and 150 individual colors). After three days of printing, I have mixed nine colors.

Æthelwold Etc: Week One

2009-01-30T18:18:00.014-05:00

September 30
Editioned the first four colors of what is now a nine color A. I put the rollers through three intermediary conditioning steps to achieve the specific translucency and hue I was going for in the green. In comparison to what I printed today the proof I pulled on Monday looks muddy and indelicate. The inspiration for the coloring is the faint green in the Feliciano manuscript. It's not my intention to mimic watercolor in print – Æthelwold is very specifically a printed book – but it is important to me that some of the background light that is peculiar to watercolor be evident. For the outline, I ended up printing it in a purpley gray which, when printed alongside the green, reads convincingly as a pencil line.

September 29
Finished editioning the O. I have spent most of the last 12 years wanting to print this image. It is based on one of the startlingly centripetal pavements in the Duomo of Florence.

First Proofs from Æthelwold Etc.

2009-01-26T17:18:00.006-05:00

I have never printed nine colors on one page. The proofing process of Æthelwold is not simply to check plates or drawings or even specific colors. It is part of a process to learn how nine colors that I have in my head actually work together – if they do – in print.

Upcoming Events

2009-01-26T17:17:00.005-05:00

CODEX International Book Fair
February 9-11
Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley Campus
Come spend a few sunny days in Berkeley. I will be showing the first pages of Æthelwold Etc. as well as a selection of my books in print. Visit http://www.codexfoundation.org for more information.

Letter Forms as Content
Society of Scribes Annual Meeting 2009
February 26, 6:00 pm
at the Type Directors Club, 347 West 36th Street, Suite 603
I will be giving an illustrated talk about my work, particularly the development of proprietary lettering and type faces for my books.

$20/$15 for students. RSVP to director@tdc.org.

Bodoni, Byron, and Bordeaux
March 28 & 29
The Center for Book Arts, 28 West 27th Street, 3rd floor
Join me for a weekend of connoisseurship. We will sample beautiful letter forms, romantic poetry, and delicious wine. Visit the Center for Book Arts for more details.

Inscription on the Real Alcazar in Sevilla

2009-01-21T16:20:00.005-05:00

Click on the image above for a better view. The layout and lettering of this inscription is reminiscent of Mosan Romanesque champlevé enamel work. Compare with the great altarpiece of Nicolas of Verdun in Klosterneuburg, Austria.

Works in Progress

2009-01-19T16:21:00.011-05:00

I am currently working on three separate book projects with the expectation of completing at least two in 2009.

Æthelwold Etc.
Twenty six letters inspired by other letters, non-letters, and little bits of poetry
With accompanying notes by Russell Maret
This will be my first printed alphabetical treatise. The work will comprise twenty six letter forms, printed on recto only, each inspired by a diverse array of historical styles, literary references, and daydreams. Each composition will be printed in rich, multi-chromatic letterpress. To give an idea of the work's complexity, the A is 8 colors and will require 9 plates. The O is one of the more subtle drawings at only 5 colors.
The sources, inspirations, and thought process behind each letter will be explained in depth in an accompanying section of notes.

Pervigilium Veneris
by Tiberianus
translated by Bruce Whiteman
I received Bruce's translation last week and it is fantastic. I will begin working on the layout in February.

Swan & Hoop 2: Lettered in Lucca
by Russell Maret
The second issue of Swan & Hoop is a guide to the public lettering in the beautiful Tuscan city of Lucca. I have begun researching the essay, but Æthelwold is driving me to distraction. I hope to begin printing this autumn.