Favorite Intertype projects : #2

FAVORITE #2 : APHA 2015 calendar

WE LOVE WORKING WITH OUR INTERTYPE C4 LINECASTER. As we already started one of our blog entries with the Intertype project we liked the best we thought we would start with this one, our 2nd favorite. The photo at the top shows the lockup for the projectBelow this one we’ll reintroduce #1 and your can click here to see a longer description of it.

We were doing a 2014 calendar for the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Printing History Association. We love to force type into non-line, non-horizontal arrangement most anytime we can. It was also fun organizing the indention to help the weekends stand out a bit. We are always wanting to push the envelope and we tried to make a page that would work as a calendar, but would also border on unreadable.

We think we came kind of close. Just the kind of people we are.

Sonnet 112 by William Shakespeare

The Bodleian Library of Oxford University in Oxford, England, was celebrating 400 Years of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in an exhibition that ran from January to November 2016.

In a sonnet cycle of 154 poems, addressed to both female and male love interests, William Shakespeare described every shade of passion while mocking the tones of courtly love. The Sonnets continue to fascinate readers over 400 years after his death. The ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets 2016’ project invited printers around the world to produce one sonnet apiece, in any style and by any method of relief printing. The results form a multi-lingual, multi-media, and multi-dimensional collection.

The collection was presented to the Bodleian at an event in November 2016.

We chose Sonnet 112 because it had the word “impression” in its first line.

Here is a video of Patrick Stewart reading the sonnet. Over a period of several months he read all 154 of them. You’ll see our contribution below the video.

We were excited to be involved in something Shakespearian-Bodleian-poetic-British. We like doing these kinds of collaborative projects and almost always use them as a way to promote the Lead Graffiti brand as experimental, creative, and conceptual. As a matter of course we will figure what others are going to do and then try to improve on them in a half dozen or more ways. Scale, number of runs, use of the letterpress process, playing with type and image, marrying multiple elements, etc.

We like including and working with imagery. We also like placing things in a historical perspective as we are often humbled by the thought that we are part of a continuing thread that goes back to the work of Gutenberg. We try to live up to some level of that responsibility.

Printed : May 2021

Client : Bodleian Library, Oxford University

Size : 14.5” x 22.5”

Type & image : portrait is a copperplate, all text is photopolymer

Runs : 5 (Shakespeare portrait, 1609 text, 2016 text, blind debossed dates, & credit line)

Paper : Somerset Textured White, 300gsm

Press : Vandercook Universal III

Edition : 35 (The Bodleian only wanted 1 copy)

Porter Garnett 10 commandments for craftsmen

After finding our Harrild & Sons Albion iron hand press had been part of Laboratory Press at the Carnegie Institute of Technology back in the 1920s, we recently visited the Hunt Library at Carnegie Mellon University to see some of the things printed back in the day.

Porter Garnett who initiated the fine press program at CIT wrote out these 10 commandments printed in a small booklet printed at the New Laboratory Press, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute of Technology. Handset in Hunt Roman, a type designed by Hermann Zapf, Printed 18 June 1963.

. . .

DECALOGUE FOR CRAFTSMEN
by Porter Garnett of the Laboratory Press

1. Thou shalt not imitate.

2. Thou shalt not cater.

3. Thou shalt not seek effectiveness for its own sake

4. Thou shalt not seek novelty for its own sake.

5. Thou shalt not employ expedients.

6. Thou shalt not exploit thyself nor suffer thyself to be exploited by others.

7. Thou shalt not concern thyself with the opinions of any but the sensitive and the informed.

8. Thou shalt not give to anyone the thing he wants unless for thyself the thing that he wants is right.

9. Thou shalt not compromise with popular taste or with fashion nor with machinery nor with the desire of gain.

10. Thou shalt not be satisfied — ever.

Top 10 Lead Graffiti moments of 2015

These are the top 10 events relating to Lead Graffiti & letterpress that happened during 2015 in chronological order.

Not a single event, but we had 155 workshop participants this year, bringing our total to 1,184. New groups included Art Conservation at the University of Delaware, Arcadia University, and James Mason University (where we also did a talk).

. . . O N E : March & April

First 2 books of our story series, “Moments Carved in Paper,” were published. The Librarian Made Us Do It (Ray’s “moment of clarity” for letterpress) and eifleS! the original idea for the series with Ray’s 2 favorite stories about his parents that started us on the project.

. . . T W O : April

We participated in the Manhattan Book Fair through the Fine Press Book Association. We were hoping to do enough business to pay for the booth, the drive up, a nice hotel room, and an intimate Italian dinner. Dinner ended up being Dopo East. We did 4 times that well. It is great fun telling our stories to anyone that would stop for a moment and look. We will also be doing the fair in April 2016. We may try to do the same hotel and restaurant.

. . . T H R E E : May

Jill took two long-desired, leather binding workshops from Don Rash. She ended up with 3 nice books. Don was the bookbinder that did the 12 leather-covered versions of our Histories of Newark: 1758 - 2008 back in 2007. He did an amazing job embedding a coin minted in 1758 with the head of King George II (he signed the charter for the city) so that you could see both sides of the coin. Don does really amazing work German style.

. . . F O U R : June

We were invited to exhibit 35 Tour de Lead Graffiti posters from 2011 - 2014 at the AIGA / SPACE Gallery in Philadelphia. Met some great new friends and, from the opening, pulled 7 great new collaborators in for stages in our Tour de Lead Graffiti 2015.

. . . F I V E : July

Tour de Lead Graffiti 2015 - our 5th edition of our 23 posters in 23 days while following the Tour de France. We had 35 collaborators spread over 21 of the 23 days who shared the Tour, the letterpress, and the dessert experience with us. Ray’s total time over the 23 days was 383 hours 28 minutes. There were 92 runs averaging 4 per poster, but some of them were doozies. “Endurance letterpress” at its most fun.

. . . S I X : July & August

We were invited to be the inaugural exhibition at the new gallery of the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in their new space. The 2-month exhibition included 48 of our Tour de Lead Graffiti posters from 2011 thru 2014. Special thanks to Jim Moran, director of the museum, for the invitation. I’m pretty sure Lead Graffiti got some new followers from the event.

. . . S E V E N : August

After watching it flounder along, Ray added some much-needed energy into the VC/UD - Then & Now Facebook group for former students from the Graphic and Advertising Design Group and the Visual Communications Group, 1968 to the present. Not exactly letterpress, but an important part of Ray’s life, and we’ll sneak some letterpress in every so often.

. . . E I G H T : October

The national conference of the American Printing History Association, which both Ray & Jill attended, was focused on printing on the iron hand press. The conference injected some energy into our efforts to get our 2 iron hand presses finished. We bought one in 2007 and one in 2008 and had to have missing parts fabricated and things like bent bolts straightened or replaced. At the conference, we experienced a new letterpress workshop based on the work of H.N. Werkmen (shorter time frame, for a good number of people, and loads of colorful, typographic fun). We used the workshop for our first VC homecoming reunion in November, which we’ve been wanting to do for a while. Everyone’s kids loved it and so did the adults. This also provoked a nice iron hand press workshop run by printer Steve Heaver from Baltimore. Also, see entry T E N.

. . . N I N E : October

From Crooked Crow Press, Rockville, Maryland, and on extended loan, we received a full 36-line Gutenberg Bible page composed of a reissue of Gutenberg D-K metal type cast by Mike Anderson. Additionally, there are 2 job cases of the recast Gutenberg D-K type that we can use to set new pieces. We are hoping to start a new series of workshops on our iron hand presses with the type.

. . . T E N : December

In the process of renovating our Harrild & Sons Albion, bought from the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Massachusetts, we’ve discovered it has a significant provenance as part of the first fine press program at a major U.S. university, Carnegie Institute of Technology, back in the 1920s. One of a pair, it was purchased to print a significant 12-volume catalog for The Frick Collection.

Things still seem to be happening that are very exciting to us.