Printing on the Iron Handpress
The APHA National Conference
October 22 – 24
Rochester Institute of Technology

Photos and random goings-ons at the National Conference engtitled “Printing on the Iron Handpress.” Generally from the view and environment of Ray Nichols. I’ll be reworking the text and perhaps adding a few photos in the near future.

Above: On the opening day a variety of workshops were held for small groups. I attended two of them. The first was at Virgin Wood Type where each of us got to go through the process a couple of time making wood type dingbat. Here you see owner Geri McCormick showing one of the participants how to work the pantagraph.

Above: One of the participants taking a movie of the process to show to his letterpress classes when he gets back home.

Above: After we each got to do a couple pieces we would stamp them to show their place of origin.

Above: The second workshop I attended was printing based on the work of H.N. Werkman. You first handroll a piece of wood type and then position it on top of your sheet (shown above). Then you run it through the press to push the ink onto the paper. This allows you to position each piece of type (which can be done singly or in groups) with fairly accurate positioning without using any lockup. It was great fun.

At Lead Graffiti we adapted the workshop and have run it several times. It turns out to be a great letterpress-related workshop that can be run in a couple of hours and is great with younger children (8-years old and up).

Here is an image of two of the final prints from the workshop. We were working in 3 groups of 3 and were working on two Vandercooks and a small Albion.

Above: Talk on the origins of the Roycroft movement. I was surprised how little I knew about Elbert Hubbard and Roycroft (which was the name of a typeface).

Above: The Vignelli Center, devoted to the work of Massimo and Lella Vignelli, was filled with work that had inspired me my whole design career. This project for Bloomingdales had always stood out to me. By simply making the boxes bright primary and secondary colors and closing them with a wide rubber band with Bloomingdales printed on it essentially cut the other major stores in New York from using color that holiday season. I remember Saks Fifth Avenue did all of their boxes in silver that year.

Above: Jill standing with the iconic New York subway map designed by Massimo Vignelli. This was really a design changer.

Above: — Talking about “Lew Ney,” a bohemian printer in Greenwich Village. In her talk she mentioned that much of his work was produced using a typeface called Inkunabula (see image below). I had never heard of it. Then at the Chesapeake Chapter Wayzgoose, Chris Manson used it on the bottom of the keepsake, explaining the D-K type of Gutenberg.

Above: As part of the conference announced the Frederic W. Goudy Award given out each year by RIT. This year’s recipient was Jerry Kelly. Also see the photo below.

Above: — who gave a talk on building a wooden common press, was showing me a keepsake they had printed. His right hand is pointing to the Kelmscott watermark.

Above: Proving the randomness, Jill Cypher and I took a fairly empty Friday morning as an opportunity to run over to Niagara Falls. Yep, there is a lot of water going over it.

Above:  A lot of attention was paid by us in the room housing the newly reconstructed Kelmscott-Goudy press. Everyone got to print a keepsake on it. Here is Jill taking her turn. This is the press used in printing the Kelmscott Chaucer  which was also owned by Frederic Goudy. It was thrilling to feel connected to the past as you pulled it. The press has a fairly massive strap of 1/4″ steel running completely around the main vertical supports to accommodate the extra stress required to print the Chaucer.

Above: Charging the roller to ink up Jill’s keepsake print.

Below are 5 photos taken around the room housing the Kelmscott-Goudy press.

Above: A massive Columbian, refurbished to the max.

Above: If you are going to give the serial number you might as well do it with a grand gesture.

Above: At Lead Graffiti we are getting an Albion up and running. It was nice to see oe and get some idea as to how it should look when we get ours all together.

Above: another Albion showing the lever system need to generate the force require for printing on a platen press.

Above: Jill wrote the review for printing on John De Pol’s iron handpress.

Above: I had bought the book Gutenberg’s Apprentice to take to the conference to read during my spare time. It was surprising to find that the author, Alix Christie, was giving one of the main talks and signing books. So, I took the opportunity to buy it in hardback and get it inscribed to Lead Graffiti.

Above: Alix during her talk reading a selection from Gutenberg’s Apprentice.

Above: A shot of about 2/3rds of the room at the sold-out conference during Alex’s talk. Interesting that on the keepsake from our Wayzgoose was a modern casting of the same time she was showing above.

Above: Stan Nelson gave a talk on the history and production of ink balls that I was so engrossed in I forgot to take photos. I thought his talk was one of the top talks I witnessed at the conference. These ink balls were in the Kelmscott-Goudy press room. They were seriously nice ones.

A few other nice shots around the Kelmscott-Goudy to end things off.

Above: Amelia Hugill-Fontanel, our host for the conference shown through the Columbian.

Above: Rolling the ink on the keepsake.

Above: Amelia Hugill-Fontanel lifting the frisket to add a new sheet for printing.

Above: Taking a close look at how things work on the Kelmscott-Goudy.