Mortimer and Warde posed in front of the plaque bearing Warde’s text, which still greets visitors in the lobby of the Government Publishing Office in Washington, DC. (GPO)

Some time ago, I stumbled across a photo on the Internet of Beatrice Warde, the famed typographic publicist and writer, posed in front of the “This is a Printing Office” plaque in the lobby of the Government Publishing Office in Washington, DC. She is standing with GPO’s longtime director of typography, Frank H. Mortimer. The photo caught my attention for a couple of reasons, and sent me off down a couple of interesting paths.  [Read more]

The completion of GPO Building 3 (at right) in 1940 brought the total floor space of the GPO facility in Washington, DC to 33 acres.

The United States Government Printing Office (now known as the Government Publishing Office) was called the “Largest Print Shop in the World” for many decades beginning around the turn of the twentieth century. Everything about the operation at that time and through the 1970s seems, especially in our age of miniaturization, just huge. The plant, affectionately called “The Big Red Buildings,” eventually expanded to four structures on North Capitol Street amounting to 33 acres of floor space. The annual production of documents was nothing short of vast, reaching well into the billions of copies annually by 1940, when 5600 people worked there. At its peak, in the 1970s, our employee roll reached over 8000. [Read more]

R. Hoe & Co No. 5703 at the Center for Book Arts with its new tympan and frisket. The HVAC duct doubles as the frisket stop.

Richard Minsky: “Restoring and Adjusting Two Iron Handpresses” ¶ Amelia Fontanel: “One Press to Rule Them All: The Kelmscott/Goudy Legacy at the RIT Cary Collection” 

3 pm saturday, october 24 ⋅ track 2

After two solid days of all things hand press (and beyond), it would have been hard to imagine a more a propos final session than Richard Minsky and Amelia Fontanel’s talks on the restoration of three iron hand presses. [Read more]