Esoteric themed devices of Erhardt Ratdolt, Ouroboros Press and Three Hands Press.
1:15-2:45 pm saturday, october 8
William Kiesel: Printers Devices in Esoteric Publishing ♦Robert Cagna: “Secret” Engraving Marks and Other Mysterious Printing on Postage Stamps ♦Pamela Barrie: Emblem & Mechanism: George Clymer’s Columbian Press as Neoclassical Hieroglyph
William Kiesel vividly brought his topic to life through several visual examples. He showed some devices with which many in the audience were familiar dating back to beginning of printing, such as the saddlebags of Fust and Schoeffer and the anchor and dolphin of Aldus Manutius. He discussed some of the early symbolism and common device ideas. Kiesel covered the meaning of several devices through examination and analysis, elaborating on those things that influenced names and symbols and going into some detail. Kiesel shifted the discussion to both the historical and contemporary examples of printer’s devices used in occult and esoteric publications. Kiesel drew the audience in by explaining how these symbols were chosen and their meanings related to the work produced by individual presses. Watermarks in esoteric and occult publishing were also briefly discussed along with the potential impact of new technologies and the relative ease and simplicity of publishing and what a device might disclose about the nature of the kinds of work they produce. Future plans for research and sources of more information were also presented. [Read more]
Michaela Rae Ryerson Baca: Blood Book: The Magic of Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia libris tres ♦Todd Samuelson: The Alchemy of Erasure: Book Waste as Evidence ♦Laura Forsberg: Magic & the Miniature Book
Michaela Rae Ryerson Baca, presented findings on her examination of marginalia in a copy of Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia Libris Tres (Occult Philosophy in Three Books), believed to have been published with all three texts combined for the first time in 1533. These texts covered the elemental world, physical and celestial objects, mathematics, and the religious and divine. [Read more]
Alchemists revealing secrets from the Book of Seven Seals, detail of watercolor in The Ripley Scroll, England, ca. 1700. (Getty Research Institute, 950053)
Carollee Campbell, proprietor of the Ninja Press, introduced the three plenary panelists from the Getty Research Institute. They discussed the exhibition of the Art of Alchemy, which APHA members would be fortunate enough to preview the following day. [Read more]
Both speakers in this session summoned science. But just a dram of detail is divulged now. Mr. Barnum’s talk (Mr. Cameron did not attend) will be posted in full on this website after all the conference events are summarized. Prof. Risseeuw’s investigations are ongoing, therefore the aim is to avoid mischaracterizing his conclusions. [Read more]
Scribe re-lettering a Torah scroll to keep it kosher. (Tom Kilpatrick)
9:30-11:00 am saturday, october 8
Myra Mossman: Sacred Scribes, Profane Publishers, Unfortunate Mystics ♣ Karen Wahl: Printing Developments in Malleus Malificarum “The Witches’ Hammer” ♣ Grendl Löfkvist: The Devil is in the Details: Conjuring the Spirit of the Book (The Challenges involved in printing a 21st Century Grimoire)
This panel featured three presentations that connect the gritty practicalities of the printer’s craft with the mystical effects and outcomes that printed books can enable or engender. [Read more]
I am considering a trip through Europe following the history of printing. My rough itinerary starts in Mainz, continues to Venice, then Amsterdam, and finally London and Oxford. As I say, this is a rough itinerary. If someone from APHA can suggest more specific places, libraries, bookstores, or museums of printing interest, please let me know or point me to the appropriate publication.
Mark Barbour introduces us to the International Printing Museum’s late-nineteenth-century “Grasshopper” newspaper press. (Jess Touchette)
friday, october 7
Working Tour at the International Printing Museum in Carson
Mark Barbour, Founding Curator and Executive Director of the International Printing Museum in Carson, California, led us on a three-hour tour of the museum’s exhibition space. The huge, high-ceilinged building is packed with an impressive array of working nineteenth- and twentieth-century presses and printing tools, yet houses only a portion of founder Ernest A. Lindner’s Collection of Antique Printing Machinery, as quite a few pieces remain in storage due to lack of space. [Read more]
Every person who registered for this year’s APHA conference “The Black Art & Printer’s Devils : The Magic, Mysticism, and Wonders of Printing History” undoubtedly shared a least one (or several) moments of thinking, “Well, what’s this going to be like?” when looking over the program. The speakers presented a rich menu of surprises and enticements. And leading that bill of surprises was the keynote speaker on Friday evening, October 7, the bibliophile, scholar and performer, Ricky Jay. [Read more]
Paul Shaw discusses the versal letters with uncial features behind him at the First Congregational Church in Old Pasadena. (Barbara Hauser)
9:00 am-1:00 pm sunday, october 9
Legacy of Letters Lettering Walk in Pasadena with Paul Shaw and a Visit to Archetype Press
Paul Shaw led fifteen conference attendees on a three-hour, two-mile walking tour of Pasadena, just northwest of San Marino where the Huntington is located. The tour focused on Old Pasadena, the city’s original commercial center. Much of its rich architectural heritage has been preserved thanks to strict city guidelines for renovation in this historic district. [Read more]
A microscopic organism and a camera obscura, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, No. 42, Monday, December 14, 1668. (Leslie Smith)
[King was unable to attend the conference; her presentation was not delivered]
Leslie Smith’s research of seventeenth-century oddities in print embarked from a desire to map thought and to understand both the process of seeing in private versus public, and how that seeing is represented from a historical perspective. To do this, she studied diagrams, drawings and plates from texts that described accounts of curious observation, like in Nathaniel Crouch’s (Richard or Robert Burton, pseud.) The Surprising Miracles of Nature and Wonder (1683). In one such plate, spectators are publicly observing an array of cosmic spectacles in the sky—blazing stars, light rays, and clouds. The method used to depict these spectacles informs contemporary viewers of the visual experience itself, as does the way in which the onlookers are shown huddled in groups, with their fingers pointed towards the sky, informs us of the historical experience of observation. [Read more]
