The American Printing History Association is pleased to announce a call for papers (pdf) for our 2016 conference at the Huntington Library, October 7-8. We are very excited about this year’s theme: “The Black Art & Printers’ Devils: The Magic, Mysticism, and Wonders of Printing History.” We hope that you will consider submitting a proposal for a presentation or demonstration. Proposals are due March 15. [Read more]
Fig. 1. River view of Hartford, Connecticut, ca. 1820–1840 (Courtesy of Graphic Arts Collections, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
My discovery of the letters patent for John Wells’s renowned lever printing press and the 200th anniversary of the innovative beginnings of the press have inspired the following: a short recollection of the life, work, and inventions of John I. Wells of Hartford, Connecticut. [Read more]
Illustrations from Mechanick Exercises of English (left) and Blaeu (right) style presses.
This is the first in a series of posts that will continue throughout the year.
Beginning in late January and continuing through the middle of December, a group of four students at the Rochester Institute of Technology will be designing and building a wooden common printing press to be installed in the Cary Graphic Arts Collection there. The team consists of myself, Seth Gottlieb, Ferris Nicolais and Randall Paulhamus, all Mechanical Engineering majors, and Veronica Hebbard, an Industrial and Systems Engineering major. [Read more]
I attended the International Antiquarian Book Faire in Pasadena CA today, and I saw your postcard advertisement for The Black Art and Printers’ Devils event. I am fascinated by the symbol on the card, would you be so kind as to tell me what it is and what you know of it?
Printing room at Dun Emer Press ca. 1904. (Courtesy Trinity College)
Kathleen Walkup: “Pulling the Devil by the Tail: Elizabeth Corbet Yeats’ Cuala Press” ¶ Richard Mathews: “Frederic Goudy and the American Hands-on Hand Press Tradition”
Kathy Walkup began by showing an iconic photograph in the history of printing. Taken in Ireland at the Dun Emer Press in 1903, it shows Elizabeth Corbet “Lolly” Yeats, dressed in a full-length smock, at work at an Albion hand press. Two other similarly dressed women share the print shop, one preparing ink and the other sitting at a table in the foreground, checking proofs. Walkup pointed out that while this image is often seen as an example of genteel ladies keeping themselves occupied with a “suitable” art, this interpretation is far from the truth. Elizabeth Yeats was no hobby printer. She and her siblings W.B., Jack, and Susan Mary “Lily” Yeats, were called upon to support themselves and their father, the Irish painter John Butler Yeats, who failed to provide for his family adequately with his portrait painting. [Read more]
The 1862 Hoe cylinder press at Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto. (Stephen Sword)
Stephen Sword: “Skills and Mechanization: The Transition from Hand Press to Cylinder” ¶ Jeff Pulaski: “After the Iron Press: The Grasshopper”
Technological change has no natural imperative, regardless of how logical such shifts might seem in hindsight. The time and place must provide a foothold, with securement facilitated rather than assured. Presentations by Stephen Sword and Jeff Pulaski conveyed a firm sense of the role of flesh-and-blood printers in the adoption of cylinder and country press designs in the nineteenth century. [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]
Letterpress holiday card tipped into J. Ben Lieberman’s 1963 book Printing as a Hobby. Lieberman was APHA’s founder and first president.
Position of the forme for the first pull, tympans and frisket omitted for clarity.
Richard Lawrence: “A New Wooden Press for Everyone to Try: The Dürer Press” ¶ Stan Nelson: “Printer’s Ink Balls: Their History and Use”
Alix Christie’s keynote lecture on her book Gutenberg’s Apprentice whet the appetite of conference attendees for clues about the mysteries of the master’s craft in its early years, and papers by Richard Lawrence and Stan Nelson did not disappoint. Their talks about the reconstruction of a historically accurate wooden press with wooden screw and the evolution of ink ball design offered superb details for those with a close interest in printing practices and experiential education. [Read more]
The Museum of Printing in Massachusetts introduces letterpress and other printing crafts to people of all ages while maintaining its primary mission of preserving the rich history of the graphic arts. (Frank Romano)
David Damico: “Printing and Interpreting at the Genesee Country Village Living History Museum on a 19th Century Washington Iron Handpress” ¶ Frank Romano: “Letterpress Workshops at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA”
Frank Romano began his session by showing a humorous video of the “Short History of Printing,” in which Romano himself has been green-screened into paintings and early engravings portraying craftsmen and printers at work—including a stiff and rather one-sided conversation with a “flat” Gutenberg. [Read more]