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]
RIT students clean, identify and print a wood typeface for the Cary Collections Adopt-a-Font Program (Nancy Bernardo).
Nancy Bernardo & Kelly Murdoch-Kitt: “Adopt-a-Font Condensed” ¶ Art Seto: “Bootstrapping a New Student-Initiated Letterpress Club: A Case Study” ¶ Rob Saunders: “Inspiring Young Designers with Letterpress Artifacts”
These three presentations focused on the theme of making impressions through teaching. In each case, the speakers presented examples of ways in which they have engaged students and designers directly with materials and processes related to printing history. The speakers illustrated APHA’s mission in action; it is an organization that “encourages the study of the history of printing and related arts and crafts.” [Read more]
Via the contact form:
I am researching history on a nineteenth century printer by the name- Ashbel Stoddard- from Hudson, NY. I have several of his books from the early 1800s. Any info would be helpful. Thank you.
At left: digitized paragraph of Secret pour ouvrir la porte de Paradis en mourant, 1623, selected and its characters segmented and classified as ascender/descender and x-height, using pattern recognition techniques. (Charles Bigelow and Richard Zanibbi)
Charles A. Bigelow & Richard Zanibbi: “Analysis Of Typographical Trends In European Printing 1470-1660: Comparison of Automated Methods To Palaeotypographical Approaches” ¶ Philip Weimerskirch: Some Little-Known Sources for the History of Early American Printing Presses”
Illustrated with numerous graphs, charts, and statistics, Chuck Bigelow presented current research on typographical trends he has been analyzing with Richard Zanibbi. Encompassing historiography, culturomics (the study of cultural trends through quantitative analysis of digitized texts), and the recent discipline of vision science. For their purposes, vision was equated with reading: layout, type size, and type style, the partners looked at 22,000 digitized books ranging in date from the fifteenth- to the seventeenth centuries. [Read more]