Papercasting

Joan MerrellMy friend Sharon and I always happen upon some sort of papercasting piece whenever we go to an exhibit together, and the Friends of Calligraphy exhibition the other day was no exception (I also wrote about another papercasting we saw here.) And I always think afterward that I should try to find a class, but never get around to it. This time the signage about the papercasting in the show mentioned the teacher Joan Merrell, who has a gallery of work on her website, including this one to the right. She’s teaching a five-day intensive class on calligraphic papercasting in Boston next summer that is seriously tempting!

To Calendar or Not…

By this time of year I should have finished my calendar design and be in the throes of printing… but this year I’m quite stuck for an idea I like. This quote from Oscar Wilde my friend Cathy sent me sums up my quandary…

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

The calendar to the left is by H N Werkman. I wrote about him here and you can see his calendars here.

Gutenburg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible was the first substantial book printed from movable type on a printing press and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has one of five complete copies in the United States. They’ve generously scanned many of the pages and put them online, as well as some background information about the bible and Gutenberg. Below is one of the pages and the online exhibition starts here.

Page from Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible, Volume 1, Old Testament, Exodus, Leviticus

Non Libri Sed Liberi

non libri sed liberti
Gerald Lange, of The Beieler Press, printed this broadside with an excerpt from Kenneth Grahame’s essay from 1898 (Grahame also wrote The Wind in the Willows). This particular paragraph is often referred to as the “Lament to a Bookbinder.” Lange used a digital version of Monotype Bell that he altered to work with letterpress printing. I suppose in keeping with the time that the essay was written, it’s printed on a paper called Somerset Velvet Newsprint Grey. The lament is below, you can read about Graham, or the entire essay is here

Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the most insidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is the bookbinder. Not in that he bindeth books — for the fair binding is the final crown and flower of painful achievement — but because he bindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, and the months to years, and still the binder bindeth not: and the heart grows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden binds her hair, each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn the harvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake and stream, and still the bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voice whispereth: “Arise, be a man, and slay him! Take him grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming, swearing, or about some act That hath no relish of salvation in it!” But when the deed is done, and the floor strewn with fragments of binder — still the books remain unbound. You have made all that horrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden over again. As a general rule, the man in the habit of murdering bookbinders, though he performs a distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and takes no personal advantage.

An Alphenhorn Blast of Post Gutenbergian Revalorization…

alphenhorn… is that the Kindle? Read Nicholson Baker’s take on the Kindle in this week’s New Yorker to find out. He’s a bit skeptical, to say the least. But “if you’re an author who makes his/her living from books, you have so many reasons to fear, love, despise, and/or at least be profoundly curious about Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.”
I pretty much agree with everything Baker says, especially his critique of the user interface of the device. I’m ultimately disappointed that so few books I want to read are Kindle-ready. I guess I just have to change my reading habits — turns out, according to Baker, “romance readers are major Kindlers” and he quotes a guy who says “The success of the ebook is being fueled by the romance and erotic romance market.”
[Image of an alphorn from here.]

But is it Letterpress?

lmachine.jpgThe popularity of scrapbooking has opened up a world of tools and papers that were hard-to-find and expensive just a few years ago. Now there are low-cost manual machines to apply glue (I have one myself — a laminator — that I use for my bookmaking). Similar rotary machines will die cut (mostly pre-made dies, but you can have your own made or there are models that are computer controlled). And now, coming to a craft store near you this fall, is L, “the Letterpress combo kit [that] contains everything you need to begin letterpress printing right away.” In the pictures below, you can see how it works…
But what exactly is “letterpress”? Is it only, as their website explains, “printing words or designs with ink while simultaneously debossing it into a thick, soft paper.” I suppose it is, although I stress in my Etsy listings that my printing work is all done on my vintage 1890s large cranky press. The Lifestyle Craft website doesn’t show an example of the impression you can get from their little machine, or what sort of designs and typefaces they will offer, or how to make and use your own. I’m also sure that registering two colors will be fraught with problems. I’m interested to see a demo in person!

Lifestyle Craft’s Letterpress