Archived entries for wood type
Take Note
Only two days left to take advantage of the Felt & Wire Finds promotional pricing on Smart & Wiley’s latest product, the colorful Take Note memo pad sets. Each set includes two wiro bound memo pads made of letterpress proof sheets from various S&W projects, a latex-free rubber band, and an imprinted pencil made of sustainable materials.
(un)touch(ed) and ±printing
Check out my post at the Vista Sans Wood Type Project to see how I got from the doodles above to the print below, and along the way developed a technique (plus-minus printing) for safely and effectively editioning masked wood type.
(un)touch(ed)
2012
3 color letterpress
17.25 × 24 inches
Detail showing the printed grain of the unshellacked Vista Sans, the hand-cut linoleum counterforms, and type-high brass rules.
Specimen Sunday
Woodtype: Selective Emphasis for Fine Typography by Hamilton, 1960, page 13. Download (right click on link) a high resolution image.
Worry Lines
This past Monday I finished some A9 showcards for an upcoming exhibit of drawings by my incredibly talented friend, Mary Toscano. I handset the type for the first run using 10 and 24 Cloister Light Face, cast by The Dale Guild.
I chose a warm brown, straight from the can, for the first color.
The type was set on a 50 pica line to make registering the second color, also set on a 50 pica line, faster and easier.
Few things rival the beauty of carefully spaced Roman capitals.
Due to the angles, placing the type high brass rules presented a challenge. I really love the creative problem solving required to letterpress print from metal and wood type and rules. Here’s my on-the-fly solution. I laid a thin sheet of paper over a laserprinted comp and traced the lines representing the brass rules. I placed the tracing paper on the press bed and used strong magnets to secure the brass rules directly on top of the traced lines. Voila!
Mary’s drawings have an anxious, compelling energy about them. And wavy rules seemed appropriate for a show titled Worry Lines.
Mixing the “salmon” pink for the final run required combining four inks; opaque white, yellow, transparent tint base, and warm red. I was also relying on the Cream Rives BFK to warm up the final color.
Despite hours (no exaggeration) of cleaning the 14 and 18 point Franklin Gothic I set by hand for the final run, I could not get consistently clean prints. The transparent pink kept getting muddy. To avoid ruining the entire edition, I improvised and made a photopolymer plate.
The finished prints. I printed the A9 cards two-up on 8.5 x 11 inch sheets then cut the stack in half on the guillotine. I wanted the design to allude to the Into the White showcards I did last year for Mary and Cara Despain.
12 line Trenton
Called Trenton by Morgans & Wilcox and Hamilton (also No. 168), this modified/modulated Gothic, with its miniscule, Runic-like serifs made its first appearance as No. 157 in Wm. H. Page’s 1888 Specimens of Machine Cut Wood Type! David Shields corrected Rob Roy Kelly’s identification of Hamilton as the originator.
This scan is from a facsimile edition, printed by Pioneer Press of W. Va., Inc. The original is in the collection of Dave Peat.
&specname[]=Courier&specname[]=No%20514&specname[]=Teniers&specname[]=Trenton&specname[]=No%20506&specname[]=No%20500&specname[]=No%20500&specname[]=Corinthian%20No%202&top=lineal&folder=B_3_3B&text=RRK_B_3_3B_020.rtf&img=B_3_3B_Spec_020.jpg&count=20&countmax=23){kind=link}
Wood Type Research
Photo, David Shields
Shields analyzes planing patterns on the feet of wood type blocks to determine provenance
Over at Wood Type Research, David Shields, design curator of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection, has quietly been posting the most important contemporary academic research of the history and manufacture of wood type. Shields is in the process of migrating content from his woodtyperesearch.tumblr.com. On top of his generosity to the design, type, and letterpress communities he’s a damned nice fellow.
30/33 line Futura Bold
Accommodating the descending tail requires three additional picas. All other capitals in this font are 30 picas.
8 line MWT Line Ornament No. 3
Get your credit cards ready folks. These beautiful, outstandingly crafted “Line Ornaments,” based on Wm. H. Page’s No. 404 Space Ornament, are coming soon to the Moore Wood Type Shop.