Fine Press Book Association

The fine folks at The League of Moveable Type: A Collection of Open Source Fonts are “done with the tired old fontstacks of yesteryear. Enough with the limitations of the web, we won’t have it. It’s time to raise our standards. Here, you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.” While there aren’t tons of options yet, what is there is quite good. Check out, for example, the Sorts Mill Goudy above. If you are a typeface designer interested in making your high-quality work available under the Open Font License, think about joining the League of Moveable Type.

(Thanks to Green Chair Press for bringing this to my attention)

– John Russell

The American Printing History Association welcomes proposals for its 2010 annual conference,

Learning to Print, Teaching to Print: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC
October 1 to 17, 2010

Proposals due April 1, 2010

The conference will be held October 15–17, 2010, at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. The main proceedings will take place on Saturday, October 16. Full details will be available at the Web site of the American Printing History Association, www.printinghistory.org.

Since the time of Gutenberg, the arts and techniques of printing have been passed down though a variety of means. This conference will explore the ways practitioners learn to design, print, illustrate, bind, and make books and other printed matter–and how they are taught. The individual mentor or master, the role of guilds, apprenticeships, commercial training, professional and amateur organizations, formal academic programs, and the self-taught are among our interests. Presentations might also deal with the transfer of knowledge through print: using the work of other printers as models; type specimens; printers’ manuals; how- to books; instructive periodicals; and the building of personal, corporate, and institutional libraries about the book arts. In addition, we seek talks that consider the transfer–by gift, purchase, or mere acquisition–of type, presses, and other tools from one printer to another. The focus will be both historical, examining the way in which methods and styles are consciously continued, and contemporary, looking at how the arts and crafts of the book are learned now, in an era in which new technologies and aesthetics coexist with tradition. Particular attention will be paid to the important and increasing role of letterpress and book arts programs at art schools, colleges, and universities. The conference program will be as varied as the ways there are of teaching and learning printing. Along with keynote addresses by a historian and a practitioner, we envision scholarly papers, panel discussions, pedagogical and hands- on workshops, demonstrations, specially arranged tours, and an exhibition. With its new M.A. program combining book history and book arts, the Corcoran, long one of Washington’s premier museums and art schools, is the ideal venue for a conference on the theme of learning and teaching.

Submission
Electronic (preferred) or hard copy submissions will be accepted. Send e-mailed proposals as attachments in Word or pdf to apha2010conference@gmail.com. Mail hard-copy proposals to:

Casey Smith
Corcoran College of Art + Design
500 Seventeenth Street NW
Washington, DC 20005

Guidelines
We solicit proposals: of 20 minutes in length
– papers
– workshops
– demonstrations
of 50 minutes in length
– panel discussions with three or more participants.

APHA membership must be current at the time of registration for all presenters.

Apart from its annual conference, APHA supports research and scholarship through its journal Printing History and other publications, an annual Lieberman Lecture named after a founder of the association, an oral history project, and a fellowship program. The association, founded in 1974, encourages the preservation of printing artifacts and source materials for printing history.

— Paul Razzell

Can you really beat the drama of the world’s top two hockey teams battling for Olympic gold? Can you remember where you were when the US beat Russia at Lake Placid, NY in 1980? (If you’ll recall, the Russian men’s hockey team had won gold at every winter Olympics since 1960.) That game was one of the most important in the history of the sport and is the subject of Gold, a stunning limited-edition book from Legacy Editions.

Introduction by Al Michaels and an afterword by President Jimmy Carter. Legacy Editions. 13 × 14 inches. 32 pages. Composed in 12/18 Univers Light with Walbaum. Printed at Studley Press and Kat Ran Press. Bound by Kylin Lee. Learn more here.

— Paul Razzell

It was in 1950, on Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12, that Lewis “Lewie” Mitchell started working at Mackenzie and Harris. Sixty years later he remains employed with M & H Type as a master casterman. On the evening of February 10, 2010, Lewie was guest of honor at a reception celebrating sixty years of service, wearing a new set of coveralls and freshly shined shoes.

The party attendees gathered in the pressroom for an evening filled with food, drinks, and conversation. Hot dogs warmed in a coffee urn . . .

. . . a well-stocked self-service bar, and many stories and acquaintances from the past and present made up the evening.

The guests included M & H customers, co-workers, and friends from the San Francisco Bay Area letterpress printing community.

In all, there were probably close to one hundred people who came to congratulate, reminisce, and see Lewie. A short program allowed Andrew Hoyem to point out the gift given by the staff to Lewie, a custom pair of coveralls screen printed with the M & H logo, and sixty years of service.

Then the floor was open to anyone who wanted to say a few words about Lewie. Among them: Othmar Peters, former owner of Mackenzie & Harris; Patrick Reagh, local letterpress printer; Sarah Songer, Arion Press bookbinder; and Monroe Postman, engineer of the Monomac computer-to-caster interface. The program concluded with an invitation for the guests to mingle in the typefoundry or bookbindery. More stories and conversation filled the rooms until the end.

Ten more years doesn’t seem out of the question; Lewie stillworks faster than the rest of us.

— Kenny Howard, M & H Type

FPBA member Peter Koch will be in Vancouver as one of the judges of the Alcuin Society 2009 Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada competition, taking place on March 27th, 2010. In conjunction with the awards, Peter will present two lectures. The first will be  “Printing in the Shadow of Aldus,” an illustrated talk about Watermark, Joseph Brodsky’s lyrical essay about Venice, with photographs by Robert Morgan.

The book is a series of essays in memoir form by the poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. Peter is an artist, printer, writer, and publisher of fine editions and artist books, and the president of the Codex Foundation. Mr. Koch will be introduced by Robert Bringhurst.

Mr. Koch will show slides and talk about the grand adventure of printing Watermark in Venice in collaboration with an international cast of distinguished printers, artists, and artisans.

For those who can’t make it to Vancouver for this talk, you can read the fascinating story about the making of Watermark in Parenthesis 15 or on this website.

His second lecture will be ”Fine Printing and the Imagination.” So book your calendars now. Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Top: Peter Koch and Susan Filter recount their adventure publishing Joseph Brodsky’sWatermark in Parenthesis 15. Image copyright Peter Koch.

Middle: Joseph Brodsky and Robert Morgan in Venice.

Below: Barging presses down the Grand Canal in preparation for printing Watermark. Image copyright Sebastian Hartz.

— Paul Razzell

From A Journey Round My Skull, this Edward Bawden valentine:

See a higher resolution image over here. Now go read A Journey Round My Skull’s richly illustrated blog about book illustration.

— Paul Razzell

— Paul Razzell

The Guild of Book Workers Journal is now accepting papers, articles, essays and proposals for photo galleries for our 2010 issue. Members and nonmembers are welcome to submit. We welcome submissions addressing any of the fields represented by the Guild’s membership, including but not limited to:

• Bookbinding (Descriptions of techniques and how-to articles; discussions of particular structures, both old and new)
• Conservation (treatment techniques, what does or does not work, noteworthy programs, history)
• Artist’s Books (innovative structures, examinations of an artist’s body of work)
• Book art techniques (calligraphy, marbling, paper-making, printing)
• History (little-known events, figures, or movements; new findings about a period or particular development in the history of the book and book arts)
• Profiles (interviews with book artists, practitioners, conservators, collectors)
• Print “exhibitions” presenting selections from a collection, an exhibition, or an individual’s body of work (if accompanied by a profile of that individual).

In its new format, all submissions to the Journal will be peer-reviewed. Authors of accepted pieces will be expected to format their manuscript and image files according to our style guidelines, available upon request or online at http://www.guildofbookworkers.org/resources/journal/journal.php.

Send queries and electronic submissions (.rtf, .doc or .pdf formats with low-resolution placeholder image files) tojournal@guildofbookworkers.org

— Paul Razzell

Dear letterpress printers & FPBA colleagues,

I am writing on behalf of the North American chapter of the Fine Press Book Association to invite you to contribute an ephemeral piece to the special copies of Parenthesis 19, which will go to press this summer. The special copies are hard bound, and slipcased with a portfolio which includes pieces of ephemera from various presses and printers. We are asking this as a donation of time and materials, with the object of having your work shown to an audience who might otherwise not encounter it.

The ephemera can take almost any form you wish, but there are restrictions as to size. The finished piece should measure no more than 8 1/2 by 11 inches [215 by 275mm], although of course it may be a larger sheet folded down to that size. We will need 114 copies of whatever piece you print for the deluxe membership editions and for a bundle exchange amongst contributors. Please note this is a portfolio exchange for contributors — you will not receive the bound edition.

For this issue we would especially like to receive submissions from California printers and presses—but that does not preclude anyone else from participating.

So go ahead, throw some ink around, stretch your typographic legs! Color is not essential but is always welcome, as are illustrated pieces. This is your opportunity to print that little broadsheet, pamphlet, poem card, or whatever else you have had in the typographic corner of your mind for months or years. We only ask that you do not simply send a prospectus for a book you are printing, or which you have printed. This is not a forum for direct advertising, but an opportunity to show your style and to have some fun. In the process, you will greatly help Parenthesis and the Fine Press Book Association.

Some past contributors of printed ephemera to the North American Deluxe Edition include:

Arion Press, Aliquando Press, Cotton Socks Press, Barbarian Press, Gehenna Press, Full Moon Press, Incline Press, Leopard Studio Editions, Lock’s Press, Loveletter Press, Midnight Paper Sales, (m)Other Tongue Press, Passim Editions, Red Howler Press, Robin Price, Sherwin Beach Press, Walking Bird Press, Warwick Press, Whittington Press, and Yellow Barn Press, to name but a few.

If you are not a member of the FPBA already, that need not preclude your taking part, but please consider joining. The association is the only organization that is furthering the work of fine press printing and the book arts in both North America and the UK, and Parenthesis, which appears twice a year, is the only forum in which books from presses such as yours are reviewed and advertised. To join the FPBA, go to: http://www.fpba.com/join/sign-up.html.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. If you wish to contribute something, please contact me (Mark McMurray) by e-mail to confirm. My address is mcm@stlawu.edu

2. Your contribution should be sent NO LATER THAN June 15, 2010. Please send your work to:

Mark McMurray

Caliban Press

14 Jay Street

Canton, NY 13617 USA

3. Remember that the overall size of the finished piece must be 8 1/2 by 11 inches or less.

4. Please email me a short blurb about yourself and your submission, as we will include a cover sheet in the portfolio that will give some details about you.

We thank you very much for your consideration, and we hope you will be joining us in this project.

With all best bibliographic wishes,

Mark McMurray

Deluxe Ephemera Coordinator

The American Printing History Association has announced the date and topic of their 35th Annual Conference, “Learning To Print, Teaching to Print.” It will be held in Washington, DC, October 15th–17th, 2010, at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Download the Call for Proposals here. (It’s a PDF.)

–Bob McCamant