The book I’m presently reading keeps bringing me up short, struck by the way its author sees books and printing. Here’s one bravura passage from poet, typographer & book designer Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style:
From the middle of the fifteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, most roman letters were printed by a technique rooted in sculpture. In this process, each letter is carved at actual size on the end of a steel punch. The punch is then struck into a matrix of softer metal, the matrix is fitted into a mold, and three-dimensional metal type is cast from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. The cast letters are locked in a frame and placed in a printing press, where they are inked. Their image is then imprinted > into > the paper, producing a tactile and visual image. The color and sheen of the ink join with the smooth texture of crushed paper, recessed into the whiter fibres surrounding the letters and lines. A book produced by this means is a folding inscription, a flexible sculpture in low relief. The black light of the text > shines out from within > a well-printed leterpress page.
He glides smoothly from the concrete–even technical–details of printing to the transcendant beauty of books as art.
Having had the distinct privilege of operating an old press of the type that used hand set type, i can attest to the validity of his description. There is something about the investment of time, care, expertise, artistry and craftsmanship in such a product that is very far distant from the loads of mass-produced paperback collections of paper that fill the bookstore shelves these days. Each backwards letter handled, placed, kerned, set, inked, and then cranked into the pressing of the ink into (yes, into, not onto) the paper. So much more of an accomplishment and, no matter how plain the wording, the printed page is indeed a work of art. The pictures were engraved to, set in relief, reversed from their intended position, all the white parts cut away to produce a relief that would carry he ink into the paper, impressing it - indeed, the print was called an ‘impression’… I miss that.
When we moved to California in 1946 and I enrolled as a 7th grader in the public school system all the boys had to take one quarter of print shop, along with a quarter of woodshop and I believe (memory slipping a bit here) both music and art. I learned to set type and all. It was a great experience, as were the other classes. The girls did something similar.
