Printingprinting History history news 24 News 1 The Newsletter of the National Printing Heritage Trust, Printing Historical Society and Friends of St Bride Library Number 24 Autumn 2009
St Bride News
The St Bride Foundation has a new Director in Glyn Farrow. Glyn has been involved with the voluntary and charitable sectors since the early 1990s, and formerly worked for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, as Chief Executive of Children Law UK and as an independent consultant. The generous donation by Elizabeth Klaiber reported in the previous issue of PHN has already had an impact at St Bride. The first batch of rolling shelving has arrived at the Library and been installed, and is now being filled.
Catholic Record Society grant
Dr John Hinks, Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, has been awarded a grant of £1,000 by the Catholic Record Society to support his research on the distribution of Catholic books in Jacobean England. The research, which will be carried out during the academic year 2009/2010, will investigate two recorded cases of recusant pedlars apprehended in Leicester in 1604 and 1616, and will attempt to find evidence of similar activity elsewhere, especially in the Midlands. If you know of any similar cases, or potential sources, please contact John at [email protected]. Page from a Stevens, Shanks leaflet designed by Desmond Jeffery
EVENTS done with hand-set type. Unlike Fros- personal views of Desmond and his haug, for whom letterpress was a matrix work, to be followed by a discussion St Bride exhibitions and lectures upon which to develop a design pro- with other speakers. gramme, for Desmond the practice was Late letterpress: the work of Desmond the programme. He equipped himself Jeffery. Exhibition held Monday 26 with an Adana, an Albion and a collec- Justin Howes Memorial Lecture: October to Friday 13 November. tion of foundry types, most of them advance notice Lecture 27 October. As a direct and imported, and in 1956 took over a job- elegant means of putting words on bing letterpress workshop in Maryle- The 2010 Justin Howes Memorial paper, letterpress remained vigorous bone, where he installed a Heidelberg Lecture will be given on Tuesday 23 until the end of its useful life about platen. Customers ranged from the February by Claire Bolton, proprietor forty years ago. In 1950 the power of Stevens, Shanks foundry to Mayfair of the Alembic Press and recent PhD this seemingly-direct route from original galleries, the Goldsmiths’ Company to graduate from Reading University. The text to printed sheet caught the imagin- the Partisan coffee house. This is the title and subject of her talk will be ation of a young returning serviceman, first public exhibition of his work. On announced shortly, and will relate to Desmond Jeffery. He saw in the work 27 October, Ian McLaren, James her studies of the practicalities of of Anthony Froshaug what could be Mosley and Paul Stiff will contribute printing in the fifteenth century. 2 printing history news 24
Designer Bookbinders things out. Research, content, design Literary manuscript master classes lecture series and execution – how and why we make (held in the Seminar Room, New the things we do. Bodleian Library, at 2:15 p.m.) The following events will be held at the Monday 19 October. Anthony Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, The trade in bindings, lecture by Edward Thwaite on Philip Larkin wc Bayntun-Coward, Tuesday 2 February, London 1. Admission is £2.50 for Monday 26 October. Katherine 6:30 p.m. Bayntun-Coward will con- students, £5.00 for members and £7.00 Duncan-Jones on Shakespeare for non-members. Season tickets are sider both trade binderies (past, present also available for four Saturday lectures and future) and the fluctuating fortunes Monday 2 November. Michael at £9.00 for students, £18.00 for mem- of bindings. Suarez on Gerard Manley bers and £26.00 for non-members. The Hopkins nearest tube stations are Holborn and A bookbinder’s approach to book Russell Square. The organizers, Rachel arts, lecture by Eri Funazaki, Tuesday Italian scribal culture workshop, Friday Ward-Sale and Julia Dummett, welcome 2 March, 6:30 p.m. Eri will describe 30 October. Run in conjunction with ideas for future lectures or for improve- how she incorporates design-binding Birkbeck College. For further details ments to the format of the series. Please techniques into the book arts and and booking please see the website at telephone 01273 486718 or e-mail explains her involvement in making bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/ and follow the [email protected]. artists’ books. link to Birkbeck’s pages. The book as a work of art, lecture by Binding to my feelings, lecture by Paul The bookbinding competition exhib- Peter Koch, Friday 6 November (held Delrue, Tuesday 6 October, 6:30 p.m. ition will run at the John Rylands in the Seminar Room, New Bodleian Subtitled ‘A celebration of fifty years of Library, Deansgate, Manchester from Library, time to be announced). Koch bookbinding’, Paul’s talk will include a Saturday 5 December to Sunday 31 will talk about his work as a letterpress description of two of his own innova- January 2010. Opening hours: Monday printer and teacher, and the CODEX tive processes, ‘lacunose’ and Tudor 12:00–5:00, Tuesday–Saturday 10:00– foundation at Berkeley, California. style, and much else. 5:00 and Sunday 12:00–5:00. Closed between 25 December and 3 January Taking sides: the printed broadside Shanty Bay Press and the pochoir tech- 2010. 1450–1830, one-day symposium, Sat- nique, lecture by Walter Bachinski, urday 14 November (held at Merton Monday 9 November, 6:30 p.m. College, Oxford). Printed for display Walter will describe the origins and Fine Press Book Fair purposes (typically on one side of a rationale of the Shanty Bay Press, single sheet), the broadside arguably which is devoted to publishing livres The 2009 Fine Press Book Fair will be addressed a wider audience than any d’artistes, followed by a detailed ex- held again at Oxford Brookes Univer- other publication of the hand-press planation of the pochoir technique. sity, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, on Saturday 7 (11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) and Sunday period. Broadsides were advertise- ments, religious indulgences, political The legacy of calligrapher Edward 8 November (10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). addresses, civic discourses, aids to Johnston, lecture by Gerald Fleuss, Some eighty fine and private presses, pedagogy, ballads and other forms of Saturday 9 January, 10:30 a.m. Gerald fifteen specialist booksellers, ten trade- entertainment. This symposium will talks about the work of the Edward suppliers and a range of societies will explore how the broadside demarcated Johnston Foundation in maintaining by exhibiting. There will also be a or connected both public and private the link with Johnston’s work and the programme of lectures on the Sunday. worlds and popular and learned significance of his legacy in the digital Stalls will be held by the Friends of St cultures. Conference organizers: Giles age. Bride and the National Printing Heri- tage Trust. Admission is by catalogue Bergel (Merton College) and Alexandra Franklin (Centre for the Study of the Extreme bookbinding again, lecture (price £5.00), valid for both days. For Book, Bodleian Library). Further by Lester Capon, Saturday 9 January, further details see www.fpba.com. details are on the Centre’s web-pages. 12:00 noon. Lester will tell of his second voyage to Ethiopia, partly to repair vellum fans and, as in 2006, to Bodleian Centre for the Study of work on the preservation of the sixth- the Book Bath Columbian century Gospels at the monastery of Richard Lawrence Abuna Garima. The Centre runs regular lectures, semi- nars, conferences, visits and events in The Columbian press that once occu- The Peter Waters I knew, lecture by Oxford on subjects relating to book pied the foyer at the Bath Press and George Kirkpatrick, Saturday 9 Jan- and manuscript studies. Events are now graces the entrance to Bath Uni- uary, 2:00 p.m. Kirkpatrick reminisces open to all, but booking is advised versity Library is printing once again. on his mentor and inspiration, one of (and essential for conferences and It may well be one of those that Isaac the great binders of the twentieth symposia) as places are limited. For Pitman used to start the Pitman Press century. booking and further details see the (later Bath Press). A little adjustment of website at bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/ or the way the platen hung, and it worked ‘Everything in the world exists to end contact Dr Alexandra Franklin at a treat. The Librarian is open to sug- up in a book’, lecture by Sue Doggett, [email protected]. The gestions for demonstrating its use to a Saturday 9 January, 3:30 p.m. An illus- current programme includes the wider audience. If you have any, please trated talk on the problem of leaving following: e-mail [email protected]. printing history news 24 3
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typographers in 1950
This photograph appeared in a special issue of Monotype recorder called ‘Typographic transformations’ (vol. 39, no. 4, Summer 1952). The caption beneath it is probably Beatrice Warde’s: ‘Nearly all of the leading typographic designers of Great Britain attended the opening of the exhibition, as well as a number of younger designers of great promise.’ That exhibition was ‘Typographic restyling’, held in February 1950 at Monotype House. Can you identify any of these typographers? If so, please contact Paul Stiff at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading, P. O. Box 239, Reading rg6 6au. E-mail [email protected]. It is hoped to reprint the photograph, with a healthy list of the sitters, in a future issue of Printing History News.
Amalgamated Press Amalgamated Press, Sun Printers to achieve a sort of tint laying register. I and Tiger Tim believe the Ordnance Survey had some The following letter and short essay Julius Stafford Baker (IV) uses for this system. All this was done were sent in response to the third part with no reference to the original line of Peter Milham’s account of his father, In the 1950s the Amalgamated Press artist (responsible for the black plate Donald’s, printing career in PHN 23. (known to one and all as the ‘AP’) image). The Ben Day tint layer was of operated a long-forgotten process course a union card holder, and not called ‘Ben Day tint laying’ for the any old union, but the most militant of Letter to the Editor comics Chicks own, Rainbow, Playbox all – SLADE. The gang of artists on and others. The artists provided same- the other hand were still living in the Dear Mr Nash size pen and indian ink line drawings in Edwardian era. They were ‘outside black and white, drawn on ‘Joynsons contributors’, and had no salary as such, I was interested in the piece about Pasteless Ivory Board’. At the London were not AP employees, and were paid Amalgamated News. I felt that one bit works a negative was made and printed only by the delivered drawing. The front was omitted. When IPC Media was down onto zinc; patches of dot tints page of Rainbow in the 1950s paid formed from the aquisitions made by were added by hand in acid-resistant seven guineas, and on the back of the the Daily Mirror Group, the chairman ink to make four-colour sets of line cheque was a printed stipulation that and architect behind it all was Cecil H. blocks. The tint-laying craftsmen were copyright was transferred to the AP. King. He was the nephew of Lords so skilled that from a dot in the blue Regarding Sun Printers, at one inter- Northcliffe and Rothermere. As Amal- plate and a dot of yellow a sort of mediate stage in the development of gamated Press had been owned by his greyish-green was obtained. Subse- photo-gravure, Sun had a neat way of uncles, he wanted to include it in his quent stereotyping produced curved providing images of text for printing company. I feel that this snippet should plates for rotary printing, with the down onto the cylinders. The typeset- have been included, although I do colour register problems you might ting, when complete, imposed and understand that space is a premium. expect. Those tints could also be laid corrected, was locked in a chase, then on the negative films and sometimes sprayed all over with an ultra fine form Yours truly, were. A range of tint patterns and dot of ‘black-lead’. When dry, this layer strengths were available, in the form of was very lightly polished to reveal just William Gore (one of Cecil King’s hard gelatine sheets with the patterns in the tops of the letters, showing silvery grandchildren) relief. This relief image was hand inked against a black background. This forme, and pressed down from the back. There locked in a chase, when photographed was a special hinged holder for the films onto sheet film in a gallery camera, 4 printing history news 24
produced a remarkably sharp image, Robert Louis Stevenson, one of many Jones, Stephen; Last, Joseph William; Leno, sharper than any film produced from a famous names in the queue, often John Bedford; Nichols family; Philp, Robert printed proof; and sharpness was what writing for the AP under pen names. Kemp; Spottiswoode, William; Taylor, they were after. I believe this was used Richard; Thom, Alexander; Timperly, Charles Henry; Waterlow, Sidney Hedley; in the production of their long-run Watson, James; Way, Thomas / T. R.) women’s magazine jobs. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Cen- The front page of Rainbow, featured tury Journalism in Great Britain ‘Tiger Tim and the Bruin Boys’. It start- and Ireland: call for Associate SMALL AD ed as a colour supplement to The world Editor for printers and printing and his wife magazine in 1890 or so. Type cabinet etc. wanted. I am looking for a double-height type cabinet (to The publishers were James Henderson A new Dictionary of nineteenth-century hold around 40 cases), with openings and Sons of Red Lion Court, Fleet Street journalism is intent on augmenting its of 1.75 or 2 inches (40 or 50 mm), to (exactly opposite Yendall’s London inclusion of regular printers of news- accommodate my existing cases. I am office). At that time they published The papers or periodicals during this period. also seeking some spacing bins or garland with ‘Hooligan’ and his antics The DNCJ was published in January drawers and an imposing stone on a on the front cover and Funny folks. By in print (by Academia Press, Ghent, stand, around 2 × 3 feet (600 × 900 1903 they were producing the Weekly and the British Library) and on-line (by mm) in size, or larger. I am happy to budget, Scraps, Snap shots, Nuggets, ProQuest). Its editors are Laurel Brake travel to collect, and to pay the going Comic life and Wild West library, all in (Birkbeck College) and Marysa Demoor rate for good furniture; or to swap for direct competition with very similar AP (University of Ghent). DNCJ consists any of the following: a triple galley titles. By 1912 Henderson’s had Lot-o- of a single alphabetical sequence of rack; a single galley rack; a double- fun, Nugget library, The Gibson post- over 1,600 entries on journalists, jour- height type cabinet with 1.25 inch (30 cards etc. By 2 April of that year Rich- nal titles, illustrators, publishers, printers mm) openings. Please contact Ben ard Quittendon (‘Quiz’), their editor, and topics associated with the press, Brundell at 6 Heathfield Rise, Rish- was 79 and in poor health. So young supported by a chronology, indices worth, Sowerby Bridge hx6 4rs, Nelson Henderson sold out to the AP and illustrations. It was compiled by a e-mail: [email protected], and turned Henderson’s into a paper team of thirteen Associate Editors and tel: 07768 558404 (mobile) or 01422 merchant. over 200 contributors. While the orig- 824759 (landline). My Grandfather, Julius Stafford inal Associate Editors had diverse areas Baker II was a, if not the, principal artist of expertise, printing history was not of many of the titles listed above. He among them and printing and printers USEFUL CONTACTS started ‘Tiger Tim and Co’, and ‘Caseys are under-represented in the text. Court’ in Chips (though admitting an The electronic edition of DNCJ is National Printing Heritage Trust www.npht.org.uk American artist’s influence in that one). to be regularly updated, and the editors He drew vast numbers of cartoons, Hon. Correspondent: Jeremy Winkworth are looking for an expert on the print- [email protected] mostly for adults in the Funny folks ing history of the period to act as an Treasurer: E. C. James days, before 1890, and in that period Associate Editor overseeing this neg- The Pinfold, Church Road, Dodleston, also for an American equivalent to lected area. The Editor would identify Chester, Cheshire ch4 9ng Punch called Judge. But gradually he printers of relevant titles beyond the [email protected] did more and more work for children’s thirty-six names already included papers, until he was, in terms of volume, (appended below), as well as the names Printing Historical Society www.printinghistoricalsociety.org.uk the leading AP ‘outside contributing of journals associated with printers artist’. He fixed for his brother-in-law Chair: Peggy Smith and printing. In addition, she or he [email protected] Will Lewis to handle the accounts of would identify the names of potential Journal Editor: John Trevitt Imperial Paper Mills at Gravesend, part authors of entries on printing, and Rose Cottage, Church Road, of the AP empire. Will eventually became commission and edit short entries, Weobley, Hereford hr4 8sd Managing Director of Imperial. It was normally of no more than 500 words. [email protected] grandfather’s view that he founded the While there is no fee for editing or Northcliffe fortune, and maybe there entries, Editors and Contributors Friends of St Bride Library www.stbride.org was a grain of truth in that. receive a complimentary CD of the With regard to ‘Tiger Tim and Co’, Chair: Rob Banham Dictionary. Those interested should [email protected] after other artists, notably Foxwell, contact one of the editors of the took over in the 1930s, Tim came to DNCJ on [email protected] or St Bride Library, Bride Lane, look rather different. By 1950 a new [email protected]. Fleet Street, London ec4y 8ee artist was required and my Father Julius www.stbride.org Stafford-Baker I I I took it over and drew (Printing-related entries already in DNCJ: Librarian: Nigel Roche the series and much else besides for the Applegath & Cowper; Ballantyne, James; [email protected] AP for many years. It was a far cry from Baxter, John; Bradbury and Evans; Chalmers the work he had done as an RAF War family; Clowes family; Dorrington, William; Printing History News Editor: Paul W. Nash Artist, and from his Royal Academy Dunkin, Alfred John; Evans, Edmund; Evans, Frederick Mould; Evans, Frederick Muller; 8 Fairfield Drive, Witney, works of 1935–1958. ox28 5lb Evans, John; Finlay, Francis; Fields, John Oxfordshire When queueing up to get his ‘outside S.; Garnett, Jeremiah; Gill, Michael Henry; [email protected] contributors’ payment (sovereigns, of Grosvenor, John; Hardy, Philip Dixon; Har- course, in a little bag), the queue had to ney, George; Hazell, Watson & Viney; Published by the NPHT, PHS and the be in alphabetical order. The man Heywood, Abel; Hobson, Joshua; Holy- Friends of St Bride Library, September behind was always coughing. He was oake, Austin; Johnson, Thomas Burgeland; 2009. Printed by Synergie, Birmingham.
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