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Post-Digital Letterpress Printing
This book presents an overview of the convergence of traditional letterpress
with contemporary digital design and fabrication practices.
Reecting on the role of letterpress within the emergent hybrid post-
digital design process, contributors present historical and contemporary
analysis, grounded in case studies and current practice. The main themes
covered include the research on letterpress as a technology and medium; a
reection on the contribution of letterpress to arts and design education; and
current artistic and communication design practice merging past, present,
and future digital fabrication processes.
This will be of interest to scholars working in graphic design,
communication design, book design, typography, typeface design, design
history, printing, and production technologies.
Pedro Amado is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the
University of Porto, Portugal, and a member of the i2ADS Research
Institute, Porto.
Ana Catarina Silva is Assistant Professor in the School of Design at the
Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave, Portugal, and a member of the
ID+/CAOS Research Institute, Barcelos.
Vítor Quelhas is Assistant Professor in the School of Media Arts and
Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal, and a member of the
ID+, Aveiro, and Unimad Research Institute, Porto.
Routledge Focus on Art History and Visual Studies
Routledge Focus on Art History and Visual Studies presents short-form
books on varied topics within the elds of art history and visual studies.
Post-Conict Monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Unnished Histories
Uroš Čvoro
Robert Motherwell, Abstraction, and Philosophy
Robert Hobbs
Jimmie Durham, Europe, and the Art of Relations
Andrea Feeser
World-Forming and Contemporary Art
Jessica Holtaway
The Power and Fluidity of Girlhood in Henry Darger’s Art
Leisa Rundquist
Buckminster Fuller’s World Game and Its Legacy
Timothy Stott
Post-Digital Letterpress Printing
Research, Education and Practice
Edited by Pedro Amado, Ana Catarina Silva and Vítor Quelhas
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge
.com/Routledge-Focus-on-Art-History-and-Visual-Studies/book-series/FO
CUSAH
Post-Digital Letterpress
Printing
Research, Education and Practice
Edited by Pedro Amado,
Ana Catarina Silva and
Vítor Quelhas
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Pedro Amado, Ana Catarina Silva and
Vítor Quelhas; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Pedro Amado, Ana Catarina Silva and Vítor Quelhas to be identied
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identication and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-00180-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-00184-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-17311-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003173113
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of Figures vii
Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xvii
Foreword: Johanna Drucker xviii
Introduction xxi
PART I
Introduction: Research 1
Part Research Highlight: The Seven Lives of a Typeface:
Material and Immaterial Convergences 3
AMELIA HUGILL-FONTANEL
1 Appropriating Printing
CAROLINE ARCHER-PARRÉ
9
2 Orlando Erasto Portela: Relations Between the Creative
Process and Letterpress Printing Methods of an (Almost)
Unknown Designer from the Mid-Twentieth Century
NUNO COELHO
19
3 The Mark on the Wall 30
ANE THON KNUTSEN
PART II
Introduction: Education 39
Part Education Highlight: Poiesis and Purpose: Lessons in Making 41
CATHERINE DIXON
vi Contents
4 The Role of the Letterpress Workshop
RÚBEN DIAS AND SOFIA MEIRA
47
5 From Letterpress to Screen: Learning from a Modular
Type System
ROBERTO GAMONAL ARROYO AND ANDREU BALIUS PLANELLES
56
6 PDLPX: The Post-Digital Letterpress Print Exchange:
Methodological Innovation in the Exploration of
Contemporary Letterpress Practice
CHRIS WILSON
65
7 Letterpress Experiments in a Design Course
RITA CARVALHO
75
PART III
Introduction: Practice 85
Part Practice Highlight: The Rising Letters – Seven Criteria
for the Typographic Design of a Letterpress Archive:
Proposing a dual, visual and sound analysis, in the extensive
survey and registration of the movable type characters in two
countries (observed and considered after twenty-ve years
have passed)
JORGE DOS REIS
87
8 Digital Fabrication: Expanding Access to and
Preservation of Letterpress Printing
ERIN BECKLOFF
95
9 Resisting Hyper-Digitalisation: Investigating Hybrid
Practices in Contemporary Graphic Design
LUCREZIA RUSSO
104
10 Computational Design Letterpress: From Procedural
Programming to Modular Printing
PEDRO AMADO AND ANA CATARINA SILVA
113
Conclusion
PEDRO AMADO, ANA CATARINA SILVA AND VÍTOR QUELHAS
123
Index 125
Figures
P1.1 Letterpress Type. From Right Column, Top to Bottom:
Goudy Cloister Initials Relief Type in Photopolymer;
Photo-Etched Magnesium; Modern Lead-Alloy Cast from
Original Brass Matrices; Laser-Engraved Maple Wood;
Stereolithographic Plastic; Fused Deposition Model 3D
Print. Photograph by Jiageng Lin 5
2.1 Three Labels of Soaps for the Brand Académico, Featuring
an Illustration of a Male Student from the University of
Coimbra Singing to Fado While Playing a Portuguese
Guitar; Arraial, Featuring an Illustration of Two Men in
a Folk Dress Playing Drums and Bagpipes; and Ceifeira,
Featuring an Illustration of a Female Reaper Holding a
Scythe, and a Wheat Branch 23
3.1 1837 Letterpress Prints on Newsprint That Make Up the
Entire Short Story The Mark on the Wall, Written and
Printed by Virginia Woolf. Kunstnernes Hus 36
P2.1 Retired Printer José Carlos Gianotti on Hand to Guide
Students in Use of One of Their Two Vandercook Proong
Presses 44
5.1 Promotional Sheet of Super Tipo Veloz Showing its
Many Combination Possibilities (Between 1942 and 1945
Approximately) 57
6.1 The 12 Prints Submitted to the Exchange 69
7.1 Praxe: It´s Your Choice. Campo Grande Garden, Oct.
2009. BA Students (Design); José Sebastião (Photo) 80
P3.1 Typographic Thoughts. Cover Page of the Norwich
Archive, 1996 88
viii Figures
8.1 Provisional Press Designed by Steve Garst with Wood
Type Created by Scott Moore of Moore Wood Type and
Posters by Brad Vetter 102
9.1 Mobile Uno: 3D Model (Top Left), Printing Test Results
(Top Right), and Physical Prototype (Bottom) 110
10.1 Participants Inking a Collaborative Mixed-Media
Imposition on a Flatbed Proof Press, while Others are 3D
Printing a Module 118
Contributors
Pedro Amado
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, i2ADS
Research Institute, Porto, Portugal
Pedro Amado is an Assistant Professor, Department of Design, Faculty
of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Portugal (since 2017). Subdirector of the
Faculty (during 2018), Member of the Board of Direction and Integrated
Researcher of the i2ADS Research Institute (since 2019). Editor of the
i2ADS journal. Member of the Scientic board of the Master in Graphic
Design and Editorial Projects at FBAUP, Porto, Portugal (since 2018).
Amado holds a Ph.D. in Sciences and Technologies of Communication
from the University of Aveiro, Portugal (2014), an MFA in Multimedia
(2007), and a degree in Communication Design from the Faculty of Fine
Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal (2002). He is currently an Assistant
Professor of Web Design (HTML, CSS & JS), Interaction (UCD), Creative
Coding (Processing), Typography, and Typeface Design at FBAUP. He is an
integrated member of the board of direction of the i2ADS Research Institute
(responsible for the design and communication), an ID+ collaborator, a
founding member of the ATIPO typography association, and country del-
egate for the ATypI international association. Passionate about digital tinker-
ing, an amateur letterpress printer, and a digital photographer, he focuses his
research and development activities on typography and editorial design, com-
putational and post-digital design, as well as human-computer interaction.
Ana Catarina Silva
Assistant Professor, School of Design, Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and
Ave (IPCA), Barcelos, Portugal
Ana Catarina Silva is a teacher, a researcher and holds a Ph.D. in Sciences
and Technologies of Communication (University of Porto, Portugal), with
a thesis that studied the design of the technical book in a hybrid editorial
context. Her research projects address a variety of elds and their borders,
x Contributors
from hybrid editions to independent publishing, typography, letterpress or
illustration. Books (and its forms) are her passion, and she’s been teach-
ing Typography, Editorial and Design Project in undergraduate and grad-
uate degrees in Graphic Design and Digital Design since 2007 at IPCA.
She is also a research member of CAOS (Communication, Art, Object,
and Synergies/ID+ (Research Institute for Design, Media, and Culture),
Barcelos, Portugal, a founding member of the ATIPO typography associa-
tion, and a member of the Design Obs, a Portuguese Design Observatory.
Vítor Quelhas
Assistant Professor, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, School of Media Arts
and Design, Porto, Portugal and ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media
and Culture, Aveiro, Portugal and uniMAD, Porto, Portugal
Vítor Quelhas holds a Ph.D. in Design (Typography and Type Design)
from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, an MFA in Multimedia Arts, and
a degree in Communication Design/Graphic Arts, both granted by the Fine
Arts School of the University of Porto, Portugal. Currently, he is an Assistant
Professor of Communication Design, in the Department of Design, School
of Media Arts and Design, Porto Polytechnic Institute, Portugal, where he
coordinates the MA in Design.
He is an integrated member of the ID+ and uniMAD research centers,
country delegate of the ATypI–Association Typographique Internationale,
and a founding member of the ATIPO and the Typography Meeting
International conference. He has been promoting his work in several con-
ferences, exhibitions and publications. Among other distinctions, his work
was recognized with two Certicates of Typographic Excellence, awarded
by the Type Directors Club of New York.
Johanna Drucker
Distinguished Professor, Information Studies Faculty, UCLA, USA
Johanna Drucker is the Inaugural Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical
Studies in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, USA. She is
internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typog-
raphy, experimental poetry, ne art, and digital humanities. In addition, she
has a reputation as a book artist, and her limited edition works are in special
collections and libraries worldwide. Her most recent titles include SpecLab:
Digital Aesthetics and Speculative Computing (2009), and Graphic Design
History: A Critical Guide (2008, 2nd edition late 2012). She is currently
working on a database memoir, ALL, the online Museum of Writing in col-
laboration with University College London and King’s College, and a let-
terpress project titled Stochastic Poetics. A collaboratively written work,
Digital_Humanities, with Jerey Schnapp, Todd Presner, Peter Lunenfeld,
and Anne Burdick is forthcoming from MIT Press.
Contributors xi
Jorge dos Reis
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Jorge dos Reis is a graphic designer. He was an apprentice typographic
composer of a National Press rst ocer in the former Cais do Sodré
Typography. He began his career by collaborating with the designer Robin
Fior in Lisbon, Portugal, and with the typographer Alan Kitching in London,
UK. He founded his own studio in 1996. His work is extensive and diverse,
having a dual activity as a designer and as an artist: he makes graphic and
typographic designs, exhibits drawings and paintings, and has published
several books. He attended the National Conservatory in António Wagner’s
singing class studying with the composers Jorge Peixinho and Paulo Brandão
while graduating in Communication Design at FBAUL, Lisbon. Jorge dos
Reis has a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art in London, a Master
in Sociology of Communication from ISCTE, Lisbon, and a Doctorate from
the University of Lisbon. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty
of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, where he founded and directs the
Master of Contemporary Typographic and Editorial Practice.
Caroline Archer-Parré
Professor of Typography, Centre for Printing History & Faculty of Art,
Design & Media, Birmingham City University, UK
Caroline Archer-Parré is a Professor of Typography at Birmingham
City University, Director of the Centre for Printing History and Culture
(University of Birmingham/Birmingham City University), and Chairman of
the Baskerville Society. She is the author of The Kynoch Press, 1876-1982:
the anatomy of a printing house (British Library, 2000); Paris Underground
(MBP, 2004); and Tart cards: London’s illicit advertising art (MBP, 2003).
Caroline is co-editor of Beauty of Letters: Text, Type and Communication
in the Eighteenth Century (2020); John Baskerville: Art and Industry of the
Enlightenment (2017); Book 2.0: From Codex to the Computer (2017); and
Religion and the Book Trade (2015). She is Lead Series Editor on the Peter
Lang Ltd series ‘Printing History and Print Culture’.
Nuno Coelho
Assistant Professor, University of Coimbra, DEI, CEIS20 Research Center,
Portugal
Nuno Coelho is a communication designer, an Assistant Professor of
the Department of Informatics Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences and
Technology of the University of Coimbra, and an Integrated Researcher at
the Centre for 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of
Coimbra, Portugal.
xii Contributors
He holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Art from the College of Arts of the
University of Coimbra. He has a Masters in Design and Graphic Production
from the Fine Arts School of the University of Barcelona, Spain, following
completion of his degree course in Communication Design and Graphic Art
at the Fine Arts School of the University of Porto, Portugal. As a Design
researcher, he is interested in history, material culture, visual semiotics, and
representation. He has curated and organized collective design exhibitions
and public conferences. He has two books published.
https://apps.uc.pt/mypage/faculty/uc26736/en
Rúben Dias
Assistant Professor, ESAD, ESAD – Idea research center, Portugal
Rúben Dias has a PhD in Design and is Professor at ESAD, Matosinhos,
Portugal. Internationally, he teaches workshops and is a speaker in type-
related subjects. Rúben consulted and authored Manual do Tipógrafo and
Imprimere’s book and exhibition, promoted by ESAD– Idea, Matosinhos
City Hall, and the Portuguese National Press – Mint House. With over two
decades of experience, Rúben runs Itemzero, founded the letterpress work-
shop Tipograa Dias, and co-founded the collective Tipos das Letras. You
can nd more about Rúben on his website.
Soa Meira
Invited Instructor, ESAD, ESAD–Idea research center, Portugal
Soa Meira is a graphic designer based in Porto, Portugal, currently
working at ESAD Matosinhos as a designer and printmaker. She graduated
as a Master in Graphic Design at Escola Superior de Artes e Design – Caldas
da Rainha 2014.She develops work and research in the area of Traditional
Typography.
Catherine Dixon
Stage Leader, Graphic Communication Design Programme, Central Saint
Martins, University of the Arts London, UK
Catherine Dixon is a designer, writer and teacher. She was appointed
as research student to the project that made Typeform dialogues (Hyphen
Press) and her doctoral thesis (2003) focused on the problems of describing
typefaces. Her interest in typeface design is ongoing and she writes regu-
larly for Fontstand and collaborates with several independent foundries, in
addition to contributing to publications such as Matrix and Eye. She writes
and presents regularly on letterpress as well as letterforms in environmental
contexts, having co-authored with Phil Baines the book Signs: lettering in
the environment. She is a Senior Lecturer and teaches typography on the
Graphic Communication Design programme at Central Saint Martins where
Contributors xiii
she also helps oversee the Central Lettering Record. From 2011to 2012, she
was a Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
Roberto Gamonal Arroyo
Lecturer, Complutense University of Madrid, ES & EINA – University
School of Design and Art, Barcelona, Spain
Roberto Gamonal Arroyo is a designer and teacher and academic
researcher. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Creativity and an MDes from the
Faculty of Fine Arts UCM, Spain. He also has a BSc in Information from
UCM, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of
Journalism II teaching courses related to communication design in journal-
ism. He co-directs the MA “Editorial Design Print and Digital Media” and
the specialization course “Design Typography” at the Istituto Europeo di
Design – IED Madrid. In this center he also collaborates in teaching-related
subjects in typography. He has been a Visiting Research Professor at the
School of Design at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, and the School
of Applied Arts in Castelo Branco, Portugal. He belongs to the research
groups Ciberimaginario and SOCMEDIA which bring his expertise in
design to dierent research and development projects. He is also part of
the editorial board of ICONO 14, a scientic journal dedicated to commu-
nication and emerging technologies. His research interests are directed at
the contribution of design to other disciplines and establishing a discursive
relationship with them. He is interested in both the most advanced and the
oldest technologies of information and communication. The result of this
is that he belongs to the groups UnosTiposDuros and Cultural Association
Familia Plómez, that review the history of typography and composition
techniques and printing craftsmanship.
Andreu Balius Planelles
Professor of Typography and Type Design, EINA – University School of
Design and Art in Barcelona, Spain.
He holds a PhD in Design from the University of Southampton (UK).
He is currently teaching typography and type design at EINA – University
School of Design and Art in Barcelona. Andreu Balius is an award-winning
typeface designer and runs his own studio, specialized in type design &
typography in Barcelona. He has presented lectures and keynotes includ-
ing at events such as ATypI conference (Helsinki, Finland, 2005; Lisbon,
Portugal, 2006, and Mexico 2009), SND-ÑH (Lisbon, 2002), ImagineIT
(Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, Italy, 2007), Bauhaus-Universität
(Weimar, Germany, 2007), St Bride conference (Birmingham, UK, 2006),
University of AppliedSciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (Lugano,
xiv Contributors
Switzerland, 2007), and the International Type Conference in Valencia and
Madrid (Spain, 2004, 2006).
Chris Wilson
Graduate Tutor, Visual Communications at Northumbria University, UK
Chris Wilson is a printmaker, design educator, and doctoral candidate
based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is an award-winning innovation
strategist, completing projects for a number of market-leading multina-
tional companies. He is experienced in managing projects within a multi-
disciplinary team, acting as a consultant in areas of graphic design, service
design, marketing, re-branding, and product development.
Since 2009, Wilson has operated as a freelance graphic designer and
photographer, working for a diverse range of clients, producing identities,
websites, promotions, and product photography.
He also works at Northumbria University at Newcastle in the School
of Design as a graduate tutor. This involves the delivery of modules
on the graphic design degree and research into post-digital letterpress
printing.
Wilson continues to develop his own creative professional practice using
a mixture of digital technologies and traditional crafts to produce printed
artwork and graphic art.
Rita Carvalho
Assistant Professor, Lusófona University, DELLI / Centre for Other Worlds,
Portugal
Rita Carvalho is Assistant Professor of Communication Design at
DELLI and researcher at Centre for Other Worlds – Lusófona University,
Lisbon, Portugal, developing experiences in Letterpress. She has a Ph.D. in
Design by FAUL, Lisbon, with a thesis on illustration in a colonial context.
She holds an MA in Visual Arts from the University of Évora, Portugal,
with a project that intersects grati and medieval marginalia, and a degree
in Communication Design from FBAUP, Porto, Portugal. Her main areas
of interest are illustration, letterpress, graphic narratives, illumination and
illustration history, and criticism. Since 2002 she has been working as a
designer, illustrator, and graphic artist, with participation in various publi-
cations and exhibitions.
Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection, USA
Amelia Fontanel is a curator at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection,
Rochester, New York, USA, a renowned library that collects on design,
typography, and the book arts. As manager of the Cary technology collection,
Contributors xv
she is responsible for teaching and maintaining some 23 dierent presses
and thousands of fonts of metal and wood type. She is actively involved
in the American letterpress community, holding board positions with the
American Printing History Association and the Hamilton Wood Type and
Printing Museum, Two Rivers, USA.
Richard Kegler
P22 Type Foundry, USA
Richard Kegler is the founder and lead designer of P22 Type Foundry.
As a founder of the Western New York Book Arts Center in Bualo, New
York, Richard combined an interest in traditional crafts along with an entre-
preneurial background to help create a self-sustaining community organiza-
tion. The new P22 studio in Rochester, New York focuses on both digital
and analog printing and typography.
Lucrezia Russo
Paris College of Art, France
Lucrezia Russo is an Italian graphic designer and educator, based in
Paris, France.
She works for major French arts publishers and she is the Chair of the
BFA in Communication Design at Paris College of Art.
Lucrezia holds an MA in Graphic Design (1998), Istituto Europeo di
Design, Milan.
Her rst publication, The Nabokov Paper, an experiment in novel-
reading, co-conceived with Kate Briggs, was published in October 2013.
Shandy Hall (Coxwold) hosted in November 2013 an eponymous exhibi-
tion, co-curated by Kate Briggs and Lucrezia Russo, to celebrate the book.
In 2013, she co-founded, with Céline Guyot and Andrew Schachman,
Oschool, a structure exploring new forms of pedagogy in art, design, and
architecture.
Ane Thon Knutsen
Oslo National Academy of The Arts, Norway
Ane Thon Knutsen is a graphic designer and artist living and working in
Oslo, Norway.
She owns a private letterpress studio, teaches at Oslo National Academy
of The Arts, does freelance lecturing, workshops, and is head of communi-
cation at Fellesverkstedet. In June 2019 she defended her PhD, A Printing
Press of One’s Own. Ane’s expertise spans the wondrous possibilities of
experimental printing, moveable type, artistic research, literature, book-
making, tools, rooms, feminism and Virginia Woolf.
xvi Contributors
Erin Becklo
Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Miami University, USA
Erin Becklo is a letterpress printer, designer, educator, and lmmaker
who preserves anecdotal and technical knowledge of printing history and
culture. Her research explores the letterpress community’s expansiveness
through time and how the letterpress printing process will survive through
educating others in the craft. She is the co-director and writer of “Pressing
On: The Letterpress Film,” a documentary about the survival of letterpress
and the remarkable printers who preserve the history and knowledge of the
craft.
She serves as an Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Miami
University and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Vermont College of
Fine Arts, USA. In 2011 she revitalized the Curmudgeon Press type shop
and developed letterpress courses as part of the Comm Design curriculum.
She studies letterpress through practical application and the shared knowl-
edge of master printers, including the talented folks at Hatch Show Print.
Erin disseminates her research through public and educational engage-
ment. She has given presentations at two Hamilton Wood Type & Printing
Museum Wayzgoose conferences; ATypI Antwerp; UCDA Design
Education Summit; Type@Cooper New York; College Book Art Association
Conferences; as well as taught workshops and lectured at universities across
the USA and UK.
Acknowledgements
Writing and editing a collective authorship book on an evolving analog
technology being practised in a digitally connected world is only possible
due to the innumerous interactions and contributions of our friends, col-
leagues, and institutions that made this book possible.
First and foremost to our families for understanding and allowing us
to invest the scarce time to develop this project. Also, the editors are pro-
foundly grateful to the members of the letterpress community that has wel-
comed and nurtured our research so kindly. Many of them, from more than
a dozen dierent countries, we are proud to be able to call friends today.
A heartfelt acknowledgment to all the artists, researchers, printers, design-
ers, and teachers who have submitted proposals to the call for works or
who have organized activities within the programme of the PDLP: Post-
Digital Letterpress Printing Conference that took place in Porto, Portugal,
in January 2020 and that was at the origin of this book. Some of them are
an important part of this book. Second to the members of the organization
and programme committee of the conference – not only for their continuous
support but also for their mentorship and engagement with this project. We
would also like to thank the publisher, namely our editors, Isabella Vitti and
Katie Armstrong, for believing and nurturing this into the nal book form
it assumes today.
Finally, we would like to recognize the support of our research insti-
tutes, the i2ADS Research Institute of Art, Design, and Society and the ID+
Research Institute for Design, Media, and Culture, both funded by grants
from the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the
scope of the projects UIDP/04395/2020 and UIDB/04057/2020. This rec-
ognition is due not only for the logistic and organizational support to the
research and events that led to this book but also for the kind nancial sup-
port in the copy-editing of the nal manuscript.
Foreword
After Quadrature: Concepts of
Composition and Letterpress Forms
Johanna Drucker
Letterpress technology was invented in Germany in the mid-15th century.
Until the coming of phototypesetting and computer-aided composition in the
mid-20th century, letterpress remained, largely unchanged, as the method of
print production in Western culture. Some automation occurred after the
1890s, and novel formats were also introduced in commercial work in the
19th century. But the technical aordances of letterpress printing drove, and
even determined, its aesthetic features. The combination of the concepts of
quadrature (squareness), linearity, and modularity became the conspicu-
ous foundation of print design. These are embodied in the square metal
bodies of the letters that were cast to facilitate their tting into the bed. In
spite of the long tradition of calligraphic expression in Korean, Chinese,
and Japanese cultures, the casts produced for character-based printing also
used the same format.
The conventions built into print (many adapted from manuscript fea-
tures, but also subjected to a strict linear discipline) were carried over into
photocomposition and digital technologies. The question is whether the
conventions that became so rmly entrenched over ve hundred years,
and which codied many of the features present in manuscript production,
are so engrained in the “programming” of literary work that even with the
innovative capacity of digital tools, we are condemned to endless repeti-
tion of letterpress rules as the dominant terms of poetic imagination. Might
the dialogue between digital tools and letterpress printing suggest other
possibilities?
Before composing his radical Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard
in the 1890s, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé bemoaned the “endless back and
forth” repetition built into letterpress page, comparing it to the brutal action
of beheading chickens. The image is stark. The poet feels the the sameness
of the square, straight, line was as stiing to the imagination as an act of
slaughter.
Foreword xix
The history of writing in monumental inscriptions, manuscript tradi-
tions, and even ancient cuneiform and hieroglyphics is lled with examples
of standardization and eciency that reinforced linear approaches. The text
of the Trajan column does not wander around in a non-linear way; nor do
the monumental inscriptions of the city of Nineveh indulge in free-form
design. To a great extent, the authority of written language depends on the
fact that it appears to be “spoken”, as if its utterances are unmarked, not
situated in a specic human cultural frame. Writing seems to “speak” most
authoritatively when it is least inected by graphical markers.
Literature on the page is largely linear. The exceptions are conspicuous,
classied as “visual” or “graphic” poetry, anomalies. As digital tools have
replaced letterpress production, we can ask whether a dialogue between
these methods can infuse imaginative innovation into the conception of
literary works. What critical and conceptual potential does a 500-year-old
technology have for informing, and literally giving new form to, poetic
imagination?
Can letterpress printing be used as a medium of innovation? Is literary
composition so conceptually integrated with the aesthetics of letterpress –
as it has become embodied in digital platforms – that we cannot break free
from it? Writing is conceived within forms. Digital formats that animate,
morph, and play with the graphic design of text bring their own language to
intellectual conception. Conforming to, or breaking from, formats can occur
at the time of composition. More often, this occurs as a design “treatment”
after a text is composed. The dierence between these two is considerable.
A treatment can inect, reinforce, and massage a text. But to conceive a
text within an alternative format requires internalization of the possibility
in advance, as part of the conceptual composition process.
One may start with the type, its weight, size, and character in the reso-
nant sense of letterforms. The arrangements can be freed from the “rule”
that holds them – the metal bars that keep the letters aligned and tightly
bound. They are the disciplinary agents of the hand-set type. Then remove
them and skew the lines, and push the words into an unanticipated arrange-
ment. But also consider the granular exibility of manuscript calligraphy.
In handwriting, everything is exible, and the pen can insert new lines into
old, smaller, and larger letters into an ordered or disordered array. Recall
the hand-drawn exemplars of master calligraphers such as the 16th-cen-
tury masterwork by Georg Bocskay, Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta. The
exquisite lettering appeared in engraved plates and later in lithographic
work. Graphical imagination fed by hand has the capacity to alter the writ-
ing mind.
Digital technology has not freed us from the constraints of letterpress,
cast metal, or quadrature. Perversely, letterpress production itself oers real
xx Foreword
possibilities to rethink inherited conventions that have constrained digital
formats within longstanding legacies. These technologies may also benet
by being informed by the exibility of the ductal imagination, the uidity
of the pen and hand that traces thought forms into existence as a graphical
language. The mind thinks from the hand and eye, and not merely through
them as instruments of already-formed expression.
Introduction
Pedro Amado, Ana Catarina Silva
and Vítor Quelhas
During its centuries-old history, letterpress printing has recorded several
milestones, both as a commercial endeavour and as a cultural driver of
modern civilisation, attaining its peak in the early twentieth century. Due
to technological developments such as photocomposition and digital print-
ing from the late twentieth century onwards, letterpress, as a professional
activity, has slowly waned. In recent years, it has been the object of artistic
exploration and speculative design within personal or commercial contexts.
Research projects also aim to reect on the methods, strategies, and chal-
lenges within the framework of a craft-based local economy that is cur-
rently on the decline.
Since the end of letterpress printing as a commercial endeavour, we have
witnessed its second life as a global trend. Several initiatives have appeared
worldwide, fuelling a continuous interest in exploring this technology.
These range from historical research to design applications, including artis-
tic, activist, and educational initiatives; and from local or individual show-
cases to international exhibitions using traditional or innovative approaches
(e.g. the Reverting to Type international exhibition of protest posters and
TIPO um Encontro de Impressores Tipográcos [TIPO – A Meeting of
Letterpress Printers]). Research conferences (e.g. the Letterpress Printing:
Past, Present, Future conference), practice-based symposiums (e.g.
Letterpress Workers), educational-oriented conferences (e.g. Make Ready
Symposium for Letterpress Educators) and recently formed associations
(e.g. Letterpress Educators of Art & Design).
This book presents a sample of cases that illustrate this reality. Work
from printers, designers, educators, and researchers who at the same time
are practitioners of this medium, in the current post-digital design contexts.
Digital technology is no longer a revolutionary phenomenon but a normal
part of everyday life, where transitions from digital to analogue are com-
mon in both directions, giving rise to new hybrid and valuable artefacts
and processes. Contemporary designers and printers sample, remix, and
xxii Introduction
mash-up these analogue and digital techniques in innovative processes and
creative experimental results.
The motivation and origin of this book spawned from the organisation
and participation in multiple international events and exhibitions. But why
write such a book today, when this phenomenon has been going on for
at least three decades? Over recent years, digital fabrication tools have
become more accessible. As the fusion between atoms and bits becomes
more pervasive, traditional printers and digital designers blur the bounda-
ries between their processes and breathe a new life into letterpress printing
by introducing new materials, such as resin, methacrylate, MDF or plas-
tic. These are used alongside traditional metal or wood sorts, in atbed or
cylindrical presses, or even with experimental printing presses. Studios,
such as the p98a or the P22, and individuals such as Da Kühne or Ryan
Molloy are living and thriving examples of using a hybrid mix of tradi-
tional and custom-built tools that explore the limits of this medium. But
the current generation of graphic designers is the rst to no longer have
professors or contact with technicians who were formally trained in tradi-
tional letterpress. Their legacy and added value are in danger of being lost.
It is therefore paramount to actively improve the pedagogy and practice of
graphic design. Research on how to incorporate letterpress practices and
processes today provides the ground to rethink the creative and technologi-
cal advances, as well as the impact, caused by the ubiquity of digital tools in
our daily lives. From revisiting traditional methods to emulating or explor-
ing beyond the limits of new materials and digitally enabled processes,
letterpress research and its interpretations in contemporary art and design
practice not only go beyond specialist research into printing history and
technology but also cross the design and ne arts practices. The result of
these initiatives stimulates the engagement of an international community
of researchers and practitioners with the idiosyncrasies of the current post-
digital culture.
The argument presented throughout this book is three-fold. Firstly, let-
terpress, as a technology for cultural expression, is a rich eld for social
and historical research since it produces cultural artefacts that record social
values, prejudices, forms of expression, and aesthetics, encapsulated over
time. Secondly, as a technology that has been used in educational contexts
over time, it is important to analyse and reect on the dierent pedagogi-
cal approaches and benets in the education of designers and artists, espe-
cially in the conict that arises from the dierent elds of study. What were
once domains restricted to each eld’s gatekeepers now constitute fertile
ground for hybrid innovation. Thirdly, contemporary letterpress practices
are explored by printers, makers, designers, and educators in their ongo-
ing work, or pedagogical practices, contributing not only to the revival of
Introduction xxiii
letterpress—maintaining its legacy — but most importantly sustaining its
evolution.
This book is organised into three parts: Part I — Research—highlights
the contribution of letterpress to the elds of arts and design research. It
acknowledges that letterpress plays a relevant role within social, aesthetic,
and human expression. Part II—Education—presents the relationship
between letterpress practice and design education. It considers the current
unique pedagogical challenges, both in academic circles and in professional
contexts. Part III — Practice—discloses current letterpress practices by dif-
ferent artists, designers, and makers. These accounts report to a future view
of the letterpress practice, bringing it closer to the individual designer and
maker.
Part I
Introduction
Research
This part highlights a reection on the contribution made by letterpress to
the arts and design research eld. It is seen through the lens of four case
studies that explore the cultural legacy of letterpress communication arti-
facts within commercial and artistic production contexts.
It acknowledges that letterpress plays a relevant role within cultural and
aesthetic expectations—ranging from the elds of archival collections,
printing and design history to practice-based artistic research —that often
include considerations of social, aesthetic, and human factors.
This rst contribution highlights the evolution of a typeface design over a
century. Amelia Hugill-Fontanel traces the various permutations of Cloister
Initials: from its beginning as a metal typeface, through digital versions,
and back into physical forms, demonstrating that letterforms currently tran-
scend digital and material formats.
The following chapter considers the work of those who appropriated
printing from the external expanding possibilities. Caroline Archer consid-
ers how these typographic outsiders equipped themselves with the knowl-
edge and skills to become printers, what they produced, and what lessons
they can oer today’s artists and designers entering the eld of letterpress.
The second chapter explores the relationship between the creative process
and letterpress printing methods, focusing on the life and work of a Portuguese
designer from the mid-twentieth century. Nuno Coelho starts by analyzing the
designer’s inuences and creative process and then focuses on his packag-
ing designs. More than technological constraints, the chapter emphasizes the
inuence of cultural heritage on the graphic design of consumer products.
The third chapter presents a recent practice-based research project in
hybrid letterpress printing. Ane Thon Knutsen, a female self-taught printer,
explains how crucial the material conditions for artistic practice are to
artistic autonomy. Analyzing Virginia Woolf’s The Mark on The Wall, she
reshapes the original experience acknowledging the role played by the
printing press as her road to freedom.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003173113-1
Part I
Research Highlight
The Seven Lives of a Typeface:
Material and Immaterial
Convergences
Amelia Hugill-Fontanel1
Understanding excellent designs from the past in such analytical terms,
rather than simply regarding them as graphic images to fetishize, is the
challenge—when we do it, we can learn from the past.
(Luna, 2019, p. 129)2
As printing historians, we explore motives, materials, and technologies that
have contributed to the primary technology of mass communication for
ve centuries: printing. It is thrilling to share in-depth research, especially
when tangible typographic objects are the results of the eort. The cycle of
research, ideation, and production repeats, where the past feeds present and
future practice. This is an account that documents how a typeface design
enjoyed at least seven reincarnations during a 100-year period of techno-
logical innovation, culminating in contemporary creative graphic work.
The American type designer Frederic W. Goudy (1865–1947), designed
over 120 letterpress typefaces in his long career. Cary Graphic Arts
Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology holds signicant archival
material by Goudy, including correspondence and typeface drawings, pho-
tographs, books, and even types that he cast and the printing presses that he
owned. Goudy’s work is ubiquitous in the digital landscape due to the fact
that the revival of Goudy Old Style is commonly bundled as a system font
on international operating systems.
In 1917 Frederic Goudy drew a oriated Capital A in the style of medi-
eval manuscript historiated initial letters for his book, The Alphabet.3 The
director of American Type Founders (ATF) convinced Goudy to draw the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003173113-2
4 Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
full alphabet for commercial release as a hot metal letterpress ‘typeface.’
This became his 33rd design, entitled Cloister Initials. It was cast in display
sizes from 48- to 144-point. Enjoying prominent use through the 1940s,
ATF kept it in production for years as a foundry type.
Writing a few decades after their creation, Goudy noted that the Cloister
Initials ‘have had a long and useful life and are still extensively used and
copied.’4 He was alluding to their popularity and inclination to be pirated
by competing typefounders. He permitted translations of this design him-
self. For example, in the 1930s they were rebranded as Goudy Initials, no.
296 for the automated typecasting system from Lanston Monotype Machine
Company. Hence the rst and second ‘lives’ of Cloister Initials were per-
sonally monitored by their creator.
The mid-twentieth-century evolution of myriad type production modes
incited many older designs to be adapted to new technologies. From the
1960s to the 1980s Cloister Initials were translated into phototype as well as
dry-transfer letters. With the introduction of digital typefaces, they became
one of the early candidates for revival. The alphabet’s designs were digitized
as individual EPS les by Gerald Giampa when he purchased the remnants
of the Lanston Company in the late 1980s.5 Cloister Initials’ third, fourth, and
fth lives were mediocre surrogates for the elegant letterpress-printed origi-
nals. Phototypesetting’s ability to optically resize and compress characters, as
well as early digital jagged type vectors, contributed to this inferior quality.
Lanston’s intellectual property was acquired in 2004 by P22 Type
Foundry of Bualo, New York. They redrew the Cloister Initials in 2005
and reformatted the EPS les to digital font formats, renaming them as LTC
Goudy Initials. In 2014, P22 decided to rework the typeface from the most
accurate source material.6 This involved a fortuitous discovery of the origi-
nal 120-point ATF brass matrices at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection.7
An RIT curator had rescued the mats from the salvage auction when ATF
was in bankruptcy liquidation in 1993.8 This sixth digital incarnation of the
typeface was poised to rejoin the analogue world.
RIT loaned the Cloister Initials 120-point matrices to Richard Kegler
of P22 for the purposes of casting a new metal type. Only one machine in
North America could handle the work, due to the fact that the matrices are
such a large point size. This was the last extant Giant Pivotal caster, which
was coincidentally sold to a fellow buyer at the 1993 ATF auction: printer
and typecaster, Gregory Walters in Ohio.9 Casting with this machine was
not an automated process, since each mould needed to be manually discon-
nected from its housing to eject the type.10 After several days of involved
labour, Walters and Kegler were able to cast a few dozen complete alpha-
bets of Goudy’s almost century-old typeface. Each character weighed 0.75
pounds (0.34 kg).
Research Highlight 5
Since 2014, Cloister Initials has enjoyed its seventh life as an analogue/
digital hybrid. The 120-point metal recasting sold out quickly to print shops
in the United States and Europe. P22’s enhanced digital type revival added
the functionality of chromatic accents to Goudy’s original design, with sep-
arate fonts that isolated inline character lls and the oriated backgrounds.11
These font les were recently used in 2020 to fabricate analogue letterpress
plates through computer-aided design applications.12
Digital processes have inuenced letterpress plate production since the
early 1990s,13 with the use of exographic relief photopolymer and photo-
etched magnesium or zinc plates. These standardised processes join a fer-
tile ground for experimentation in contemporary digital laser-engraved and
3D-printed plates. Using Cloister Initials designs, several comparative char-
acters were made with all of these technologies in a collaboration between
P22 Type Foundry and RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. They were printed
using a Vandercook cylinder printing press at P22 (Figure P1.1).
The printed comparisons from digitally fabricated plates were promis-
ing. Photopolymer plates are known for the ability to render accurate detail
in letterpress prints at small sizes. Fine tolerances in plate production at a
Figure P1.1 Letterpress Type. From Right Column, Top to Bottom: Goudy Cloister
Initials Relief Type in Photopolymer; Photo-Etched Magnesium;
Modern Lead-Alloy Cast from Original Brass Matrices; Laser-
Engraved Maple Wood; Stereolithographic Plastic; Fused Deposition
Model 3D Print. Photograph by Jiageng Lin.
6 Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
service bureau and the careful machining of their aluminium printing base
make photopolymer plates predictable printing matrices.14 This was true
for the Cloister Initials test, with no surprise. The etched magnesium plate
also printed well but had more variance in the type height of its plywood-
mounted base which had to be corrected in proong.15 In this way, the pho-
topolymer and magnesium plates joined the P22-cast metal sort in a control
group of acceptable prints.
The laser-engraved Cloister Initials character yielded high-quality
detail in the oral tendril shapes that replicated the control group’s results.
However, this neness was a direct result of the quality of the wood from
which it was cut. This was end-grain maple hardwood that had been care-
fully milled to letterpress height and face-sanded and shellacked before
engraving. All of this work depended greatly on the skill of the worker who
prepared the wood—a resource that is not accessible to all. Laser-engraving
also requires a lot of testing to rene the laser’s kerf or cutting width, so that
the relief block may approximate a piece of cast type.16
Encouraging results were derived from the stereolithographic 3D print-
ing process. This makes 3D objects by successively ‘printing’ or depositing
thin layers using a liquid plastic medium that is curable by ultraviolet light.
The Formlabs’ Form 3 SLA printer built a Cloister Initials character with
a resolution of 50 microns per layer starting from the bottom foot to the
type’s face. The letterform curves were acceptably maintained, but a faint
striated pattern was apparent in the positive or solid black portions of the
3D-printed type. This would be considered a defect in a cast piece of metal
type.
A failed experiment in additive printing used Fused Deposition
Modelling (FDM). Here a lament of a thermoplastic material was fed from
a coil through a moving, heated extruder head and deposited on the grow-
ing work. The FDM 3D printer could not produce a lament that was thin
enough to replicate Cloister Initials’ intricate scrollwork.17
It is important to underscore that the Cloister Initials’ seventh life in
the current post-digital environment is non-binary, in terms of being mate-
rial (analogue) versus immaterial (digital).18 It embraces a hybrid existence
where one mode of creation blurs seamlessly into another. While Goudy
drew his inspiration from media that predates movable type printing, his
designs have complexity that tests the limits of contemporary technologies.
If one were to forecast into the future at the end of the post-digital period,
perhaps in 2035—when type moves unguided on the screen or is converted
to 3D eortlessly in several media—Goudy’s Cloister Initials will have per-
haps twice as many lives to be documented with a timelessness that tran-
scends any given format.
Research Highlight 7
Notes
1 This work was rst presented with Richard Kegler of P22 Type Foundry at the
2020 Post-Digital Letterpress Conference in Porto, Portugal. The author wishes
to acknowledge his continued collaboration, especially in editing this article.
2 Paul Luna, Typography, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2019): 129.
3 Frederic W. Goudy, The Alphabet: Fifteen Interpretative Designs Drawn
and Arranged with Explanatory Text and Illustrations (New York: Mitchell
Kennerley, 1918).
4 Frederic W. Goudy, Half-Century of Type and Typography 1895–1945, vol. 1
(New York: The Typophiles, 1945).
5 Giampa Textware/Lanston Type Co. Vancouver, Canada, 1991.
6 ‘Goudy Initials,’ P22 Type Foundry. https://p22.com/family-Goudy_Initials.
7 Richard Kegler, ‘Goudy Cloister Initials,’ Devil’s Artisan, no.86, Spring/
Summer 2020, http://devilsartisan.ca/p22_type_specimens_goudy_cloister_in
itials.html.
8 David Pankow, ‘The Rise and Fall of ATF.’ Printing History 22, nos. 43/44
(2002): 3–14.
9 P22 Type Foundry, ‘Casting Metal Type: Cloister Initials,’ Adobe Behance,
2014, https://www.behance.net/gallery/17665337/Casting-Metal-Type-Cloister
-Initials.
10 The Giant pivotal casting work was dangerous too, as molten lead could acci-
dentally squirt under high pressure when it was injected into a matrix.
11 ‘LTC Goudy Initials Fill’ and ‘LTC Goudy Initials Flora,’ P22 Type Foundry.
https://p22.com/family-Goudy_Initials.
12 Amelia Hugill-Fontanel and Richard Kegler, ‘The Seven Lives of a Typeface,’
presentation, Porto, Portugal: Post Digital Letterpress Printing, January 31,
2020.
13 Betty Bright, ‘Letterpress in the Second Millennium,’ in Fine & Dirty:
Contemporary Letterpress Art (Minneapolis, MN: Center for Book Arts, 2012):
6.
14 Boxcar Press of Syracuse, New York manufactured the photopolymer plate from
digital les supplied by the authors in early 2020. https://www.boxcarpress.com.
15 Hodgins Engraving of Batavia, New York, supplied the service of making
photo-etched magnesium plates. http://www.hodginsengraving.com.
16 Scott Moore of Moore Wood Type in Ohio made the laser-cut Cloister Initials
blocks from digital les. https://moorewoodtype.com.
17 The 3D-printed type was made at the RIT College of Art and Design FabLab.
https://conuence.cad.rit.edu/cadtech/cad-fablab.
18 Jeremy Knox, ‘What Does the “Postdigital” Mean for Education? Three Critical
Perspectives on the Digital, with Implications for Educational Research and
Practice,’ Postdigital Science and Education 1 (2019): 357–370, https://doi.org
/10.1007/s42438-019-00045-y.
1 Appropriating Printing
Caroline Archer-Parré
For much of the seventeenth century, from 1637 to 1695, printing in England
was controlled by statutes and laws which not only regulated the number of
presses and printers that could operate in the country, but also determined
what could, and could not, be produced.1 The Acts and Decrees enacted by
Parliament were a response to a widely-held fear that the freedom to print
was a threat to society, a challenge to the crown, and a danger to the Church.
But it was not just Acts of Parliament that hampered engagement with print-
ing: so too did the trade’s rigid structure and organisation. From the time
William Caxton (1422–91)2 introduced printing into England in 1476 no one
was able to set up as a Master Printer without having served an apprentice-
ship. Master Printers defended their privileges and protected their skills,3
and it was only they, assisted perhaps by a journeyman or apprentice, who
could issue printed material.4 The terms of apprenticeship were enshrined in
law and rst regulated by the Statute of Articers (1563 and 1601), which
authorised and made national that which had been usual practice.5 Later, the
printing trade unions also exerted tight controls over who and how many
people could join the trade, and what they could do.6 Just as parliament had
imposed restrictions on the printing trade, so the trade itself enforced tight
controls on who could join it. The controlled became the controller and
as a consequence printing was almost impenetrable to those outsiders who
wished to engage with the craft whether for pleasure or for prot.7
This chapter considers the work of those who, over the course of
500 years, have circumvented the system, operated outside trade conven-
tions, and appropriated printing for their own purposes. Some were pri-
vate individuals who participated in the craft either for leisure or pleasure;
writers who turned to the medium to promote their literary endeavours; or
pirate-printers who used the process for the production of fakes and fabrica-
tions, seditious and illicit literature. This chapter looks at how these typo-
graphic outsiders equipped themselves with the necessary knowledge and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003173113-3
10 Caroline Archer-Parré
skills to operate their presses, considers what they produced, and reects on
their reasons for so doing.
Printing at Home: From Palaces to Parlours
In the early eighteenth century, in the new era of comparative press free-
dom, individuals from outside the trade began to appropriate the press and
print from their own homes, in order to ll their leisure time. It is a habit
that persists today. Twenty-rst-century home-printers adopt historical
typographic technology to print for pleasure; and nearly everyone has a
home computer which has placed the typographer’s tools-of-the-trade in
the hands of the everyman. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so
many people took to printing that it soon became the craft most widely
pursued by amateurs.8 These home-based printers operated outside the
constraints of the trade; they were lay enthusiasts who were usually—but
not always—male, wealthy, generally well-educated, and primarily inter-
ested in the products of the press rather than the mechanics of the pro-
cess.9 By printing poems and prose of their own authorship, or written by
their friends, they were ‘vanity’ printers who established their own private
presses and employed the skills of professional compositors and pressmen
to reproduce their literary endeavours. Probably the best known eighteenth-
century home-printer was the historian, politician, and man of letters,
Horace Walpole (1717–97).10 Walpole established his Strawberry Hill Press
in 1757 at Twickenham, Surrey where he employed a single man to act as
both compositor and pressman, to help print works of his own creation and
those written by his friend, the poet Thomas Gray.11 The English bibliog-
rapher and genealogist Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762–1837) recruited
the services of the printers John Johnson and John Warwick to help produce
his many volumes of literature at his Lee Priory Press, Kent.12 In addition,
the English journalist, and radical politician John Wilkes (1725–97) briey
kept, in 1763, a large-scale printing oce in his house in Great George
Street, London, where he had two presses and eight men working for him.13
So large was the set-up that, in order to accommodate the presses, Wilkes
had to ‘call in carpenters to enlarge the hall’.14
Space and nancial resources were the greatest deterrents for most
aspiring eighteenth-century home-printers. Pressmen had to be paid, and
typographic machinery was prohibitively large and cumbersome15 so the
home-printer needed both a bank account and a house suciently large to
accommodate the workers and material necessary for production. To satiate
the needs of the home-printer, scaled-down presses were designed, manu-
factured, and sold specically for amateurs who could operate them at home,
without employing the assistance of a trade printer. The London engraver
Appropriating Printing 11
and etcher, John Sutter, rst advertised his portable press in 1769 for use by
‘noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies curious in printing’.16 Sutter had competi-
tion. John Brown rst manufactured a ‘Portable-Printing Press’ in around
1770 and used it to print his own writings.17 Interest in scaled-down presses
started with royalty. In England the Duke of Cumberland and his sisters
printed works using a portable press at St James’s Palace in 1713.18 In
France Louis XIV (1638–1715) reputedly printed on a scaled-down press.19
Once French royalty involved themselves with printing it was only a matter
of time before other members of the Court took an interest in the craft. The
Marquis de Marigny (1727–81) printed from his home in Bercy.20 There is
no evidence of what, if anything, Marigny printed, but his curiosity was pri-
marily linked to the science, technology, and mechanics of printing. By con-
trast, Marigny’s sister, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721–64), better known
as Madame de Pompadour), was concerned with the artistic potential of
the craft and was taught etching by the French painter, François Boucher
(1703–70) under whose guidance she created fty-two engravings of his
drawings.21 Pompadour also developed an interest in typographic printing,22
and kept a scaled-down wooden press on which, it may be presumed, she
printed works of her own composition.23
It was, perhaps, inevitable that once Kings and their Courts had taken up
printing, it should lter down through the classes and become ‘a polite study
for humble patrons and people of more leisure’.24 By the nineteenth century,
printing was adopted by the middle-classes as an aordable, satisfying, and
intellectually protable pastime: ‘there is probably no art or science calcu-
lated to aord so much gratication to amateurs as printing, inasmuch as it
is a valuable handmaid or assistant to all other arts’.25 As a result, a trend in
home-printing became popular with the middle-classes who started to use
their leisure time to print calling cards, invitations for parties, or small pub-
lications of their own composition for private circulation. So large was the
community of home-printers that by the mid-nineteenth century a number
of companies, including Holtzapel & Co., tool and lathe makers, London,
were designing, manufacturing and commercially retailing ‘toy’ printing
presses specically for their needs.26
The endeavours of the home-printer were supported by a range of litera-
ture. In 1864 David Garden Berri published The Art of Printing.27 Aimed
at popularising the typographic arts amongst the general public it sought
to enable anyone, through a few simple instructions, to become their own
printer. The Art of Printing was followed by several other illustrated guides,
culminating with P. E. Raynor’s popular Printing for Amateurs (1875).28
Designed for the layman, these volumes contained practical details on the
machinery and materials required for printing, together with descriptions
of the processes necessary for their handling. The fact that so many books
12 Caroline Archer-Parré
on printing were published and republished in the mid-nineteenth century
demonstrates that there was a marked demand for typographic instruction
from a public interested in doing it themselves. This literature is still avail-
able to the current generation of home-printers, but the Internet provides
more interactive instructions, including videos on sites such as YouTube.
Just as nineteenth-century home-printers enjoyed seeing the products of
their pens realised in print, so too did more established twentieth-century
authors. V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018), James Herbert (1943–2013), and Terry
Pratchett (1948–2015) each took an interest in how their words were repro-
duced and worked closely with their printers on the typographic presenta-
tion of their texts. Other authors, however, took production, quite literally,
into their own hands by printing their own material. Virginia Woolf (1882–
1941)29 and her husband Leonard (1880–1969),30 founded the Hogarth
Press in 1917 as a diversion from the pressures of writing. Starting with
a small hand-press at their Surrey home, they not only printed Virginia’s
own work, but also that of other writers such as Katherine Manseld, T.
S. Eliot, C. Day-Lewis, and E. M. Forster. In addition, the Woolfs’ press
provided avenues of expression for many artists, photographers, illustrators
and designers. Following the success of Kew Gardens in 1919 the Hogarth
Press evolved into a commercial enterprise.31 In 1946 it was sold to the
publishers Chatto & Windus. The Hogarth Press, which had started as a
diversion and escape from mainstream publishing, became a victim of its
own success and succumbed to the commercial pressures which it had been
established to avoid. In his autobiography, Good-Bye to All That,32 Robert
Graves (1895–1985),33 a friend and contemporary of Woolf, described how
‘In 1927 [he] began learning to print on a hand-press. In 1928 [he] contin-
ued learning to print’.34 Graves, together with the poet Laura Riding (1901–
91),35 founded the Seizin Press in London. Graves knew many people in
the printing trade and his typographically-aware friend, the author Vyvyan
Richards, taught him to compose type using a Monotype caster and how to
print on an 1872 Crown Albion Press. The Seizin Press enabled Graves and
Riding to print their own work, including Riding’s rst book of poetry, Love
as Love, Death as Death, free from the constraints of publishers.36
Both the Hogarth and Seizin Presses used historical typographic equip-
ment on which to print their publications. At the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, printing was moving from a craft-based trade to a technology-led
industry. Letterpress printing was giving way to oset lithography, hand
composition to mechanical typesetting. The modern mechanical composing
machines and printing presses were larger, more expensive and required
specialist training to operate in contrast to the old hand-operated presses
which were simpler to operate and maintain. As mechanisation became
more prevalent, so too did union restrictions on who could and could not
Appropriating Printing 13
operate the machines.37 As trade printers began jettisoning the old technol-
ogy in favour of the new, their redundant equipment became available to
home-printers, who, like Woolf and Graves, appropriated it for their own
purposes. Some authors preferred, however, to appropriate contemporary
printing presses. Aldous Huxley (1894–1965),38 for example, was interested
in using modern printing machinery to provide high-quality books for the
masses and wrote much on the subject.39 But by-and-large home-printers
appropriated historical printing equipment. It is a trend that persists today,
as contemporary home-printers eschew modern technology in favour of
historical equipment, drawn to the tactility of the process, the materiality
of the operation, and the olfactory delight of ink and oils. There is also the
satisfaction in having rescued, restored and brought back to life machines
of a by-gone era, salvaging the past to serve the present: a sentiment that
chimes with current environmental concerns to reuse and recycle resources.
Printing in Private: Pirates and Pornographers
Home-printers operate in full sight of the law and with the knowledge—and
disapproval40—of the trade. Pirate-printers, on the other hand, worked out
of sight of the authorities and without the sanction of the trade, in order
to produce fakes, forgeries and other typographic fabrications. The fear of
forgery was one of the reasons behind the 1637 Star Chamber Decree which
was also designed to prevent ‘abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and
unlicensed books and pamphlets, printing and printing presses’. For centu-
ries, however, everything from counterfeit banknotes to philatelic forgeries
and seditious literature has been produced surreptitiously, and in deance
of Decrees and trade unions, either by fully indentured trade printers turned
criminals, or by crooks using unlicensed pirate presses.
Seditious libel, printed in order to subvert the State or incite discon-
tent, was produced behind rmly closed doors, usually by politically moti-
vated or doctrinally sympathetic pirate-printers. In 1683, for example, John
Culefant, whose regular profession is unknown, was convicted of oences
against the King when he was tried for printing, and publishing, two scan-
dalous and seditious libels: The growth of popery, and Ignoramus Justice.41
Culefant not only printed the material but also commissioned the copy, cor-
rected the proofs, and encouraged the work. At his trial he was found guilty,
ned and pilloried. Similarly, John Lowthorp, a clergyman by profession,
was indicted in 1690 for a ‘high misdemeanour, in writing, printing and pub-
lishing a most pernicious, scandalous, seditious and notorious libel against
the King and Government’.42 Lowthorp was stripped of the cloth and ned,
and his books were burnt by the Common Hangman at Westminster.43 So
seriously did the State take the role of the printer, that in 1675 one nameless
14 Caroline Archer-Parré
convict, a scrivener by trade, was not only accused of printing scandalous
libels but also for being ‘a pretended printer’. He was ned, imprisoned and
prohibited from ‘exercising or using the trade of printing for three years to
come’.44
Forgery was particularly rampant in the late eighteenth century when,
for the rst time, the Bank of England issued low-denomination notes that
were handled by people unaccustomed to paper currency and often illit-
erate.45 They were the natural victims of forgers.46 In 1789, for example,
newspapers widely reported the arrest of three men in Dublin caught print-
ing fake one guinea notes.47 Counterfeiting was widespread and produc-
ing forgeries remained a lucrative trade for pirate-printers despite punitive
penalties. In the eighteenth century anyone interested in calling on one of
London’s brothels could buy a guidebook, Harris’ List of Covent Garden
Ladies (1758-95), to help them nd a lady suitable to their needs. Published
pseudonymously and printed illicitly by John and James Roach and John
Aitkin, their covert operations took place in plain sight and alongside their
legitimate work in their printing house in Covent Garden, London. An echo
of Harris’ Guide was heard two centuries later in 1961 when an enterpris-
ing pornographer, Frederic Shaw, published in London a Ladies Directory.48
Shaw was indicted for ‘conspiracy to corrupt public morals’, convicted and
sentenced. Shaw was part of Britain’s thriving mid-twentieth century under-
ground press movement, which promoted anti-establishment ideas, allied
itself with the hippy drug-inspired culture and championed a new age of
sexual freedom. Publications included International Times (1966–72) and
the Marxist paper Black Dwarf (1968–70). Perhaps the most inuential was
Oz magazine (1967–73). Published monthly by Richard Neville (1941–
2016),49 and achieving an average circulation of 30,000 copies, it became
the chief organ of the British underground press movement. Renowned for
its graphic invention and its constantly changing format, Oz’s printers took
full advantage of new printing stocks, including metallic foils, new uores-
cent inks and the greater exibility of layout oered by oset lithography.
The magazine gained notoriety for its editorial policies and the forthright
manner in which it tackled sex. But it was a cartoon image of a priapic
Rupert Bear that caused particular consternation with the authorities. Oz’s
printing works were raided; its publishers were taken for trial and indicted
for corrupting the morals of children and young people.
London’s underground press did not end with the Oz trial, and there is
still a ourishing network of pirate-printers prepared to run the gauntlet of
the authorities and print the material the police would rather see banned.
Probably the most apparent products of the underground press are London’s
‘tart cards’ (1984–today) which appear in telephone boxes around the
capital, advertising the services of the city’s prostitutes.50 Produced by an
Appropriating Printing 15
established circle of underground printers, the early cards were manufac-
tured on a range of obsolete equipment. Initially, type was created on a
kitchen table using cut-out letters or rub-down characters such as Letraset;
later word-processing systems drove low-quality bubble-jet printers, fol-
lowed by personal computers which placed the typographer’s tools-of-the-
trade in the hands of the everyman. Printing was usually undertaken using
oset lithography and occasionally letterpress by an established circle of
pirate-printers working from unspecied addresses away from the centre of
the city in order to avoid arousing the curiosity of the authorities.
Conclusion
Home-printers and pirate-printers, whether working in the fteenth or
twentieth century, had much in common. Both parties were dependent upon
access to obsolete equipment. Home-printers used old machinery because
government decrees and trade union rules, coupled with nancial con-
straints, prohibited them from using current materials. In addition, techni-
cally advanced machines usually occupied more space and required greater
skill to operate than historical equipment: both of which were beyond the
average home-printer. Similarly, pirate-printers were often forced to work
with antiquated machinery because it was cheap to purchase, and because
its obsolescence may have rendered it unlicensed and therefore almost
untraceable either by the trade or the authorities. For the wealthy home-
printer, learning to operate the equipment was done under the guidance of a
trade printer; but most home-printers were self-taught and simply followed
the instructions provided by manufacturers manuals, or were guided by one
of the many publications produced on the subject. Most pirate-printers, on
the other hand, were indentured trade printers turned criminals, who simply
transferred their skills across technologies. But whether home-printers or
pirate-printers, their motivations for taking to the press are curiously simi-
lar. Each was inspired by the freedom to print whatever they wanted, the
liberty to distribute their words to whom they wanted, and to appropriate
typographic control—for better or for worse—for the everyman.
Today we are all typographers thanks to the advent of personal comput-
ers and the arrival of desktop printers. Such equipment has not only placed
the typographer’s tools-of-the-trade in the hands of everyone, it has also
emancipated the printed word and appropriated it for the purposes of the
digital era. Never in the history of printing have individuals experienced
so much freedom to express themselves, with so much control on how
they communicate, both in public and in private, or been able to do so at
speed. They have done so without knowledge of printing, the hindrance of
large expensive equipment, or having to engage the services of a printing
16 Caroline Archer-Parré
professional. Now everyone can control their typographic identity, whether
to produce the mundane—such as newsletters, stationery, invitation cards—
or the exotic, as seen in the large-scale digital typographic representations
created by the artists Gilbert & George.51 Both the mundane and the exotic
serve to demonstrate how specialised production equipment has ceased to
be the exclusive tool of pre-press experts and become an instrument in the
hand of the artist. However, the speed, freedom and comparative cheapness
of digital reproduction has also initiated a resurgence of interest in mechani-
cal process, and old typographic technologies have been made new again
in the hands of a new generation of artists and designers, whose unfettered
imaginations produce work that would have been unimaginable to their pre-
decessors in print.
Notes
1 Star Chamber Decree (1637); ‘Act for preventing abuses in printing seditious,
treasonable and unlicensed books and pamphlets, printing and printing presses’
(1662). Raymond Astbury, ‘The renewal of the licensing act in 1693 and its
lapse in 1695’, The Library 5, 1978, iv, 298–322.
2 N. F. Blake, ‘Caxton, William (1415 x 24–1492), printer, merchant, and diplo-
mat’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2008). Online, https:/
/0-www-oxforddnb-com.catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb
/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-4963, accessed 18 January
2021.
3 David Jury, Graphic design before graphic designers: the printer as designer
and craftsman, 1700–1914 (London, 2012), 15–16.
4 T. A. Skingsley, ‘Technical training and education in the English printing indus-
try’, Printing Historical Society Journal 13, 1978/9, 1–25.
5 Skingsley, ‘Technical training’.
6 Skingsley, ‘Technical training’.
7 Caroline Archer-Parré, ‘Private pleasures and portable presses: do-it-yourself
printers in the eighteenth century’, in C. Archer-Parré & M. Dick (eds) Pen,
print and communication in the eighteenth century (Liverpool, 2020), 89–106.
8 R. Cave, The private press (London, 1971); Jeremy Black, The English press in
the eighteenth century (Abingdon, 2011).
9 Robert Stebbins, Amateurs, professionals and serious leisure (Montreal, 1992).
10 Michael Snodin & Cynthia E Roman, Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill
(London & New Haven, CT, 2009).
11 James Mosley, ‘The press in the parlour: some notes on the amateur printer and
his equipment’, The Black Art 2, 1962, i, 1–15.
12 K. A. Manley, ‘Brydges, Sir (Samuel) Egerton, rst baronet, styled thirteenth
Baron Chandos’, Oxford dictionary of national biography. Online, doi.org/10
.1093/ref:odnb/3809, accessed 14 June 2019.
13 P. Thomas, ‘Wilkes, John (1725–97), politician’, Oxford dictionary of national
biography. Online, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780
198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29410, accessed 4 December
2019.
Appropriating Printing 17
14 Arthur H. Cash, John Wilkes: the scandalous father of civil liberty (London &
New Haven, CT, 2006).
15 Joseph Moxon, Mechanick exercises: or the doctrine of handy-works applied to
the art of printing (London, 1683), 16–17.
16 P. E. Raynor, ‘Printing for amateurs’, Printing Historical Society Journal 23,
1994, 5–76.
17 Raynor, ‘Printing for amateurs’.
18 James Moran, Printing presses: history and development from the fteenth cen-
tury to modern times (London, 1972).
19 Moran, Printing presses.
20 A process by which an image is incised into a surface of a zinc or copper plate
and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink.
21 Jean Adhemar, Graphic art of the eighteenth century (London, 1964), 43, 106,
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22 Margaret Trouncer, The Pompadour (London, 1937), 218.
23 Perrin Stein, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Eunice Williams and Kelsey Brosnan,
Fragonard: drawing triumphant (London & New Haven, CT, 2016).
24 Moxon, Mechanick exercises, lii.
25 Jabez Francis, Printing at home: with full instructions of amateurs (Rochford,
1870).
26 Charles Holtzapel, Printing apparatus for the use of amateurs: containing
full and practical instructions for the use of Cowper’s parlour printing press
(London, 1846).
27 David Garden Berri, The art of printing (London, 1864).
28 Francis, Printing at home; How to print (London, 1875); P. E. Raynor, Printing
for amateurs: a practical guide to the art of printing, illustrated (London, 1876).
29 Lyndall Gordon, ‘Woolf [née Stephen] (Adeline) Virginia (1882–1941), writer
and publisher’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004). Online,
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30 S. P. Rosenbaum, ‘Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969), author and publisher’,
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31 Kew Gardens was rst published privately in 1919 by the Woolfs at the Hogarth
Press, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and sub-
sequently in the posthumous collection A haunted house (1944).
32 Robert Graves, Good-bye to all that (London, 1960).
33 Richard Perceval Graves, ‘Graves, Robert von Ranke (1895–1985), poet and
novelist’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2010). Online,
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34 Thomas Graves, ‘Robert Graves as printer’, in Bartkowiaks forum book art
(Hamburg, 2005/6) 62–88.
35 Elizabeth Friedmann, A mannered grace: the life of Laura (Riding) Jackson
(Persea Books, New York, 2005).
36 Laura Riding, Love as love: death as death (London, 1928).
18 Caroline Archer-Parré
37 A. E. Musson, The Typographical Association, origins and history up to 1949
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38 David King Dunaway, ‘Huxley, Aldous Leonard (1894–1963), writer’, Oxford
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39 Aldous Huxley, ‘Introduction’, in O. Simon & J. Rodenberg (eds) Printing of
today (London, 1928).
40 Mosley, ‘The press in the parlour’.
41 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0,
11 January 2021, August 1683, trial of John Culefant (t16830829-14).
42 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0,
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43 1 Mark = 13s 4d.
44 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0,
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45 Bank of England, ‘Counterfeit and imitation notes’. Online, https://www.ban
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47 Bell’s weekly messenger (London, 1789).
48 J. E. Hall Williams, ‘The Ladies’ Directory and criminal conspiracy: the judge
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