Letters & Books

I skipped out of the shop an hour early today and stopped in to see my friends at the Esther Clarke Wright Archives at Acadia University. They had an interesting brass telescope on display. I of course noticed the lettering.



The archivist showed me what seems to be a Latin copy of Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, printed by Anton Koberger in 1493. This famous piece of incunabula was hidden in plain site for many decades in an odd collection of rarities assembled by William Inglis Morse and donated to Acadia between 1926 and 1931 (other parts of his library went to Dalhousie and Harvard). This book, a history of the world, is famous for its integration of text and illustration. It has over 1800 woodcuts, some extending across page spreads. This copy seems poorly printed at times compared to other sheets from the incunabula period that I have seen, and hand colouring infrequent. If you’d like to see high-resolution images of pages from a fully coloured copy, click here.



Once the special collections room was closed for the evening, I went to the general stacks and found this nice endpaper in a copy of Jack Shadbolt’s Mind’s I; Poems &: Drawings, published by M&S in 1973. I’d guess by the style that it was drawn by M&S house designer Frank Newfield, not Shadbolt.



I made a stop on the way home at my neighbourhood antiquarian bookseller’s, The Odd Book. I took the opportunity to extol the virtues of the understated text and jacket design of a copy of Donald Creighton’s Canada’s First Century, 1867–1967, published by Macmillan of Canada in 1976. Even in a small town, it is possible to find examples of both old and beautiful design if you know where to look and what you are looking for.

Memorial Hall Borders

In October, I travelled to Fredericton, New Brunswick, for Ross Leckie’s Sixth Annual Poetry Weekend at the University of New Brunswick – or Leckiefest as I’m want to call it. Founded largely by accident, it’s the world’s most down-to-earth and dead-simple literary festival. Readers ranged from Leckie’s promising creative writing students to Griffin Prize winner A.F. Moritz. I met a pile of interesting writers. It was the first time I’d heard Sue Sinclair, Kevin Connolly or Zach Wells read, for example, or met Arc magazine’s Anita Lahey. I wasn't reading, but Gaspereau authors Michael deBeyer and Ross Leckie read, and Halifax poet Matt Robinson read from a letterpress-printed broadsheet he commissioned me to design and print for him. Gaspereau’s long-time proofreader, Christina McRae, was there too, reading from her new book published by Wolsak and Wynn. I can’t say enough good about this folksy little event.

One of the great things about Leckiefest is the venue. The readings were held in Memorial Hall on the campus of the University of New Brunswick. Built in 1924 to honour the 35 UNB Alumni who died in the First World War, Memorial Hall was originally designed as a science building. When my architect friend John Leroux heard that I would be spending the day in Memorial Hall, he raved about it and emphasized that I must check out the stained glass windows. (John, author of Building New Brunswick: An Architectural History, is a bit of an expert on New Brunswick’s built heritage.) And John was absolutely right. It’s an astonishing space. And the stained glass windows inspired me to design a new suite of typographic ornaments. John graciously went back to take some detail photos of the windows for me. This week, I completed a trail version of the font. No doubt I'll use these ornaments in some forthcoming Gaspereau projects.

Also this week, Gary and I, and my son Adam, knocked down some walls in the printshop in order to dedicate more room to letterpress printing. In this renovated space we will install two Vandercook proofing presses, an 1833 Albion press and perhaps a Chandler & Price or Pearl platen press or two, as well as type drawers and the composing stone. Gathering these tools together from various corners of the shop where they are presently dispersed will effectively create a quiet, well-lit letterpress studio – a better place for printing and perhaps eventually for teaching as well.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Wikipedia: Martha saved Letterpress

I got an email this weekend from my buddy Peter Koch, letterpress printer and cultural buckaroo extraordinaire, based in Berkeley, California. Peter directed me to the Wikipedia entry for “Letterpress Printing,” specifically the subsection entitled “The letterpress revival since the 1990s.” The entry says:

Letterpress publishing has recently undergone a revival in the USA, Canada, and the UK, under the general banner of the ‘Small Press Movement’. Interest in Letterpress was fueled initially by Martha Stewart. The use of wedding invitations in her magazine Martha Stewart Weddings, was the first to use pictures of Letterpress invitations in their images. The beauty and texture became appealing to brides who began wanting Letterpress invitations instead of traditional engraved invitations. […] Popular presses are, in particular, Vandercook cylinder proof presses and Chandler & Price platen presses. In the UK there is particular affection for the Halifax, built by Arabs.

Needless to say, I was interested to discover that convicted felon and home decorator Martha Stewart was in fact responsible for ‘fueling’ the revival of letterpress printing. Here I had thought that it had something to do with all the incredible letterpress printers operating round the world (like those, for example, who are involved with the Fine Press Book Association). I also have no idea what a Halifax press looks like, or who these crafty Arabs are who manufacture it. Perhaps Martha can enlighten us in an upcoming issue of Martha Stewart Weddings, a must-read publication for anyone in the letterpress avant-garde.

So in tribute to Martha’s outstanding contribution to letterpress, and Wikipedia's endless potential for jawdropping insipidness, I’m posting one of Peter Koch’s great ephemeral pieces below. Keep your presses rolling, Peter. Some day you may make a contribution equal to Martha's.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

When Winter Fringes Every Bough

Winter’s around the corner, so I took a little time out from a demanding week to print a little broadside of one of Henry Thoreau’s poems on leftover ends of some green St. Armand handmade paper we had kicking around. When you’re tired out and working too fast, slipping a little joyful play between other responsibilities, obvious blunders sometimes slips past you unnoticed – until you’re home by the wood stove, that is. I snorted when I saw the kerning problem between the A and V in ‘David’. You could drive a bus through that gap! Well, whatever. Henry won’t mind. The poem is “When Winter Fringes Every Bough” and you can find a version of it online at the web site of the Walden Woods Project (which is a very worthwhile project, indeed).

Speaking of Thoreau, Gary Dunfield made the first 50 sheets of handmade paper for the jackets of our long-overdue letterpress edition of Thoreau’s essay Walking. We hope to have some copies of the paperback version in circulation before Christmas (given that the title pages state that it was published in 2008).

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Editing 'Through Darkling Air'

After the excitement of wayzgoose, everyone settles back to work at the press. As well as the usual run of commercial typesetting, printing and whatnot that occupies a portion of every week, I’ve spent a good portion of this one making corrections on Peter Sanger’s epic book on the poet Richard Outram (1930–2005), Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram. As well as publishing collections of verse with, among others, MacMillan, The Porcupine’s Quill and Aliquando Press, Outram and his wife, the artist Barbara Howard, produced broadsheets and limited edition books under their Gauntlet Press imprint. You can find out more about the Gauntlet Press and see examples of their work by visiting the excellent online archive hosted by Memorial University of Newfoundland at the link below:

http://collections.mun.ca/gauntletpress/

A 512-page casebound book including an index and 48 pages of photographs and illustrations, Through Darkling Air promises to be one of the most ambitious trade publications Gaspereau Press has ever undertaken. It fits both within the oeuvre of Peter Sanger’s works of belles lettres (Spar and White Salt Mountain) and Gaspereau’s series of works on major figures in the Book Arts in Canada (launched with autobiographies by Wesley Bates and Jim Rimmer last year).

The book is slated for release in April 2010, in all likelihood with a launch at one of Outram's old Toronto haunts. That is, if I can ever finish getting these pages and pages of corrections and changes entered! Sometime readers fail to realize the amount of work that goes into preparing a text for press, the many rounds of editing, revising, and proofing. On a complex book it can be exhausting for author and editor alike. Sometimes it feels like a long carry between two distant lakes. But these issolated lakes always reward the effort it takes to reach them.

ANDREW STEEVES

The Goose Approaches!

Our annual wayzgoose and open house is just a few days away. As well as working overtime to get books shipped to launches and events, we’re dusting off some of our lesser-used typefaces and presses in preparation for our many guests on Saturday. Visitors will be able to try their hands at three different presses – an Albion, a Vandercook, and likely a Chandler & Price – in order to print a three-coloured broadside. I’m also putting together my slides for the evening talk on the Wild Letterforms of Kentville, though I think I’ll forage a few more times before I settle on the final line-up. For more information about wayzgoose activities and events, click here.

Boats and Bits

Today I’ve got the second of two colours to handprint on the jacket of John Terpstra’s new book Skin Boat. Local illustrator and calligrapher Jack McMaster did the water pattern, as well as an illustration for the frontispiece (the guts of the book are printed offset). The type is Jim Rimmer’s Amethyst. The paper is Domtar’s feltweave. Printed letterpress, the white lines of the waves seem to rise above the paper.

I’m still working away, botanizing wild local letterforms – fontanizing? I’m planning to give a talk called Wild Local Letterforms: A Taxonomy," at our annual wayzgoose and open house, to be held this year on Saturday October 24. More on that later. For now, B is for … well, many things.

–AS

Letters from a Small Town: Letter A

Here in the Town of Kentville (TOK), when it comes to wayfinding and signage, we’ve got the usual dog’s breakfast of letters hanging around on our shops, posts and fences. Being somewhat fond of letters, I’ve started to document the local alphabet – the good and the bad – and am assembling them under the general title Letters from a Small Town. I’ll post some of the images here on the Gaspereau Press blog from time to time.















Before computers and vinyl cutters, stencils were a cheap, utilitarian way for the average citizen to make a pre-fab letter. The rough texture and deep colour of these plywood Town of Kentville signs greet me when I bike through the parking lot by Town Hall.















Even the stencil isn't idiot proof, as this sign with its backward Ns proves. If you zoom in at the bottom of the sign, you can see some renegade hand lettering which makes reference to the 'LIKER STOR'.















Like the LIKER STOR letters, most of my favorite local letterforms are one-off originals, made on the spot specifically for the function and context they serve. This sign hangs on the back of the local curling club, visible from the old railway line which is now a public walking trail. Why is it around the back? Was it replaced by a more 'sophisticated' modern sign with pre-fab letters? I'll have to walk around the building and find out next time I ride past on my bike.










This post was brought to you by the letter A.

– AS

Alcuin Dinner in Toronto

We got a nice package in the mail this week from Stefan Rose, author of The House That Stands, a book which I designed for Thaddeus Holownia at Anchorage Press last year. It was one of the six books that I designed at Gaspereau Press that was recognized by the Alcuin Society in its annual Canadian book design competition. Stefan attended the Alcuin awards dinner at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto a few weeks ago and was kind enough to gather up our certificates and mail them to us. Never one to neglect to offer of a free meal in lean times, I asked wood engraver and long-time collaborator Wesley Bates to attend the dinner in my place. His report, in part, follows:

“It was a great honour to be your stand-in last night. You and Gaspereau were the darlings of the event. I got to stand at the front and receive four awards in a row for you. More that any other press. Bravo! As for me, well, I was warmed to the core in the spotlight that was cast on Gaspereau. I met people that I hadn’t seen in years. The meal was lovely. I had never been in the Arts & Letters Club before and Don McLeod of the Devil’s Artisan journal gave me a tour of the building. I had a little acceptance speech worked out but they didn’t give anyone the mic so I just smiled and waved at everyone for you. – Wes”

You can find out more about Wesley Bates by visiting his web site or dropping in to his gallery on the main drag in Clifford, Ontario. You can also read about his experiences as a wood engraver in his recently published book In Black & White, which was one of the books which was recognized for its design at the Alcuin dinner.

You can find out more about the Alcuin society by visiting their web site.

A.S.

The Creatured Letter

The other day I went poking around in the Acadia University archives in order to photograph some materials for a print client. The manuscript in question was an autograph transcription of the journal of the New Light evangelist, itinerate preacher and hymn writer Henry Alline (1748–84). Though not a Baptist himself, Alline had a great influence on the establishment of that denomination in the Maritimes. He was a bit of a loose canon, however, with more than a few unorthodox ideas; many in the established churches were suspicious of this young, golden-tongued upstart.



















The transcription of Alline’s journals was made by Handley Chipman (1717–99). A ‘New England planter’, Chipman moved to Kings County, Nova Scotia, from Newport, Rhode Island, in 1761. Settling in Cornwallis, he was elected Justice of the Peace, then Judge of Probate, a position which he maintained until his death and which, it appears, left him with sufficient leisure time for copying Alline’s diary. There was no photocopier, camera, or OCR scanner available to him in those days, and you wouldn’t engage a printer if your intention was simply to make one copy. You might engage a copyist, but it seems Chipman viewed this as a more personal tribute to Alline.

My hand cramped just looking at these pages. Notice the careful emendation on the left hand side of the spread (‘Thus’), the space-saving ampersands, and the clear craft and love of making letters evident in the curly extenders of letters like g and d (see ‘Kingdom’ on the right hand page).















Now, if the pen were in your hand, and you actually made it to page 102 of a handwritten manuscript, do you think that you would still be making letters such as these – if you could make them so skillfully in the first place? These days, we live in a world of prefabricated letters, just as we live in prefabricated houses and eat prefabricated food. I wonder what is lost by having only to type one key to make such a letter appear on the screen, and another to reproduce it a thousand times over or to send it hurtling around the world? When we cease to shape our own letters, do we lose something of what they represent?

The penultimate line in Douglas Lochhead’s suite of poems, Homage to Henry Alline is: “The creatured universe is a little song of love.” And so is the creatured letter.

AS

Gaspereau Press Wins Six Alcuin Design Awards

Six books designed by Gaspereau Press co-owner Andrew Steeves have been recognized in the Alcuin Society’s 27th annual juried book-design competition.

Four of the six winning titles are trade books which were published by Gaspereau Press in 2008. The remaining two books were designed for Anchorage Press, a private press operated by photographer Thaddeus Holownia in Jolicure, New Brunswick.

The Alcuin Society was founded in 1965 and promotes the appreciation of fine book design in Canada. This year’s judges – Alan Stein, Frank Newfeld and E.A. Hobart (Zab) – examined 233 books published in Canada in 2008. A total of 32 awards were granted in eight categories: Children’s, Limited editions, Pictorial, Poetry, Prose fiction, Prose non-fiction, Prose non-fiction illustrated and Reference. The winning books will be exhibited internationally at the Frankfurt, Leipzig and Tokyo book fairs, and at locations across Canada.


SECOND PRIZE - PROSE NON-FICTION
Wisdom & Metaphor by Jan Zwicky

This is a redesigned hardcover edition of Zwicky’s award-winning book of philosophy. The original version also won an Alcuin award for design in 2003. Designed by Andrew Steeves and printed and bound at Gaspereau Press.



SECOND PRIZE - POETRY
The Muskwa Assemblage by Don McKay

This letterpress-printed poetry book is the first book which employs a jacket paper handmade by Gary Dunfield at Gaspereau Press. Designed and handprinted by Andrew Steeves at Gaspereau Press.



SECOND PRIZE - PROSE FICTION
That Tune Clutches My Heart by Paul Headrick

Set in the 1940s, this short novel follows one girl’s high school experience as recorded in the pages of her personal journal. The jacket features an original illustration by Wesley Bates. Designed by Andrew Steeves and printed and bound at Gaspereau Press.



THIRD PRIZE - PROSE NON-FICTION ILLUSTRATED
In Black & White by Wesley Bates

This is a luxuriously illustrated memoir by one of North America’s foremost wood engravers. Designed by Andrew Steeves and printed and bound at Gaspereau Press.

National Poetry Month

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
– T.S. Eliot

Well, Tom, say what you wish about April, but here at Gaspereau Press it’s a month that gets us all shook up. Not only is there water running in the brooks and birds singing in the trees, warm sun coaxing grass to green and trees to blossom – there are also the spring poetry books, the fruits of our winter’s labours, ready for readers.

Poetry? I hear you saying. But don’t go making the mistake of thinking that poetry is all delicate frou-frou about lovers, obscure flowers and Greek goddesses. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some of my best friends are Greek goddesses.) Poetry is tough stuff. Made right, poetry is the very sinew which holds language together, making communication and understanding possible. It allows us to temporarily hold impossibilities in place and examine them, to consider one thing through the lens of another, as Shakespeare does with his beloved and a red rose. Simply put, the limber, metaphorical language of poetry makes it possible to express things about our experience in this world which might otherwise lie beyond expression. Where there is meaning, there is likely some form of poetry giving it voice; where there is poetry, meaning is possible.

King Oedipus, frustrated by his inability to procure an executive summary of an oracle from the prophet Teiresias, grumbles How needlessly your riddles darken everything. Sophocles has his wry prophet respond that in riddle answering you are strongest. Is it any surprise that a writer faced with the complex tensions and contradictions present in a figure like Oedipus – a figure at once guiltless in his ignorance of his crime and guilty of a great offence against order – would advocate for a limber, metaphoric language strong enough to convey difficult, dangerous truths? And how could a language that wily, that full of tensile strength, do anything other than get you excited about April? … Tom?

◊

In Canada, April is National Poetry Month, and we’ve decided to celebrate by reaching into our poetry backlist and posting a poem on our blog every day for the rest of the month. Most of the poems we will feature are from books published by Gaspereau Press, but we’re also planning a few surprises.

We'll kick things off with a poem by the west coast poet Tim Bowling, who is presently living in Edmonton. The poem appeared in Fathom, which was published by Gaspereau Press in 2006 and won the 2007 Alberta Book Award for poetry. It also appears in the 10th anniversary anthology Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1. – AS


Sixteen Wild Cherry Trees
Tim Bowling

In a pair of cut-off jeans and nothing else
I go back to raid them.

They’re gone. If I want to stain myself
I’ll have to cut and bleed.

Eight samurai
thick thighs planted
girded our town.

When they cried
I walked in their tears.

After battle
I was a crow
at their guts.

Sixteen lookouts—

now who watches
the high mountain passes
for the man who must raid
what he loves
to survive?

Copyright © Tim Bowling, 2006

In Our Library

In the process of learning the craft of printing and publishing, Gaspereau Press has gradually been acquiring (surprise) books. From time to time we’ll use this blog to give you a peek into our modest though eclectic library.

One of the rarer volumes in our library is a copy of A Dictionary of the Art of Printing, written by William Savage and published at London in 1841 by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. The printer was A. Spottiswoode, New-Street-Square. Arranged alphabetically, this book is a collection of practical facts and historical background on everything the nineteenth-century printer might wish to know. Covering topics ranging from the practical (casting-off, page imposition, mechanics, hyphenation rules) to the arcane (the Doomsday Book, Rose Engines) to the exotic (composition rules for Hebrew or Sanskrita), the book remains a valuable a tool for students of fine printing as well as the print historians.

If you can’t lay your hands on a copy, the contents of this book may be found on Google Book Search:


http://books.google.ca/books?id=QLXukDnn4PMC

The First Day of Spring

The first day of spring! And we’re getting close to the release dates for some of our spring 2009 titles. Most of the books are now progressing through the production line, some on press, some in sheets, some sewn, some bound. This time of year it’s hard to find a flat surface in the printshop that isn’t piled up with paper which is in some state of becoming a book. This week, as well as tidying up the last few details on the text of Anne Simpson’s essay collection The Marram Grass, I also used the Vandercook 219 letterpress in my office to print a few book jackets for spring titles and an invitation to our upcoming Spring Poetry Tra-la at Ben McNally Books in Toronto. That is, when I wasn’t busy crushing cupcakes. —AS

Andrew's Printshop Review 2

Out in the printshop and bindery, we were mostly working on commercial jobs this week. One of our more interesting clients is the Blomidon Naturalists Society. We design and print their quarterly newsletter, which includes reports on all sorts of local birds, animals and plants as well as on the society’s various meetings and field trips. I’ve tried to to bring an early 20th century Curwen Press look to the publication, complete with original oak-leaf ornaments designed by Wolfville calligrapher Jack McMaster. This picture shows a signature from the newsletter moving through the Smyth sewing machine in preparation for perfect binding.















When Gary wasn’t busy casebinding more copies of Wesley Bates’ In Black & White, filling book orders or tinkering with grumpy sewing machines and folders, he found some time to carry out a few more paper-making experiments. We’re developing a method of making sheets which allows us to control the exact amount of pulp that goes into each sheet. Last night Gary completely turned our working theory on its head and, with some hastily-built test gear, pulled some very good sheets.















And me? With the spring selling season bearing down upon us, I’ve mostly been chained to my desk this week, typesetting and editing. Our spring catalogue is now out to film and headed to press. This year’s catalogue features a detail from an early wood engraving by Wesley Bates which we also used on this year’s edition of the Gaspereau T-shirt and plan to silk screen on some boxes for a special US marketing campaign we’re undertaking next month.















I did manage to escape the computer for a few mornings this week, and completed the printing of the coloured drop capitals on the letterpress edition of Thoreau’s Walking. Gary and I have decided to build pine boxes to house the 26 lettered copies of the deluxe edition of this book, in homage to the pine box which Thoreau is said to have built to house his notebooks and journals. You can find more information about this book on our website.

Andrew's Printshop Review

Things are getting busy in the printshop again after a bit of a break over the Christmas holiday. As usual, there are many different projects at many different stages, but my main focus at the moment is on designing the guts of new poetry books by Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen and Carmine Starnino, and the jacket for Robert Bringhurst’s Selected Poems. Kate and I are also trying to get the spring catalogue to press – which is several weeks overdue on my account. I’ve been distracted with both commercial design jobs and the production of two letterpress books.

















This week I started to print the green ‘spot’ colour on our forthcoming letterpress book, Walking, an essay by Henry David Thoreau. The printing of the text is complete, and after I print all the drop capitals and such I’ll be ready to print Wesley Bate’s three engravings from the blocks. The paper is a wonderful German sheet called Biblio. The green is PMS 443, a selection inspired by Rockwell Kent.

















Speaking of letterpress books, the printing of Don McKay’s The Muskwa Assemblage is complete, but we’re still trying to find time to make the paper for the jacket. More accurately, as I told Don, we’re still trying to find time to make the equipment we need to make the paper for his jackets. I’ll include some pictures of our papermaking process in a forthcoming post. In the meantime, Don was good enough to send us some cotton fibre to help make the paper for his book jackets – an old pair of his own blue jeans.