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