Tags
book arts, Chad Pastotnik, Deep Wood Press, education, Letterpress, Linotype, Oak Knoll Fest, Printing
First off, having recently returned from a most encouraging showing of my books at Oak Knoll this past week, I must say thank you to many who have followed this blog and whose friendships I continue to make and cement in the “real” world. I was amazed how many mentioned reading this or the social media bits of DWP’s online presence and I feel I must apologize for this blog having turned more into a PR tool or travelogue. It was my intention from the beginning for this to be more about process and dialogue. So let’s begin again and I will attempt to stay more on track though I will still mention new work or events but direct you to other sources for more details. This will be a somewhat longer post to get things rolling.
type hand-set on a curve
Dialogue – what is letterpress printing?
At these events and exhibits I have the pleasure of the company of fellow printers as well as a cultivated relationship with private and institutional collectors of my books. It is with interest I have noted a recurring theme of discussion which has been raging in the fine press world for over two decades but it seems the buying public is just starting to wonder: What is letterpress printing? Allow me a couple of paragraphs to cover the general process and history, neither exhaustive or fully concise:
By definition I suppose it is printing from a relief surface via letterpress. Letterpress is a term that has only come into existence really in the past 50 years and has morphed into both verb and noun use. Prior to this time it was the only widely used reproductive process as innovated by Gutenberg in the 15th century and it was merely “printing” and those who printed were “Printers” Today, those of us who continue the tradition, draw on this legacy for better or worse.
Gutenberg’s legacy is that of the matrix from which type is cast in a mould. Type is something you can pick up with your fingers and compose into words, form sentences, paragraphs and pages with. It is the famous “26 soldiers of lead” which conquers ignorance and tyrants. Type remained in this form until the late 19th century when machine composition became a possibility with the technology and resources made available by the industrial revolution and manifested by Monotype composition casting equipment and the Linotype and Intertype line casting innovations. Both of these new means of putting words into page form allowed for composition to be done via a keyboard and then cast into type metal from that action to form the composed page. With this innovation and increase in production some compromise was made in typography as compared to hand composition but refinements could be used to help negate and bridge the narrow gap. This technology remained in place essentially until the 1980’s with the advent of the ease of modern desktop publishing with the dark days of film composition enjoying a thankfully brief stay in the 60’s-70’s.
So why is the question being asked now – what is letterpress printing? What is new now and not part of the 500-year-old tradition of printing is the advent of polymer plate printing. Arguably this technology is what may have saved letterpress from near death and made it accessible and popular with small presses offering wedding invitations, business identities, packaging, ephemera and – books. Printing from plates is relatively easy and they are created predominantly on computers. No knowledge of the history or the art of printing is necessary nor are many of the skills ingrained in producing printing with metal types needed.
Nearly everyone with a computer can compose text, add illustration and even make a book. True also that anyone given a box of paint and a brush can paint a picture. The quality of the product created is the sum of the individual’s understanding of the process, their artistic abilities, level of craftsmanship and, I would add, their understanding of the history of their craft and those who shaped it. There are countless programs now in higher education across the US, the UK and beyond teaching letterpress and book arts courses in degree programs and, thankfully, almost all of them start teaching students the basics of hand typography – assembling type you can pick up from cases and composing the project as has been done since Gutenberg. The polymer machine sits in the corner biding it’s time and offering sweet promise of relative ease and speedy efficiency to be utilized later.
I fully acknowledge that now, at this point in time, it is very difficult to assemble a letterpress shop. The machines, fonts of type and supporting industry revolving around letterpress ceased to exist in the 60’s for the most part. Twenty two years ago when I started printing book forms I received the bulk of my equipment for free or little money merely to make room in more progressive established print shops for more storage or that new all-in-one color laser/dye sub/inkjet thing that did 90% of what their customers wanted. What is left now of the equipment is often quite expensive to purchase and, while type still exists, it is not the sturdy foundry type of the days of old and still commands a premium prices as well. Printing from plates also has the potential of producing work of the highest quality indistinguishable from metal type except maybe for being “too perfect” – not a guarantee but full potential if used by a typographer and designer skilled in better than average desktop publishing software.
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- linotype and hand set composition on the press
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- hand set type form on press
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- polymer plate going on a press
WHAT IS LETTERPRESS PRINTING?
Is it merely printing from a raised surface? Or is it more?
What is it to you? To what do you give value?
Chad Pastotnik, Deep Wood Press 
What you have outlined above begins to define where letterpress printing is today, but I fear that the future is bleak, even with the developments in the past 15 years or so. The ability to generate a printed surface is not what makes to craft survive. Without the purpose-made papers, inks, machinery, and industry support, letterpress continues to dwindle, and when there are no more presses to buy, no more parts to replace worn ones, and the other processes (such as offset) from which we continue to borrow are supplanted by other industry options, it will become impossible to operate at a level that makes it competitive as a business interest. Folks who enter the craft today have no sense of what it was 50 years ago, and now they never will. This is proven daily by the unfortunate fact that proofing presses sell for many times the value of production presses, which often go begging or are junked because the current crop of letterpress aficionados have no idea how to operate them. The dilettantes and dabblers will come and go, but the increased demand for the remnants of the process will force true dedicated crafts-people, into a position to be financially unable to continue.
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Interesting comment indeed. I agree that larger scale commercial ventures may already be “profit challenged” using our antiquated processes. Outfits like Hatch more likely draw customers on the history and charm of the product service rather than the price point that must be given just to break even on the project. It is no longer time and labor efficient to print via letterpress unless the customer is willing to pay the premium for the desired unique effect of the result. Additionally, the market seems now glutted with new letterpress stationers offering brides their services and other ephemeral printing to which polymer is quite suited and paper companies have actually developed new products for.
I would argue that on a much smaller scale, such as making books or visual art related printing that the process will remain sustainable. Suppliers such as Graphic Chemical in Chicago continue to make good ink, many of the traditional paper mills in Europe and some in the USA offer good paper stocks (Atlantic Papers & Legion are big importers) and there is a good support industry for bookbinding and other paper arts. But, yes, these are all catering toward an “art market” rather than on the industrial supply scale. We have become a specialized, premium market and that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you can sell it.
The rise in equipment costs, repair and supplies is an issue I agree. The loss of big production presses is mournful as well, you also need a good dedicated place to put these beasts and the related support equipment which is another investment. Supply and demand rules prices for anything but I see the greater letterpress community more akin to vintage farm tractor enthusiasts than Wall Street traders – the best way to come by equipment is to network with established printers. These are the same people that can offer instruction and guidance in technique and process whether their history be from the production industry or fine arts.
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As always, I am inspired by your work and passion for this process. Your ability to articulate the ins-and-outs of it all is impressive too!
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Thank you Mary and may I say likewise about your wonderful prints. Your work strengthens my discourse I believe with your Japanese wood block prints. One may achieve a facsimile of the result by other, more modern, processes but would it be respected or accepted in Japanese culture?
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Thanks much for this dialogue. Feels important to keep returning to some of these root observations and questions about this craft / art. For me (a hand-set metal type person, relatively new in the field), one of the many “values” of the traditional printing process is the very fact of its slowness. I came to this craft from the literary arts, not the graphic arts; the time that it takes to write a poem, to read and sit with a poem, is resonant (for me) as I stand at the cabinet and compose that poem with lead type. Somehow, I get a sense of the interior life of a poem — and the poem’s work in my own interior places — as the letters and spaces accrue in my hand/composing stick, one by one. I like that.
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Well said Emily. I don’t fancy myself much of a writer but on the occasions when I have composed verse from the case to the stick or just random dialogue on the Linotype keyboard I’ve found some gems. Sort of like driving down the road and writing a song to a tune in your head out loud – sometimes you’ve got to pull over and write it down! Interesting perspective too as I come to printing from a fine art background and sometimes the words are marginalized by my overall intent. Book forms become so intimate on so many levels for both the creators and viewers.
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