I’ve know Michael Delp for many years now and have admired his writing so when I became aware of his new series of Mad Angler poems I knew I had to finally get a project together with him. I know I’ve been doing a fair amount of trout related themes here in the shop latey – bare with me, I know it is an affliction of some sort – I’ve some Oscar Wilde in the works as well to please the non afflicted lovers of fine books and print.

The Mad Angler’s Manifesto is a longish poem, far to many words to hand set from the case as I would quickly run out of sorts (individual pieces of type) in a large size that usually is only used for headlines or titles. So for the past week I had been experimenting with something new on my Linotype and attempted to cast 24pt faces on an advertising mold. I’m happy to say that after some initial fiddling it has been a great success. As the Linotype is only able to cast 30 pica lines (5 inches) many of the lines of the poem had to be pieced together from multiple slugs into 50 pica lines – further complicated by only having 2 matrices for the letter “h”.

Then the galley of slugs is brought over to the press room and proofed on the Vandercook.

After a couple corrections and the addition of leading, a title and a few other refinements another proof is made.

Next up is to finish the large linocut I’m working on to accompany the text. So far the specs are: 24pt Lydian with 144pt Americana title on a 18.5 x 26 inch sheet. More to come soon as I hope to have it done for this years Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor.