Tuesday, January 31, 2012

the mystique of damped paper

John Denny of Puriri Press, Auckland, New Zealand has kindly sent in the following note about some of his experience of damping paper - 


. . . I've been meaning to contact you re damping of paper. Beth Serjeant and I have had success freezing damped paper in between printings. The record so far is six months in the freezer between printing text and image. I've installed a special little freezer in the garage just for handling paper, and it's most useful being able to yank a piece out, let it thaw, and have it almost instantly ready for use. Even after six months, the paper was beautifully limp and not at all wet, and printed perfectly


and Philip Gallo of Hermetic Press sent me a nice little card about which he wrote the following - 


cover damped 10am; printed
1:00pm, the same day - all
3 colors.


held one week; inside
re-misted, printed interior -
held one more day -
colophon printed
All told - eight days - 


I'm now getting very interested in experiences that are somewhat outside the usual assumptions about the vulnerability of the paper-damping process - and would like to hear from anyone with experiences of the same order - and thank here Philip & John for their permission to post

Friday, January 27, 2012

two more eyes for you

having been somewhat quiet over January, it's time to get this space moving again - and it starts with two blogs I have found, one sent to me by Juergen Wegner in Australia, and the other by the printer himself -


Typefoundry
this is the blog of James Mosley who, according to one source, is Visiting Professor in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. He retired as Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in London, 1999, and was founding editor of the Journal of the Printing Historical Society. He received the annual award of the American Printing History Association for contributions to printing history in 2003. His blog is full of detailed, interesting information about type & type history. Here it is -

Ephimeros
the fresh new blog of Norman McKnight, handpress printer (uses a Pratt-Albion handpress, as I do) at Philoxenia Press. I wonder if it's possible, perhaps even desirable at this early stage, to document the Pratt-Albions, list their owners, serial numbers & dates etc. In any case, Norman's Philoxenia Press is a fine mix of the traditional and the quirky, worth following in my view as a further sense of what the handpress may do, even on such a small press. Ephimeros (in ancient Greek the accent is on the second syllable) means, according to my lexicon, longed for, desired: delightful, agreeable.  Here it is -

Sunday, January 1, 2012

herein : the new year

drawn by Thomas Digges, 1546 - 1595, astronomer & mathematician, the first to postulate (wunnerful word, postulate) the Copernican system in English, and the first to postulate (aaahhh) the dark night sky paradox [look it up in Wikipedia (I did) but basically it says that anywhere you looked into the sky, the infinity of stars means that there will be a star in your line of sight, and that means that the night sky would be covered in stars, and therefore completely white, rather than mostly dark] - in any case, whatever light comes to you from wherever, may your 2012 year bring you all it damn well ought to - cheers to y'all - and with the sincere affection of the printer/poet. . .