I have been deeply grieving Craig Arnold’s death and have consequently been mute. I don’t think I can elaborate any more than that.

For now, here’s a write up on the Bitch magazine blog about Lindsey Markel and the upcoming You Are Among Friends book, in which I have a contribution. If you are interested in donating to Lindsey’s amazing and important project, you can do so at her Kickstarter page.

Honestly, paper making is one of the few aspects of book arts and print making that doesn’t get me fired up. But this weekend Colleen’s studio had an open studio event and I encountered Rhiannon Alpers‘ work for the first time. It made me seriously reconsider my attitudes toward the craft. Her work is phenomenal. Being in her in space and surrounded by her work was a nearly spiritual experience. Rapture is really the only way to describe it. Go to her website and click on Artists Books and then click on the second to last triangle on the right. One of my favorite pieces I saw that night. After that, look at everything else. Gorgeous.

Julie Chen is a well known book artist in the Bay Area. She teaches at Mill’s College. Her website is beautiful and so is her work. Flying Fish Press. 

Paris was exhausting in its beauty. It took all of last week to settle my sleep back into a regular schedule. But here I am again, well rested, tragically unemployed and consequently with plenty of time on my hands to give a proper update.

While in Paris I intended to visit the Imprimerie Nationale and the Bibliothèque Forney. I couldn’t determine from the Internet whether or not the Impremerie was still in operation, or if it had perhaps been privatized and no longer open to the public. So I decided to forgo that trip, though in retrospect I wish I had at least ventured over that way.

The Bibliothèque Forney, however, was open. The institution houses the type drawings and library of the now defunct Deberny & Peignot foundry. A bit of background from The Elements of Typographic Style:

Joseph Gaspard Gillé the elder, one of Fournier’s apprentices, opened his own foundry in Paris in 1748[...] In 1827 the novelist Honoré de Balzac acquired the foundry as part of his intended writing, printing and publishing empire. The scheme failed at once, but the foundry was rescued by its manager and bought by Alexandre de Berny.

Gustave Peignot entered separately into the typefounding business in 1865. His own foundry entered its first creative phase under his son and grandson Georges and Charles Peignot, who issued historical revivals of the work of Jean Jannon and created a series of types based on the letterings of the eighteeth-century engraver Nicolas Cochin.

The De Berny & Peignot foundries merged in 1923. Under the guidance of Charles Peignot, the enlarged firm issued new designs by Adolphe Cassandre, Adrian Frutiger and others. When D&P ceased production in 1975, the type drawings and company library went to the Bibliothèque Forney, Paris, and most of the typographic material - including a set of original Baskerville matrices - to the Haas (now Fruttiger) Foundry, Münchenstein. Baskerville’s punches, also formerly help by D&P, are now at the University Library Cambridge.

The staff was extraordinarily helpful with my requests and gracious toward my non existent French (a special thanks here is due to Typfoundry for keeping an archive of important typographic resources. That entry insured that my spelling of all the important names was correct, which is absolutely essential when you have to communicate though written slips of paper! Do check out the journal, it is a fascinating delight.). While I was examining some specimens, one of the librarians who had been helping me excitedly rushed into the reading room and told me that a member of the Peignot family was at the library to deposit some additional documents for the collection and wanted to know if I should like to meet him. I of course said yes. This man turned out to be Monsieur Jean-Luc Froissart, grandson to Georges Peignot and nephew to Charles Peignot, an absolutely charming gentleman and fantastic story teller.

Monsieur Froissart sat with me for over an hour and regaled me with stories and gossip about the family, giving a delightfully human sheen to the material in front of me. He scowled when he spoke of the grandmother who had insisted on the foundry only designing inline type (an edict which did not prevail), beamed when talking about Georges Peignot, and sighed at his personal perceived incompetence of Charles. Monsieur Froissart had written a book about his family and a copy was in the library. We looked at the plates together. My favorite was a photograph of Charles, boldly bare chested and in sharp profile, taken by Man Ray. “Naked,” the librarian chuckled.

The serendipity was incredible and perhaps the crowning element of my trip. I had to sign many documents stating that I would not publicize any photographs I took of the collection, so I can’t share any of my beautiful pictures. However, Monsieur Froissart is not part of the collection, and so I leave you with this portrait.

Monsieur Jean-Luc Froissart

I don’t even remember how I first heard about Hatch Show Print. Hatch is such a significant part of American letterpress that it kind of seeps into your consciousness via osmosis if you hang around a studio long enough. As I use letterpress primarily for book making, Hatch is a vibrant reminder of the possibilities of color and space and graphics. And as I am magnetically drawn to French Renaissance typography and fonts, I tend to become mired in a heavy golden dream of the 15th century, to which Hatch also serves as an inspiring wake up call, boldly announcing the goddamn modern *A*M*E*R*I*C*A*N*E*S*S* of printing in these United States.

An exhibit of Hatch Show Print posters just opened here in Seattle at the Experience Music Project - Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame and I am THRILLED (both to see the exhibit and to actually go inside the EMP - SFM, the name of which always makes me ask Seriously what does that mean???). It’s long running, till July, so you have some time to make a West Coast pilgrimage if you need to. Or if you’re local, you have time to go twice. Or three times. Or four.

(PS Dear Bauhaus, please do not ever, ever, ever again play the instrumental version of the soundtrack to CATS that’s playing right now. Please.)

Lizzie sweetly invited me to the Portland Zine Symposium this past weekend. She’s been volunteering at ZAPP this summer and they had an extra bed at their hotel for her, so away we went.

I’ve been out of the zine loop for what feels like ages. Since taking up letterpress I’ve been much more focused on fine printing than I have on the DIY scene. The last few months, though, I’ve been feeling the itch to do zine making again, and with modern communities* talking about starting up a quarterly publication, PDX was a welcome inspiration.

Despite not being connected with the scene for a couple of years, I was pleasantly surprised to run into a few names that I remembered. I used to get Lady Pajama’s per zine and I got to met her for the first time. LP happened to be tabling with Courtney Blazon, who’s art is currently up at Victrola, where Lizzie works. Theo Ellsworth was also there. I’m crazy about his art and was delighted to hear that he has a book forth coming. There were several zines that I didn’t follow but knew by title and was pleased to put a name with a face, and of course I discovered some new gems. There was a farmer’s market happening behind the building and we both purchased poems from Luis Maestre (Or maybe Luim Tremases? His business card has both names!).

Also, a young lady asked if she could photograph my rat tail for her blog, RAT TAIL DREAMS.

Lizzie after a long day of zines.

*Check out our sister journal, WWR (or at least it should). There’s a passel of new interviews up.

I remember when I held the Doves Press Bible. I made a small gasp and a bolt lit my body, a feeling close to erotic attraction. It was single handedly responsible for demonstrating to me of the intrinsic power of a well made book.

Since my first encounter with the Doves Press I have cultivated a more personal taste in font. The Doves Roman, drawn by Emery Walker and cut by Edward Prince, is a font I find particularly handsome. It is, unfortunately, lost to history. The way Les told the story, as I remember it, goes something like this:

“Thomas Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker were the partners of the Doves Press. They agreed that whoever lived the longest would take over after the other died. It became apparent that Walker was going to outlive Cobden-Sanderson, and he could not abide the thought of Walker running the establishment. So Cobden-Sanderson began filling his pockets with type and tossing the handfuls into the Thames from Hammersmith Bridge on his walk home every evening.”

Image courtesy of History of Graphic Design 2008