September

The arrival of my 12x18" Chandler & Price a couple weeks ago certainly deserved its own post, but I've been so busy since then arranging the shop and making room for new equipment, and trying to do profitable work, that the opportunity went by the boards. This picture nicely captures the excitement involved. I had to widen the front door to pass the press and paper cutter through, a time-consuming but not difficult project. Then we got to play with the hydraulic lift gate of a Ryder truck, which can be a rollercoaster, bumper car or Ferris wheel depending on your common sense. The press weighs just over a ton, so in strapping it down for the four-foot flight we erred on the side of paranoia. There is a moment about six inches off the ground where the lift gate retracts and tilts down, which knocked the press back on its heels for a breathless split second. Thanks to the allied brilliance of John Barrett and Joe Riedel, the whole thing went very smoothly. We eventually even managed to get the press off its oversized skids. It was worth the extra hour and a half of logistics. Joe is a pro.

While the press awaits the skilled touch of a master electrician, I've been occupied with various layouts for projects in their early stages. The round-ferrule brush is still an intimidating instrument, but I have made some rather satisfying improvements which make for happier lettering.

The other day I was contacted by a friend offering me a few pieces of surplus equipment. I continue to be amazed by the generosity of friends at this tender stage of MP&L's lifespan. I've been "in" business for almost a month. But after the addition of this recent trove of composing room essentials I feel much closer to actually "doing" business, printing-wise.

Unloading the 400-lb Miller saw was a little dicey. But it all worked out in the end. And I can't begin to describe how cool this thing is. It comes with a router attachment which would allow me to, say, make my own wood type. And much else besides!

In a fit of OCD this morning I scrubbed seven Morgan expandable roller trucks, which will ensure a smoother ride for my new rollers. This is the before shot.

The Miller in position. It has a grinding wheel mounted just to the right of the bed. That'll keep my chisels good and sharp. There's a funny picture in the literature that came with the saw of a group of bowtied printers at the window throwing out all the separate pieces of equipment necessary for the various things the Miller happily does all in one.

I'm hoping to lay a slab of marble on top of the galley cabinet for imposition, thick enough to accommodate an inscription running along the edge. That is the plan, at any rate.

So far it has been a tremendously satisfying experience running my own shop. Not without its attendant anxieties (and they are not insignificant). But bottomless responsibility is somehow a small price to pay for standing on your own two feet. I won't feel completely settled until I start running the press. But for now the dizzying swirl of things to keep track of and get done feels a lot like Real Life. I'll take it.

Sterling Fair

My friend Darrell Hyder at Sun Hill Press had printed a few ART SHOW posters for another occasion, and when I paid him a visit last week he gave me one to hang on my tent at the Sterling Fair. It wasn't entirely misleading, as I shared the space with my mother who was selling prints of my grandmother's paintings. Her art work has been featured on Fair t-shirts, buttons and posters, as well as various town publications, for decades. If anyone knows me at all in Sterling it's as Rosemarie's grandson or Heather's son. This year the Sterling Fair gave me the chance to re-introduce myself as an artisan (ARTISAN SHOW?), and I have to say I was cheered by people's response to my work. I met a man whose father worked at the Colonial Press in Clinton, major book printers back in the day, and he remembers his father coming home with errant sorts caught in the cuff of his pant leg. Proud of his high standards to this day, he will occasionally pick up a recently printed book and shake his head in disgust. I can hardly blame him, though I should say I do know where to look for admirable modern book design. Thanks to all those who visited my booth and took the time to have a conversation about printing and lettercarving.

Darrell tried his hand at it while his wife Elisabeth observed.

 

 

Meg showing off her skills to her friend Jackie.

 I entered my Welcome sign into the Fair auction on Sunday.

End of an era/begin again

A parting shot of the sign on the door I opened and closed almost every day for six years. I'm fairly sure it was brushed by the late Gino Lee, who worked at Firefly alongside John and also Edith McKeon Abbott back in the late '80s/early '90s. Sort of a tacit challenge: learn how to do this, too. I accept.

Life has been a wild tumult these last few weeks, moving house after seven years from Boston to central Massachusetts and shop from a horse stall in a barn and a few galleys at Firefly to a building in a converted textile mill outside Worcester. I'm sort of in a state of elated shock: I own a small business doing the two things I love most and I live in a beautiful village with the one I love most. I return to this space excited to share my excitement (like Philip Booth: "today if ever to/say the joy of trying/to say the joy.") and hope to put an end to weeks of internet silence. There is work to be done.

September 3, 2012, my first day as sole proprietor of a printing and carving shop. By way of swearing-in ceremony, I did what anyone else in my position would do: I assembled a rusty, battered double-wide type cabinet. This was part of the first trove of printing equipment I acquired, before I had any real notion of how to go about living the printing life. I was still involved in publishing, working as an occasionally paid factotum at a small poetry press in Brookline, MA, when the director said he needed to clean the basement. That meant getting rid of the 10x15 Peerless Jobber and a great miscellany of printerly accoutrements originally purchased by the press's founder, who had aspirations of running his imprint as a limited-edition poetry print shop. He died canoeing before this dream could be achieved and so the equipment languished in the director's basement for no one can remember how long. Until I volunteered to take it, that is, the thinking behind this decision being that if I had a press I must be a printer. Now the reverse is true: I'm a printer but I don't (at least until [post alert!] next Wednesday) have a press. However I do have a lot of much else besides, and so I got to work. It took a couple of hours to scrub off the patina of rust, figure out where I wanted to go and then put it together. A satisfyingly absolutely filthy job, but once it was in place I could begin to design the rest of the shop.

After lunch I took a break from shoving equipment around to lay my first font of type into a clean case. Every job has its equivalent, I should think, its "best part." Alright, laying type may not be the best part of printing, per se, but it is awesome. Especially with a face like 42-pt Augustea Inline, which demands satisfaction. It was something of a reunion, actually, as I purchased the face from the sad, amazing type sell-off at The Stinehour Press in 2008 and later purchased the type cabinet from a friend who was present at the final auction of whatever was left in 2010. In that moment I made the world a little more whole. It is a great thrill to serve as a caretaker for the prodigal equipment of a once-great press. We are all stewards of a long graphic-arts legacy. Some realize and appreciate this, others don't. But it seems to me that you can always tell who is on which side. The work doesn't lie.