Printing

I remember the excitement of learning to read, and what a liberation that was. I remember the book: Wide Range Reader Blue Book Three, and I remember the story, of a mouse that collected with its tail jam that spilled from a jar on a shelf. There was a magic about books, and the printed words on a page, that could be deciphered and were the key to new worlds. I remember learning to write, with the Marion Richardson method. I also remember my father occasionally taking out his signwriting brushes, to make signs for the coronation, or for church noticeboards, or for solicitors' windows. He made me look at letter forms, at spacing, at serifs and all the other subtle details of letter shapes.

At some stage I was given a John Bull printing set, and I loved it. I made a stamp that I inserted into every book that we had inherited from my grandparents in the attic. It read: "Return to Frank's Library by:".

At some stage I acquired a new set, no longer with wood in it, but the modern material, plastic. This is the set I still have.

My aunt Lyn also studied art when young, though to a lesser degree than my father, but she too had a love for letters, and I still have the books she used for reference. I still have her copy of Lewis F. Day's 'Alphabets Old and New', with his preface dated 1898. A friend of William Morris, and an important member of the Arts and Crafts movement, Day influenced Lyn and me too. Lyn's copy is well battered and much used.

'Alphabets Old and New, Lewis F. Day, 1898

All the alphabets in the book fascinated me though, and I enjoyed examining them and learning from them.

This is another book I inherited from Lyn, and I too used it. I studied it, learning with her help to copy the letters, and even winning a prize at the Dolton and Dowland Annual Flower Show for my first attempts at calligraphy. Lyn obviously studied the book too, though the most used pages, that are now detached, are these:

When I was fifteen or sixteen the sisters at the Cenacle convent allowed me full and free use of their disused printing equipment. They had an Adana press, founts of types, including founts of French manufacture—they were a French order—and fascinating type for use in plainchant. I bought john Ryder's 'Printing for Pleasure' in the Teach Yourself series, and studied it intensely and closely, trying to glean what help I could from it. I did print some items, and I wish I had them now.

It was thirty or forty years later that I finally acquired my own Adana printing press and started to do a little printing again, but it is an art, and requires practice.

I acquired several trays of type too, in different fonts, which I also still have, plus more recently some wooden letters, printing blocks, and the general paraphernalia of printing.

My composing sticks. Thanks to learning how to compose type as a teenager I am still quite proficient in reading upside down and back to front. In the foreground is an automatic numberer for items such as tickets.

I also have two sets of letters in my bookbinding equipment, which I had hoped to use one day.

I did continue to practise my calligraphy over the years. At St Bede's Mr Ron Smith, a Latin master and customer of my father, ran a lunchtime handwriting club, where I learnt italic handwriting and developed the discipline which allowed me to adopt a mature hand. I can still write in italic, though my everyday handwriting is considered an illegible scrawl I argue that people are less able nowadays to read a calligraphic hand.
I also learnt to write Hebrew, and developed my skills in Hebrew calligraphy, inclusing writing my own ketubah, or marriage certificate, in 1982. I remember the rabbi commenting at the ceremony that it was the first time that he had officiated at a wedding where the groom had inscribed his own ketubah.