It’s strange how an experience can seem inconsequential, but over time can mutate into an obsession. We have two such letterpress experiences involving large pages of large metal type, both occurring in England. And while I took dozens of photos at both spaces I didn’t take a single one of the images of the type that would come to haunt us.

The first experience came in 2004 when we were taking a week-long letterpress workshop with Claire Bolton at Alembic Press, just outside of Oxford, England. She would print large book pages for the Reuters news service each time a Reuters journalists was killed in the line of duty. Reuters would write a short biography and Claire would print ten copies of the bio on two sheets. These would be distributed to the various Reuters offices and placed in an unfortunately ever-expanding book. The typography was 30 point Garamond with 18 points of leading set on a 75 pica measure and printed on her Albion iron hand press. The field of type was stunning.

Claire Bolton (right) during one of our visits with a group of my students.

The second experience came on a visit to the studio of London letterpress printer, Ian Mortimer. He printed a large sheet listing important donors to the Royal Academy of Art. As I remember, there was the year in red, followed by names of important donors in black. The next year he would add the new year in red and continue down the sheet. The whole page was treated as one continuous paragraph with the texture of those colorful years sprinkled down through the sheet. The page might have been as large as 24″ x 30″ or so, printed on Ian’s Albion.

Ian Mortimer (center) showing type specimen sheets from his book Ornamented Types which was the catalyst for us starting our lives as letterpress printers.

When we first started looking for an iron handpress, we had these two projects in mind. We wanted to do large pages of type. Speeches, dedications, opening sheets in large portfolios, etc. So, finally we got both a 25″ x 38″ Hoe and a 21″ x 29″ Albion iron handpress which shifted our focus to obtaining large metal type. We could do one of these pages in photopolymer, but we wanted to be able to do it in metal.

On Thursday, February 19th we traveled to Washington, D.C. to see Roland Hoover at his Pembroke Press to pick up that large type that we think will realize our field of dream type. Roland was in desperate need of some space in his crowded shop to accommodate a number of cases of wood type and had offered to sell Lead Graffiti a run of Garamond (roman & italic) from 14 point to 72 point. Additionally, he was willing to part with 72, 84, and 96 point Caslon (roman & italic). Almost all of the large type is foundry metal.

A sample of the 96 point Caslon.

For some photos of moving the type, click here.

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