It is September 18th, 9/18, and someone somewhere at some point some seven years ago decided this was awfully similar to .918, which is an important number for letterpress printers like me: .918 is the standard height of type. Convivio Bookworks began sponsoring back then a Letterpress Appreciation Day celebration at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries, and we’ve done so ever since. This year, we’re supplying the Italian cookies. I also designed the print, and if you’re in the area, you can come print one on the center’s 1890 Wesel iron handpress, which is the same type of press that I first learnt to print on with Glenn House in Alabama, and then with David Wolfe in Portland, Maine.
This year’s print is a famous quote by Charlie Chaplin: I am a citizen of the world. It relates to an exhibition the center is running now about silent films and the novels in pictures by folks like Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward that came about alongside those films… and so there’s been a lot of Charlie Chaplin in my life lately, not to mention Buster Keaton and Mabel Normand and Fatty Arbuckle and Mary Pickford. Here’s something I realized the other day, as I pulled a few proofs: Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889… so when the center’s Wesel iron handpress was built, Mr. Chaplin was but a year old.
We’re printing for this Letterpress Appreciation Day Open House today until 5 PM and again tomorrow, Monday 9/19, from noon to 5 as well. I don’t have a photo of the print here to upload as I type this, but there is one on our Instagram feed! See it there, and follow us while you’re there, too.
P R I N T E R S R O C K !