Book of Days

Ask any letterpress printer about the number 0.918 and if that printer is worth his or her salt, they should give you a hearty smile and a twinkle of the eye. It is an important number in their craft: 0.918 inches is the standard height of type. From the base of the type to the printable surface, no matter if it’s metal type so small you need to set it with tweezers or a piece of wood type so large you can fit only one character at a time into the press, all of it measures the same 0.918 inches in height.

I’m a printer and a lot of the folks who read this blog are printers and book artists. This is because we know each other (sometimes only by name) and we support each other (sometimes without ever meeting). We are a tight knit bunch, book artists and printers. And today is a big day for the printers. It is September 18, 9/18, the closest iteration of 0.918 we get on the calendar. It is Letterpress Appreciation Day.

Printshops around the globe will be celebrating, and if they’re not, they should be. Convivio Bookworks is sponsoring Letterpress Appreciation Day at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts, as we do each year. We bought the center 50 pounds of popcorn kernels for the event and for a film festival that ran all this week on the run up to Letterpress Appreciation Day. So today, I plan on eating popcorn, printing if I’m lucky, and remembering all the great printers I have known and the ones I have never met but whose work has influenced and informed my own through example and the power of good timeless design. The ones I have known have all been real characters, which, when you think about it, is the essence of any good printshop and of any good story. Make the story you live a good one.

Image: This year’s Letterpress Appreciation Day message of positivity reads “Live a Good Story.” It was set in historic wood and metal types by JCBA student Charles Pratt and we’ll teach folks to print it themselves on the center’s 1890 Wesel Iron Handpress, just as my friends David Wolfe and Glenn House taught me so many years ago. Thanks Charles. Thanks David. Thanks Glenn.

A lot of the folks who read The Book of Days are book artists, because I am a book artist, and we book artists are a tight knit bunch. We look out for each other and we take care of each other and we support each other’s projects. And for those of us in the book arts who happen to be letterpress printers, today we have another red letter day. It’s not one you’ll find in any calendar, and it was only recently dreamt up by someone involved in the craft. But each 18th of September we printers celebrate Letterpress Appreciation Day, and this is based on one very important measurement: the height of type in the US and the UK, which is always 0.918 inches. That measurement is from the base of the type to the printable surface at the top of it, and it is the same no matter what point size the type: the smallest 4 point type cast in metal to the largest wood type you can think of for printing large posters––all of it measures the same height: 0.918 inches.

Someone a few years back thought it would be a good idea to honor printers and printing on September 18 (9/18) and some of us (ahem, me) have been celebrating this date ever since. If you know a printer, this is a good day to shake his or her hand and to admire what they do. If you are a printer, this is a good day to share what you know.

On this particular Letterpress Appreciation Day, I remember the man who first taught me how to print on an iron handpress: Glenn House. He taught me, and now I teach others. One of the great things about humanity is we take what we know and we pass it on. Glenn House left this world on Sunday. He was a good guy. He liked to say “yes” where others said “no,” and this is something I try to emulate, too. The day we printed at the iron handpress at the University of Alabama, we printed an old poem, an old song, and it went like this:

William Matrimmatoe
He’s a good fisherman.
He catches hens,
Puts them in pens.
Some lay eggs.
Some lay none.
William Matrimmatoe
He’s a good fisherman.
Wire, briar, limber, lock.
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east.
One flew west.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
Wire, briar, limber, lock.
Out goes you, old dirty dish rag, you.

Glenn was one of the quiet superheroes I have known in my life, and so this year, the printing I am doing, with others, is a small way to honor his memory and his legacy. To spend this day printing: well, Glenn would like it like that.

Image: This year’s Letterpress Appreciation Day message of positivity. Printed on the 1890 Wesel Iron Handpress from historic wood types.