About this story: this past spring, Robert McCamant traveled to Vancouver, B.C. to check out the thriving bookmaking community. The resulting article he wrote, “It’s Something in the Air” can be found at the Caxton Club’s website. This profile of Jim Rimmer is one of eight in the issue.

Jim Rimmer creating type on the pantograph. (photo: Robert McCamant)

(photo: Robert McCamant)

Jim Rimmer is a Vancouver typographer, printer, and designer. He is also one of the pieces of glue that holds the world of Vancouver fine printers together; countless times, I heard people say things like, “I had a problem, and Jim was able to fix it,” or, “I had no idea how I was going to get accents for the font, but Jim cut some for me.”

Rimmer was apprenticed to a Vancouver typographer, J. W. Boyd, in 1950. After his 6 years as an apprentice, he worked at composing another 6 years, but by then he could see the handwriting on the wall; there was no future in typography. So he went to night school to become a graphic designer, after which he worked at newspapers and design firms. He hung out his own shingle as a free-lancer in 1971, and never worked in someone else’s studio thereafter.

But metal type and letterpress printing interested him all along, and he started to accumulate equipment in his basement and work/play with it in his spare time. “In 1964 I started collecting like crazy. So many people were getting rid of type and letterpress equipment. Some of it needed to be saved,” he said.

Jim Rimmer’s Colts Armory. (photo: P22)

He has several presses, including the very large Colts Armory. When Rimmer got it, this rebuilt beast of a platen press was missing parts, many of which he machined or figured workarounds. It’s fussy and requires plenty of attention, but a full spread can be printed at once much faster than on a hand-cranked cylinder press. He also has a complete Monotype setup (including this caster , which lets him cast individual letters for handsetting and complete pages of text when driven by punched paper tapes. But the most unusual thing he has is a pair of pantograph machines, which allow him to engrave matrices for making new type faces. (I’ve seen working Monotype setups half a dozen times in my life, but the only pantographs I remember seeing were in books.)

Jim Rimmer at the pantograph machine. (photo: P22)

In fact, he even has a third pantograph in storage, a Ludlow Weibking pantograph he got from the late Paul Hayden Duensing Printer, typographer and teacher who inspired Rimmer’s handsome Duensing Titling , who had, a couple of decades earlier, acquired it from the Caxton Club’s own Robert Hunter Middleton, Middleton created over 100 typefaces while working for Ludlow Typograph Company of Chicago, most notably Eusebius, based on Nicolas Jenson’s Roman who was allowed by the Ludlow company to place them with deserving individuals. But unlike the ones Rimmer uses, the Ludlow one has no markings for setup, so it is much harder to use.

Detail of one of Jim Rimmer’s Monotype casters. (photo: Robert McCamant)

In the graphic design world, Rimmer was always good with a brush or pen, and he frequently hand-lettered logotypes A notable example is the logo for the Pacific NW based two sister band Heart or drew insignias. (“They called me a ‘wrist,’” he joked.) So it was not a big step for him to design typefaces. He tried a few in the era when the Photo Typositor was the king of setting headlines (the 1960s and early 1970s), but was disappointed that they did not sell particularly well because they were not the kinds of styles then in vogue. But in the digital era he has a huge number of typefaces to his credit. P22 sells more than 200 of his faces, distributed through 18 type families. Many of these are revivals of classic faces (some done first for Lanston or Giampa while others are entirely original. I have half a dozen of his adaptations in my font library (some well-known faces include Albertan , LTC Garamont, and Kaatskill), but didn’t realize he had done them until I spoke with him in Vancouver.

Here again, Rimmer goes one better than type designers I have known. He has not done just digital type, but metal versions of some of his faces. When he’s going to make a metal face, he first draws it by hand, then transfers it to the Ikarus program on the computer. That allows him to play with spacing and do trial settings to be sure it looks right in small sizes. He prints out outlines from the computer, and these are used to hand-cut cardboard ones. The cardboard outlines are used with the pantograph to create smaller lead matrices. A final pantograph step creates actual-size matrices in brass for use on the casters.

One of Jim Rimmer’s monotype diecases. (photo: Robert McCamant)

His most recent face, called Stern (in honor of friend and fellow typographer Chris Stern, who died unexpectedly in his 50s), is to be simultaneously released to the public in digital and metal by P22. The foundry has even made a video of Rimmer at work in his basement casting the metal. “They had a lot of fun shooting it,” he said. “My workshop is close quarters, and they had to be careful not to bump their heads or get into something hot.”

The big project front and center in his shop currently is his edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Right now all the pages of metal type are in cabinets around the room. “This one I’m having proofread four times. In the end, eleven typos were discovered in my last big book, which I consider an embarrassment. So this time I’m being as careful as I can be.”

The Tom Sawyer includes Rimmer’s lino cut illustrations—8 full-color, full page plus 38 small cuts—and uses his own typeface, Hannibal Oldstyle. The type is standing and he’s gotten the paper in (a cream-colored paper from Arches), so now all he’s waiting for is the completion of the proofreading. The edition of 75 copies has been in progress for over five years with many interruptions, but Rimmer hopes to be binding by summer’s end.

This is actually the fourth big book from his Pie Tree press. He did an edition of Dickens’ Christmas Carol in 1998, Shadow River: The Selected and Illustrated Poems of Pauline Johnson in 1999, and Leaves from the Pie Tree (the story of his life in typography) in 2006. And in between, there have been dozens of pamphlets and broadsides for just about every book-related event in British Columbia over a span of many years.

Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry

328 Eleventh Street, New Westminster, BC Canada V3M 4E2 / 604-522-5321

Finding his calling:

“When Grandfather heard I was not too hot on the idea of becoming an apprentice compositor he called for me to come and see him. I arrived at the Duke Street house and found Grandfather in the backyard, hoeing potatoes. He propped the hoe in the crotch of the plum tree. In the cool green of his garden, he tamped his old briar, took a draw and started in his gentle voice: “I hear you want to go back to school. Now that is a fine thing, to have an education behind you, but there are different ways to get educated; and they are all good education. You have a fine opportunity to have a trade. Printing is an old and respected craft. There is art in printing. You are artistic; you will have a chance to use it. At one time printers were the only people aside from nobility who were allowed to carry a sword.” He took a pause to relight his gurgling pipe, and midst the perfume of the rhubarb and loganberries he continued: “and if yer don’t take the job I’ll kick yer little arse all the way up Duke Street!” I accepted my Grandfather’s offer on the spot. My fated collision with printing has been quite plainly one of the greatest blessings in a charmed life. I can’t think what direction life would have taken had my father and grandfather not interceded in my desire to attend formal art classes. I can’t place a value on what six years of apprenticeship training gave me, particularly the typefounding portion of it.”

…

Pie Tree Press is named after this “ancient snagly old tree in our backyard, from which a couple of lovely old sister ladies who used to live next door to us would bake apple pies. They always referred to it as the Pie Tree.” (photo: Jessica Spring)

“Printing, illustration, type design, typefounding, type engraving, bookbinding, graphic design, stonecutting and digital type design are things that have occupied me, and do to this, my seventy-second year. Excepting the bit of letter-cutting in stone, these occupations have put dinner on the table; but it has been my good fortune to have loved the work. A very big surprise came upon me in the mid-nineties when the fickle advertising business discovered it couldn’t live without linocuts represented in annual reports, billboards and potato sacks!”

…

“School was a thing I was never very good at. I was afflicted with a learning disability, a run-away imagination and a thickish smattering of laziness. Dyslexia was as yet unknown, but unfortunately for a few like me the label “stupid” was not, so I was for the greater part passed off as being a little slow. In spite of it all, I had a fine left hand and did well in “language” class when we were occasionally given the liberty to write a short story. My stories were over the top; while the brain team documented in thrusting prose their summer vacation in Moosejaw, or how they helped paint the garage, my stories involved wild mustangs sweeping up imperiled daughters of later-grateful ranch owners, and saving them from the burning prairie. Pure Hopalong Cassidy.

“I lived for the one art period that redeemed the soul-rasping days of readin’, writin’, ciperin’ and suf-ferin’. I believe I spent ninety-five percent of class time decorating my exercise scribblers. English, Social Studies, Arithmatic; is mattered little to me. These subjects represented just so many square inches of clear margins that made way for cowboys, Indians, zeppelins; whatever took me away from the dead air of the class and the unending drone of a teacher…”

…

Printing class, in high school:
“All of us grunts were given an on-going task; that of distributing back into a California Job Case the type that had been set the previous year by Grade 10 students and used in the printing of the school annual. The type was 12 point Century Oldstyle, cast for the school by historic and now long-dead trade typesetter and typefounder Shilvock Parkes. The school composing room had more than twenty cases of this type, so each lad had his own case to “diss” type into. The object of this tedious job was to teach the student the “lay” of the case. When the job got just too much to bear we would simply broadcast a handful of type over the case as though planting wheat, and then scratch over it like a cat in a litter box trying to bury the crime. Mr. Tate knew the sound and would come rushing over and catch a person in the act. It was his usual practice to interrupt a boy in his work, take up a composing stick and set a line from the case. If there were any typos he might on rare occasions dump the case on the floor and instruct the lad to put it all back “correctly.” I think this happened only once or twice, and everyone thought better of attempting to take a short-cut. After the Christmas break we graduated from dissing, since by that time all the text matter had been dealt with. We were then given the treat of setting a few lines… in 12 point Century Oldstyle. To this very day Century Oldstyle is one of the very few types that I can’t get too enthusiastic about. Ironically this type was more or less the flagship face on the Linotype in the shop that I was eventually to become apprenticed to.”

…

Jim Rimmer’s first press:
“There on the wooden plank floor sat an ancient 8×12 side-lever platen press. Light from a solitary side window washed over the press. Years of dust blanketed it, and blooming morning glory grew up through the planks em-bracing my prize. It was, to put it plainly, a thing of near perfect beauty. Only another printer will understand that sentiment. I bent to brush the dust from the main yoke that spanned the back, revealing in relief the name COLUMBIAN. Smitten, I stood up and asked if he might sell the press, and what the price would be.”

(Editor’s note: the man selling the press asked $25; Rimmer bought it for $30.)

Jim Rimmer’s shop is nestled in a yard behind his Victorian house on a quiet street in a suburb of Vancouver, BC. A quaint letterpress placard on the door instructs visitors to walk around. The entrance is graced by a type specimen of Duensing Titling, carved in stone by Rimmer. A tour of this hard working shop, along with work samples and stories shared by Rimmer, makes it clear why he is considered a living national treasure in Canada. There just aren’t many people who can cast type any more, and even fewer who can take the mere idea of a font then bring that idea to form in lead, tin and antimony, ready to print once it cools off. When Fred Goudy was doing such a thing for his Village Press, he had a lot of equipment and craftsmen ready to lend well-trained, experienced hands.

Rimmer has a network of typecasters through the American Typecasting Fellowship (despite the name, an international group) that share ideas and technical knowledge in keeping this craft alive, and member Rich Hopkins sums up Rimmer’s very special skill set: “Jim is truly unique in that he has such an “instant” design flair and has a mastery of all those neat devices he uses in cutting his types.”

In 2006, after 50 years of printing, designing, typecasting and teaching Rimmer was joined by friends and colleagues to celebrate, complete with an introduction by Robert Bringhurst. Dubbed “Rimmerfest”, the event marked Jim Rimmer’s contributions to a craft he continues to keep vital.

Following is a Q&A interview. Also check out Bob McCamant’s article on Jim Rimmer as well as excerpts from Rimmer’s autobiographical book “Leaves from the Pie Tree.”

(Jessica Spring) Your first press was an 8 x 12 Columbian purchased for $30 and “a thing of near perfect beauty.” What were the challenges in using this press?

(Jim Rimmer) The Columbian platen press: the difficulty was in pulling the handle to get an impression. The press was very heavy for its size, but under-engineered. As a result it was very hard work to pull the handle with enough force to get a good impression on any type forme over about 5×7 inches.

Any love affairs with other presses in the past?

Jim Rimmer’s Colts Armory (photo: P22)

My favorite press is definitely the Colts Armory. Its immense strength has made it possible to print two books with large type area with no difficulty. In spite of its age of 105 years and its marked wear, it still prints well with a little care. It’s a good ‘n!

I had a small Reliance handpress a few years ago. It had been in an engraving studio that I worked at as a designer back in 1970. It was used for nothing more than scrunching the metal engravings down onto the wood blocks. I tried to buy it, but no luck. I chased it around town for the next 25 years, until the owner finally sold it to me. I got really broke a number of years back and had to sell it. It was a beautiful thing, and printed well, but printing that way is more idealistic that I wanted to be. Printing on a powered press is work enough.

You’ve been a printer since learning how to set type in 10th grade. What are you most proud of?

I am most proud of being able to stay at the craft more or less without a break for nearly 60 years. Or quite simply, I am proud to have been associated with the craft.

Most of your books include a typeface designed and cut for the project, such as Hannibal Oldstyle for Tom Sawyer. Are the fonts intended for one-time use only, or do you envision other uses?

My fonts will more than likely be used for just the one book. Hannibal may be used again if I have the years left to print Huck Finn. In the past I have preferred to experiment and move on to new type designs.

When you design a typeface do you work differently depending on its final form as metal or pixels? Was Stern a new challenge knowing it would be both?

When I design a typeface in either digital or metal, I think of it being printed letterpress, and envision each letter’s bite into the paper. Though some would argue with this opinion, I think that almost any typeface can be used for either litho or letterpress printing. After all, in the end, they are merely images that are to be laid on paper, and if printed by a good press operator will come out clean and crisp.

Stern was no challenge at all in so far as the two technologies are concerned. The challenge was to make a type that I think Chris Stern would have liked to see printed, or to print with.

You learned your craft after six years as an apprentice only to see the trade give way to offset printing. For folks who missed this transition, what was it like?

Linotype (image: Dudley Randal Center for Print Culture)

At first the decline of letterpress was slow, but soon sped up. Within about 15 years from my first awareness of the decline of the craft there was hardly a Linotype or Monotype machine in town, and presses were relegated to numbering and diecutting. Let me say, it was sad, and I thought (foolishly) that it was fickle and capricious that the shop owners should dump such an honorable craft with its history and grace without a backward glance. What saddened me even more was the indifference of the printers themselves to the loss of letterpress. Some loved to say: “No more dirty type. Now we can wear white shirts to work.”

Any comments on the revival of letterpress and photopolymer?

I am delighted to see so many young and not so young people getting involved in letterpress. Although I have no personal interest in printing from polymer plates, I am aware that they print every bit as well as does metal type. That said, if I had no choice but to print from polymer plates, my interest in continuing on would be reduced by about 99.5%. There is just too much fascination for me in designing, casting and setting metal type.

What has been your biggest challenge as a printer?

(image: Type Club of Toronto)

There have been many challenges. My biggest challenge as a printer has been the book I am completing at present: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom Sawyer has been the greatest challenge from the standpoint of its size. The text is lengthier than anything I’ve done before, and I designed and made the typeface (Hannibal Oldstyle) to run on the Monotype composition caster. This in itself has never been done outside of the Monotype company, I was told by Harry Wearn who worked at British Monotype for many years.

So I suppose the making of the type matrices was the most time consuming and daunting part. Also there are a lot of linocut illustrations which I had to draw and cut.

Your favorite typeface?

That’s a tough one to answer. I love so many of them and I hate none of them, but I have to say that I think Cartier (Carl Dair’s original design, not the handful of re-creations that are out there) is my favorite typeface.

Most of your illustrations are linoleum cuts. What’s the appeal of the medium?

Linoleum cuts from A Christmas Carol , published by Pie Tree Press, 1998. (image: Type Club of Toronto

Linoleum cuts just pluck the strings of my inner harp. I like the rugged gutsiness of them, and I like that each one is a complete surprise once the first proof is pulled. I admire the look of wood engraving, but it’s not for me. I think I lack the skill and the patience to work in that medium. Linocuts suit my impatient nature.

Any typographers/printers throughout history you admire?

Gutenberg; Nicholas Jenson Born in France in 1420, Nicolas Jensen was trained as a goldsmith but became a letter cutter, printer and publisher. While working in Venice, Jenson produced a roman type based on the humanistic scripts of his time. He produced over 150 books, including Eusebius printed in 1470.; FW Goudy Prolific type designer who was a true celebrity in mid-twentieth century America. No, it’s true: a type designer was a celebrity at one point in American history! Goudy’s designs were sold primarily by Lanston Monotype and by his own Village Foundry in upstate New York; Bruce Rogers American typographer and book designer born 1870–1957, known for the design of Centaur, which was a project for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A special version of the font was used to produce the Oxford Lecturn Bible. Completed in 1935, the Bible was set with a Monotype caster to showcase the machine’s abilities.; Paul Hayden Duensing Jim Rimmer’s good friend and mentor, Duensing was involved in every aspect of the typographic arts. He designed and cut matrices for Quadrata, Chancery Italic, Unciala and Zapf Civilté; co-founded the American Typecasting Fellowship; and wrote numerous scholarly articles on the history of typography. Penland School of Arts and Crafts in North Carolina has named a gorgeous new letterpress and printmaking studio in his honor including a scholarship endowment.; Chris Stern; and my grandfather, Arthur Boutilier.

Once upon a time, back when photopolymer was a newfangled thing for letterpress printers, Chuck Izui gave me a call from Aiko’s. Aiko’s Art Materials was founded by Aiko Nakane in Chicago fifty years ago. Chuck Izui worked there nearly 30 years, taking over ownership and continually providing exquisite art supplies in a warm-fuzzy-yet-zen environment. The store will close this April leaving a huge void. He was putting together a show at the store for Walter Hamady Book artist, professor, papermaker, letterpress printer Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady was born in Flint, Michigan in 1940. Species: homo ludens. and wanted a little card to announce the event. It should be understated (like Aiko’s) yet not too stuffy or serious (like Walter). I was honored, yet petrified at the prospect of designing and printing work for a book arts luminary. Chuck broke out some gorgeous handmade kozo for the project, adding to my fears. I wrestled with a decision for days over what to do. I had limited type and the piece called for a lot of “P”s, propelling me towards the use of photopolymer. Wouldn’t Mr. Hamady be horrified?

Page spread: Depression Dog by Toby Olson, illustrated by Henrik Drescher, Jim Lee, David McLimans and Peter Sis, 2003. Verso displays illustration by Henrik Drescher, recto is text by Toby Olson. This title was a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Books/Fifty Covers.

Many years later when it’s hard to find a letterpress printer NOT using photopolymer, Boxcar Press emails. They’re putting together a new website and hope to start with an interview of Walter Hamady. Again I’m honored to be asked, but still petrified. Walter Hamady has been the proprietor of The Perishable Press Limited since 1964, publishing 130 books, collaborating with numerous authors and artists, such as Toby Olson and Paul Auster. His books See some of his work at Vamp & Tramp Booksellers or check out this 2.1 MB PDF 4-page catalog from fine press dealer Priscilla Juvelis, Inc. have been consistently been awarded AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers, undoubtedly influencing graphic designers and the commercial world where their work appears. He taught for more than 30 years at the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a list of students that reads like a Letterpress Who’s Who: Walter Tisdale, Caren Heft, Barbara Tetenbaum, Amos Kennedy, Jeff Morin, Kathy Kuehn. With numerous exhibitions in his career, curators and colleagues have poured over Hamady’s books, sculptures and collages, extolling his prodigious talents with finely crafted prose.

Page spread: Reflections on a Carboard Box by Paul Auster, illustrated by Henrik Drescher, 2004. Verso is Drescher illustration of three heads falling, recto is title page. This title was a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Books/Fifty Covers.

Our interview begins by snail mail Hamady uses a typewriter, one with red/black ribbon. His wife Anna is the official word processor, hard at work transcribing Hamady’s journals. These transcriptions will be part of Hamady’s next project, “A Timeline of Sorts” which will gather bits and pieces recorded beginning in 1963 when he was an undergrad at Wayne State in Detroit.and I start the ball rolling with our Aiko’s connection, tentatively broaching the photopolymer question. Years later, I’m still curious. I seal up the envelope using some vintage Gutenberg stamps for luck. Within a week, an envelope arrives postmarked Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, where Hamady lives with his wife Anna on a farm not far from Madison. His Vandercook A non-motorized SP-15, which requires hand-cranking for ink distribution. is set up in the farmhouse parlour and papermaking takes place in the barn. Hamady responds in a perfectly typewritten letter dated “17 Febrewarie 2008”:

“Why would anyone be horrified by the use of polymer plates? Who cares HOW you get there, just get there, no?”

Photographs of Walter S. H. Hamady by Zane Williams, 2004

I like this guy, this self-described “heretic aethiest curmuddgeon irrasible,” nutty spelling and all. I breathe a small sigh of relief, and continue reading. Hamady suggests I can see his books by contacting Elspeth Pope, Elspeth Pope is a retired librarian, hobby printer and Director of Hypatia-in-the-Woods, a retreat for women in the arts, which includes a letterpress shop. When she and Jim were married, she told him she’d rather have a printing press than a diamond ring. She got an SP-15 with a motor. who lives about an hour away. Elspeth’s late husband Jim Holly From Hamady’s journal entry from Friday, March 1, 1968: “Meet Mr. Holly at Macalester. (When we met, I don’t remember all the details, the weather was probably gray and cold, and I remember I had a huge great coat from Army Surplus that just about went to the ground with great double-breasted big lapels. The point is that meeting Jim Holly who was the Librarian at Macalester College and you know he looked at the work and just not any screwing around he wants a standing order for this stuff. No pussy footing, no dickering, nothing vague about it. It was just an honest straight up saying hey man he recognizes this is something interesting, and something slightly unusual and he wants a piece of the action. I guess that’s part of my good fortune through all of this. I met a lot of really wonderful, straight-up, pivotal people with clear minds and clear ideas.)” placed a standing order for Hamady’s work in 1968 while a librarian at Macalester College, which Elspeth has maintained.

Page spread: Gabberjabb No. 8 9/16: Hunkering, 2005. Verso is “Aquifer & Levels“ w/ vertical arrangement of brackets, recto is illustration of spinal cavity overlayed with anatomical male figure diagram printed on. This title was a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Books/Fifty Covers.

Elspeth has agreed to share her collection of books with me and Catherine Michaelis, Catherine is the proprietor of May Day Press. I knew her artist books—all innovative structures that glorify the natural world from seeds to signs of rain—through Aiko’s, where they were sold. Catherine took me under her wings when I moved from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve been fast friends ever since. who lives nearby and has been helping Elspeth get the Hypatia shop in good order. We sit at a small table in the living room surrounded by windows full of evergreens, poring over a large stack of Perishable Press books. The stack includes some of Hamady’s Interminable Gabberjabbs, Artist and critical writer Buzz Spector describes the Gabberjabbs: “The writing itself, in its typographic variety, but more importantly, in its linguistic indiscretions, adopts the multitudinous cadences of seduction-imprecations, ejaculations, double entendres, baby talk, breathless extensions of sentences—to draw the reader ever more deeply into the situation. And the situation is one of apparently delirious excess. Like the dancer in a burlesque hall, however, Hamady’s shakes and shimmers are quite deliberately choreographed. Rather than transports of unselfconscious bliss, his effects are enlisted in the service an amorous projection: the book form as the body of the beloved.” a series begun in 1976 that features every manner of page treatment, from collage, rubberstamping, drilling, numbering, corner rounding to cow’s ear-tattooing. The letterpress printing is crisp and flawless, biting into handmade paper with deckled edges in a variety of earthy colors. We marvel at the generous use of paper, with blank spreads as a prelude to a page with just one line of text: “this whole page set aside mostly for visual resting and quiet reflection.”

Catherine aptly describes the work as “excessively obsessive,” full of numbers, page-long colophons, no details left out. The bindings are solid and gorgeous, but they don’t steal the show from the words, the letters, and the spaces between.

Page spread: Title page from The Selection of Heaven by Paul Blackburn, illustrated by Walter Hamady, 1980.

I am particularly entranced by a huge folder of ephemera containing years of extra goodies sent to Jim and Elspeth as friends and subscribers. There are snapshots of Hamady, proofs for books in progress, and Hamady’s diatribes against invasions of his privacy. Just as carefully designed and printed as the books, the text draws in the reader then bites. One flyer easily confused with a 16th century title page begins “stick that fatt finger in your ugly nostril or some other grateful orifice or at any risk keep it away from that telephone dial!” and concludes in generously leaded six point type:

“Do people who so mindlessly pick up the phone ever consider that they might actually be interrupting some personal act such as composing random elements into their Self-destined harmonius order, or, even the Peaceful voiding of One’s excrement? It is a clear fact that considerate people can usually avoid the use of mr Bell’s invention just as good drivers do not need to use their loud horns.”

Time at Elspeth’s flies by, an inspiring glimpse at decades of tremendously hard work, attention to detail, a curious mind and most of all a great sense of humor. I return home to reread my Hamady letters, in particular his response to a question about his sources of inspiration. What would he ask Aldus Manutius Born 1450 in Rome, Aldus Manutius or Aldo Manuzio founded the Aldine Press in Venice. He employed Francesco Griffo as a punchcutter and used his type (including the first italic) to produce the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in 1499 which combines type and illustration with sublime harmony. or Nicolas Jensen Born in France in 1420, Nicolas Jensen was trained as a goldsmith but became a letter cutter, printer and publisher. While working in Venice, Jenson produced a roman type based on the humanistic scripts of his time. He produced over 150 books, including Eusebius printed in 1470. given the opportunity? His reply makes me laugh, but it’s just right:

“Notto be egotistical, but don’t you think Manutius and Jensen et al would be wanting to ask us the questions? Like rubberbased ink? Polymer plates, scanning and digital printing etc etc etc? Am sure they would be tickled to see little hand operations like the one here in the parlour of this old farmhouse, see a grown man get off on the ‘feel’ of the impression coming up the arm through the hand crank handle.”

Read more of Hamady’s original writing: So What, Some What’s in the So (one of the Ramble Rambles)

Page spread: 1985, The Twelve Months, 1992. Verso is illustrated with rubber stamp collage by Walter Hamady, recto displays a reproduction of a painting by John Wilde in response to Hamady text celebrating the month of June. This title was a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Books/Fifty Covers.

A note from Jessica Spring: “Walter sent me the following never before published text, one of several Random Rambles transcribed by Anna Hamady, that gives some insight into what makes the artist tick (or what tickles the artist?)”

In 1988 I called a friend (you’ll wonder what kind of friend) and said, filled up with myself: “Geez, I’ve been printing books for half of my life!” to which he said: “So what.” It is 2000 and so I’ve been printing books for six-tenths of my life and so what. I supposed there are a lot of “what’s” and let’s see if any can be specifically located.

There are 125 books from The Perishable Press Limited, so what? What do they have in common? Well they all were made by hand; they were all believed in; they all could be done better if done over; they all are flawed; they all taught me many things. They are all my friends who introduced me to other friends yet they wait for me with fierce and dedicated loyalty.

There are many reasons for making a book and probably the best one, as the only reason for making Art, is because you can’t stop. Because you can’t stop ought to be in extra bold caps tattooed on the forehead backwards so that every time you see your mug in the mirror you will remember why in the hell you are doing it! A few ancillary reasons, reasons you can explain to the IRS or a psychiatrist ready to put you away, might be: because the literature, the writing turns you on so damn bad you just HAVE to publish it; because the text flashes big lovely images on your screen that cry to be illustrated; because the various elements configurate a marvelous totality of concept applicable to the FORM; because if published, the book would encourage the author to continue; because you can make a real nifty surprise for the author if you do it secretly. But mostly I make books because I can’t stop.

Making books is a wonderful way to read. Starting with hands-on making of paper; setting type letter by space by letter, line by line, stanza by paragraph, page by book has given valuable insight into language and reading. Reading this slow way, with the hands, reveals patterns and cross-connections sometimes unknown even to the author. Somewhere I saw a diagram of the nerve endings of the human body and their connection to the brain. If you re-diagrammed our bodies on this basis our hands would be as big as our abdomens. This means that a lot more information goes into our heads through touching than seeing, smelling, hearing. Also, using our hands, touching, creating things is, as a former colleague said, a “low-yield out of body experience” but I think it is a high-yield. And further, a litmus test to know if you are “doing it right” is: if you disappear to yourself whilst in the midst of making your art. You need to get out of your own way and just work. It is as close to heaven as I can get and still tell about it.

Another so what is: because books are recognizable, peaceful objects in society at large. Most people know what they are so the expectation is easy to penetrate with subversion. That is, people easily accept the book as it is handed to them. People are suspicious when you want to show them your etchings. So as said before, the book is the Trojan Horse of Art. Art’s Trojan Horse makes me think of Bobby Byrd’s wonderful poem about Art in America, about a guy named Art, maybe in El Paso.

Anyway, you can get into more people’s consciousness through the book, the form of the Trojan book.

Again, people take the book with their Hands, they touch it, they turn the pages they interact with kinetic sculpture. While the tactile reports are tingling up the ganglia simultaneously the nose is whiffing, the ears are hearing the rattle snap and pop of the paper, the eyeballs are rolling in all sorts of bites of type into the visually tactile paper and reporting words clearly there, repeat, THERE in the fibers of the page. So it is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel to get what you want into that poor unsuspecting head!

Another so what is making a book properly, if the INTENT is to communicate the written word, it is to extend the writer’s text to the fullest realization. One might argue that the text IS the writer’s fullest realization but I think not always. The text must be READ by someone else—to what strangers what welcome—and, as the dentist can do a better job repairing your tooth so can a typographer craft the readability of the text better than the author.

Another so what is standing in with a wonderful and rich tradition. To touch the type, assemble it, space it invisibly (typographers need a special kind of ego for their fine work if successful is like retouching a photograph—if you can see the work it fails.) Print it, distribute it back into the job case in a rhythmic way, is having hands on with all the great printers and literate bookmakers since the beginning. Like the poet just touching her fingers to the keys of the piano gets a flood of imagery, a cacophony of every composer who ever wrote for the keyboard. It is being part of a great and powerful team of championship players so it is necessary to know who are in the Hall of Fame and why they are there and remember who opened the window through which you can see—the accumulation of permissions.

It is humbling to think that if I could meet Nicholas Jensen or Aldus Manutius—or any of the printers whom I admire with all my heart—we would have one hell of a lot in common and a lot to talk about. Does this make any sense?

I just thought of another so what—because, dammit, it IS fun! It FEELS good. It is like Thelonious Monk felt when jamming those keys. It is like life, on a fine line between total absurdity and absolute profundity—choose your own examples.

Another what in the so what is that yes, it could be considered hard work to make a book by hand or anything else by hand. And it is, in a way, but then there are numerous rewards, e.g. you can see piles of things stacking up. After a day in the paper mill your back should ache but it is assuaged by looking at a pile of a hundred lovely inviting sheets of malleable wealth! You can see directly what you have done, you have exchanged your time and body for a pile of product that is meaningful, worthwhile, un-gettable any other way and, it has worth both in dollars and beyond money. As the paper is editioned in the press, it is piled & unpiled & piled again. As the sheets become folios and again as folios become signatures and again as signatures become the text block and again as they come back apart to have sewing holes punched and again as they are sewn together and again as they are forwarded and again as they are stacked as finished copies head to toe, they are piled. They, these steps, are layers, they are the geological cross-sections of the earth and planet of our intellect. It is making cake, eating cake and having the cake too. So what. There are 125 titles to date, so what? This represents sixty-one authors (thirty-eight are ‘writers whose work receives serious consideration’ so what?) all of whom have taught me lessons about contemporary writing as well as given me direction as to other writers that they think worth serious consideration.

Yet another of the what’s in the so what is having to do with my own writing, aside from essay and quasi-technical—see: Papermaking by Hand, Being a Book of Qualified Suspicions #102/1982 has evolved into a lexical tennis match. The reciprocation is between actual visual images and analytical free association. This interactive relationship finds source and is often conditioned by the stuff itself, that is, the process. That means: with my arthritic fingers I scribble/scrawl the works as they squeeze out the point wetly onto the paper then I get onto this infernal old portable typewriter & with one finger and one thumb I bang out the first translation and because I can then read it, I can make changes and improvements. Next, on to the typecase with the job stick using the same opposable thumb and adding a thumb to the other hand’s finger out come the letters one at a time, space by space, etc. and it is slow enough to actually think about what the hell ever it was trying to be said and sometimes patterns and other relationships appear not known even to the author and those can be seized and added to the stew. And then proofing and printing sometimes suggests even further adjustments. So then setting type and printing can help writing. Word processors “help” writing in a fake way by using someone else’s intelligence but typesetting helps in a real way because it extends your own intelligence.

Some more what’s in so:
How we use time is how we use our life—who said: “you are what you love”? If we can spend time doing the things we love then we are very very fortunate indeed. To do something well once might be beginner’s luck. To do something over and over for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean anything. To do something repeatedly and Grow and Show is good. As long as the growth is steady then perhaps the longer the better. For me, the measure of a worth in/of a performance can only be applied to the whole life given, only when death seals it can an assessment begin. Life can only be lived forward but only understood by going backwards. So to measure five years, a decade, a quarter century or a half is still a partial judgment.

What! Art is Sex! Books are the issue of sex, are children of our minds; our children are the bridges to the future, OUR future forever. Name your most favorite purveyor of Wisdom from the past? Boccaccio, Pindar, LiPo? How are they here still copulating in the depths of your brains? By the bridges of books recycling our generic humanity made by the hands, heart and head before memory. So what.