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.)

It’s 2002 and I’m in the final stretches of finishing my MFA thesis project. Typography is involved, and I have my heart dead set on using Satanick also called Tell Text or Troy, which was designed and cut by William Morris for his Kelmscott Press. There is just enough of the lead Satanick at Columbia College to set a headline for the broadside, a piece about pepper with Salman Rushdie’s text. I make desperate pleas to buy or borrow the type on various letterpress listservs and receive paternal-not-patronizing replies. If folks had this font, they probably wouldn’t lend it out. And the Smithsonian had the mats an abbreviation for “matrix”, a mould for casting type used in letterpress printing. Below is a photo (by Robert McCamant, taken at Jim Rimmer’s studio) of individual matrices or mats loaded into a matrix-case.

at one time but rumor has it they lent them out and somehow they were lost for good. A big dead end, but fate delivered P22.

P22 is a digital type foundry specializing in the creation of “computer typefaces inspired by Art, History, and sometimes Science.” For less than thirty dollars and ten minutes, I have downloaded and installed P22’s newest font, Morris Troy. I print the broadside using metal type and photopolymer, side by side. It takes two passes on press, but only the most discerning type nut would know.

P22’s the origins of the company name can be traced back to an old rubber stamp discovered on the storeroom floor of Kegler’s father’s hunting and fishing shop. His best hunch: it refers to a fly-fishing fly. The random letter and numbers were embraced as a “mysterious fictional multi-national umbrella corporation.” head type nut Richard Kegler calls himself a “typographic archeologist” and, with wife Carima El-Behairy, leads a collective of type foundries under the P22 umbrella based in Buffalo, NY. For graphic designers in the 1990s, P22 was a typographic candy store with unusual “artsy” fonts packed with alternate characters and coordinating dingbats. Fonts arrived mail order in gorgeous packaging accompanied by P22 Dollars that could be used towards future purchases, but the faux currency was so lovely in design and print they became instantly collectible. Inspired by S&H Green stamps, store coupons, Bauhaus artists (such as Herbert Bayer 1900-1985, Austrian graphic designer and architect who directed the Bauhaus printing and advertising department in the 1920s), and German and Austrian currency, designers utilized P22 fonts and ornaments to turn what could have been mere coupons into dainty type specimens.

Not your typical type

Kegler created his first font in 1994 based on the handwriting of artists Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miro as part of his master’s thesis. “Not typefaces in a traditional sense, the Duchamp font was an attempt to use Duchamp’s own methods of random selection and appropriation in a self-referencing homage, and the Miro font was an attempt to extract a full alphabet from the forms found throughout Miro’s Constellation series of paintings,” says Kegler.

In order to create the fonts, Kegler autotraced Duchamp and Miro’s handwriting, then imported the scans to Fontographer Developed by Altsys for the Macintosh in 1986, Fontographer was the first Bézier curve editing software available commercially. Being “found objects” little alteration was required. The fonts were packaged on floppy disks and sold through a network of museum gift shops, which already carried Kegler’s handmade blank books. Sadly the fonts are no longer for sale—a lesson learned about copyright, trademark and public domain.

Collaborations with foundations and museums followed in the creation of more P22 fonts, which Kegler describes as “at times vaguely pastiche yet with a real reverence to the source materials.” The Guggenheim collaborated on a Josef Albers font, and the Whitney cooperated on a Daddy-O beatnik set, providing examples of lettering on 60s era paperback novels and jazz albums. The Daddy-O fonts have appeared on numerous CDs for bands like Esquivel and Xavier Cugat, all produced by P22 fan Rod McKuen. Once formally introduced, the foundry and the musician made beautiful music together: a CD version of McKuen’s Beatsville album including a new track plus the picture font Daddy-O Beatsville.

Fourteen years of P22 history include collaborations that—like working with Rod McKuen—seem to happen by chance, but evidence Kegler’s persistence and devotion to the history underlying his craft. In 1996, The London Transport Museum approached P22 about developing a transportation font for their Children’s Museum. While pursuing the design, Kegler took advantage of the opportunity to approach the Museum about digitizing Edward Johnston’s Underground, a sans serif designed in 1916 that inspired modern sans-serifs like Futura and Gill Sans. London Transport was infamously protective of the font, so Kegler figured no one else would even pursue the matter. “Our first inquiries were dismissed. The children’s font luckily never saw the light of day, but from the ashes of that project rose a new attitude at London Transport that our first proposal might just be agreeable,” says Kegler.

Letterpress prints of Johnston’s original woodblocks were provided as source material, and imperfections like “bumped corners” were intentionally added to keep the look authentic, not sanitized. Pictorial elements were added, inspired by train station tile, cabin upholstery and original maps. Font users can tie together elements to create winding, bending lines of train tracks complete with stations. The Underground set was a smash, a must-have for many designers’ toolboxes: “I think the history is more than 50% of its appeal,” says Kegler. “Designers know it the way musicians know Johnny Cash. Even if you aren’t a huge fan, you recognize the iconic stature and greatness.”

Because P22 fonts are so recognizable, the danger of overuse and abuse is a distinct possibility. Several global coffee companies used the script font Cezanne simultaneously, and now multiple chocolate makers have embraced the face, from artisans to Hershey’s. According to Kegler, “the Arts & Crafts font was used by just about every other person in the village of East Aurora, New York, where the Roycroft Campus is situated. Since this was the lettering by Dard Hunter that essentially made the Roycroft visual identity, people there wanted to use it. I tried posting a tip to help but there are still lots of stretch versions with random alternates on expensive signs all over the place.”

Many of our really nice fonts I have seen in awful settings and some of our awful fonts I have seen in great settings. A font is a tool. That is the risk of making a tool, it may cause people to do great things or hack away and make a mess.

P22’s umbrella grows

As P22 grew over the years, separate divisions were formed with distinct identities—basically font boutiques. International House of Fonts (IHOF) was formed to sell the work of freelance font designers, with online-only sales in contrast to the P22 boxed sets sent via mail-order. In 2003, the Sherwood Collection was added to feature Ted Staunton’s historical fonts, a good fit with the P22 family. Staunton began working as a graphic designer, wood engraver and letterpress printer in the 1960’s and–with a life-long interest in type–knews his way around its design and history.

In 2004 a tremendous opportunity to expand P22 arose with the acquisition of the Lanston Type Company, along with more than a century of history tracing back to the monotype caster. In the late 1800’s Tolbert Lanston patented a mechanical typesetting machine which became the Monotype caster. Using “hot metal,” the machine cast individual letters (in contrast to a Linotype, which casts slugs containing text for a whole line of type and is best suited to newspaper production’s quick set, melt and reset) which allowed for simple correction of mistakes as needed. By 1906, the machines were fitted with keyboards and improvements that allowed for automatic justification. Lanston manufactured these casters, supplying type to fulfill a growing need for quality printing, especially in the production of books. Frederic Goudy served as Lanston’s art director from 1920-47, creating over 100 classic typefaces.

Gerald Giampa, previous Lanston Type Collection owner & letterpress printer
(photo: Gerald Giampa’s web site)

P22’s Lanston Type Collection underworld rise of the lycans HD download features 272 fonts, including faces by Goudy and Sol Hess, who managed the Lanston library. Digitization was based on the metal patterns used to make the master punches from which type was cast, a process began by previous Lanston owner Gerald Giampa. These 3 x 4” patterns are used in combination with printed samples as references to work out spacing and kerning. One of the earliest developers of Postscript fonts Postscript is a language developed by Adobe Systems in 1984 that, along with the Macintosh computer, allowed computer typesetting to thrive, Giampa oversaw Lanston’s transition from hot metal to the digital era and continues to consult with P22. “The Lanston collection gives P22 an authentic typographic pedigree,” says Kegler.

The description of Kegler as an “typographic archeologist” is apt as he describes the process of digitizing the Lanston collection: “We search for the best possible specimens of each face and scan at high resolution. We also look for alternate sources. For LTC Metropolitan Italic (Frederic Warde’s Arrighi) we innocently asked during a visit to the Cary Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology what specimens they had in their collection. I was unaware they had the actual punches for Arrighi! That helps to get a true sense of the intention of the design. Arrighi also had an early version with the ascenders turning in the opposite direction of the final version, so we incorporated both versions so with OpenType you can choose from two style of ascenders within one font, so we look for alternates and proofs as well as the ‘official’ release versions of Lanston faces.”

Canadian type designer Jim Rimmer was brought on board to assist in the development of the Lanston collection since he had worked on many of the Lanston designs for Giampa. “When we acquired Lanston,” says Kegler, “there was some confusion over the ownership rights to some of Jim’s original designs that came with Lanston. We wanted to be sure that Jim had proper attribution and royalties. That led to the formation of “Rimmer Type Foundry” as a single entity which offered Jim’s digital designs at P22.”

Collaborations between Rimmer and Kegler continued. Kegler suggested developing one of Rimmer’s metal typefaces as a digital font. Rimmer had bigger ideas: for the first time, a simultaneous offering of a new font in both hand-set metal and digital form. Using the computer program Ikarus, Rimmer designs characters with a plotting pen and outputs to a laser printer. A paper master pattern and working lead pattern are then developed, scaled to a 16 point brass matrix to allow for casting of single pieces of type. Frederic Goudy followed a similar process—without the assistance of computer and printer—for hand casting at his Village Type Foundry.

Rimmer’s typeface is named Stern, in memory of Chris Stern, a talented Seattle artist and printer who died in 2007. Kegler has recorded the font’s development with a documentary filmed at Rimmer’s studio to premiere in 2009. A booklet filled with lush duotones taken throughout the process is in production at Coach House Press in Canada, and—along with the Stern font—will be available at TypeCon2008. Typographers attending the conference will also be the first to see a trailer for Kegler’s documentary.

TypeCon, presented by The Society of Typographic Aficionados, takes place in Buffalo this year under Kegler’s leadership. A mix of speakers, workshops, exhibits and tours are piled into five dream days for type nuts from all over the world. Kegler notes: “Some of the highlights are outside of the main conference track at partner facilities: Pecha Kucha at Hallwalls; Stefan Sagmeister at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum; NLXL at the University at Buffalo; and Erik Spiekermann German typographer and graphic designer, founder of the firm MetaDesign at the Albright Knox Art Gallery.”

Kegler also has big plans to unveil the new home of the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative during TypeCon. Using his supreme skills at collaboration, Kegler pulled together a rich collection of arts organizations, printers, and book artists to create WNYBAC, dedicated to the printed word and image. While the group has previously offered lectures, classes and exhibits in various venues, the new building will house binding and printing equipment (donations Kegler is hard at work gathering) plus offer permanent space—much like community-based book arts centers in New York or San Francisco.

the new book arts center of Western New York (photo: http://www.wnybookarts.org/)

Kegler keeps his own hands-on connection to type history by binding in his home studio or printing at Paradise Press, a local letterpress shop, when possible. “The minimum is a Christmas card each year. I learned bits here and there from Paradise proprietor Hal Leader (who was the apprentice to one of the last Roycroft printers, Emil Sahlin.)”

Though P22 utilizes letterpress printing with photopolymer plates in their marketing materials, Kegler hasn’t tried the process yet. Kegler took photopolymer into account with the digitization of the Lanston collection. “We actually made fonts available in two weights for photopolymer use and compensation for gain but have not had discernible feedback to say whether anyone really uses these as intended. I would think good presswork could do more to avoid gain than altering fonts.”

Kegler’s favorite font in metal? “I think Neuland, since every letter is different at every point size and the medium and technique by Rudolf Koch German type designer known for his craftsmanship as punchcutter at the Klingspor Foundry in Offenbach, Germany during the 1920s and 1930s really defined the look.”

The original Neuland was designed without the aid of patterns or pantograph, each point size punched and filed like one-of-a-kind sculptures. If you can’t get it in metal, there is P22 Koch Nueland, which is intentionally spelled differently than the metal font and subsequent digitizations that preceded P22’s. Yet another fine collaboration, it features alternate characters designed by Koch, lost in previous digital fonts, then rediscovered by Kegler through researching original sources like a Dutch sample book and sign painter instruction manuals. In keeping with the typographic archaeologist’s other work, the task was approached with reverence.

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.