Some thoughts on letterpress – its history, impact and future – by NNP partner and author of Type Archived, a recently published book on the history of British typefounding, Richard Ardagh:
The first noticeable thing about letterpress type is that it is back-to-front. By design, these tools of relief printing are intended to leave the mirror image of the type’s face on paper. At first encounter this can be confusing, but through practice you become accustomed to reading letters, words and eventually long passages of text in reverse.
Which is not to say that when the type is proofed that it prints without mistakes – in my own case, 15 years experience hasn’t stopped that possibility. Young children, up to the age of about 8, seem to make fewer typesetting errors than adults, possibly because it’s easier for them to unlearn the patterns of recognition that in older people have become ingrained.
The letters of the alphabet are, after all, just shapes that we have attached meaning to, symbols that we use to communicate thought. Our letterforms are descended from pictograms used by the Phoenicians (and later adopted by the ancient Greeks) to represent their world: oxen, fish, tools and weapons.
The invention of printing from movable type was one that completely transformed the way we understand ourselves. The printed word enabled the Renaissance, lifting us out of the Middle Ages. By making information widely available for the first time, it instigated social mobility, revolutionising societies. It made ideas permanent, defined boundaries and ownership, gave authority to laws. Furthermore, over five centuries, the age of print standardised the structure and conventions of language.
As a trade, printing developed into a powerful and tightly organised industry. Its objectives were speed and efficiency within the bounds of its physical components. Presses ran hungrily, creating impressions from the wooden and metal fonts that were the building blocks of all publishing. Printing was known as ‘the black art’, possibly due to its rules and traditions being shrouded in secrecy, or perhaps the likelihood of having inky fingers. The countless hours of physical labour – setting type letter by letter, printing sheet by sheet – are unimaginable to us now.
I enjoy practising and teaching letterpress. The intricacies of the technique and its rich history are fascinating to me, and I love sharing with others a subject that I seem to be continually learning myself. But, through the classes we teach, I can also see that experiencing the process can be rewarding in itself, regardless of this deeper knowledge.
There are practicalities to grasp: the ‘point’ system (type’s own unit of measurement, as is still used for typography on screen) and safety – no one wants to damage their tools or themselves. But, once these aspects are understood, I don’t believe that tradition should be followed blindly. Practices like uneven inking, slur and even typos can all serve a purpose in expressing an idea.
Letterpress is no longer the slave of industry with rules and hierarchy. The survival of its components – objects that were once so influential – requires new approaches. In the hands of artists the craft is open to experiment and reinterpretation. And I, for one, welcome back-to-front thinkers and enjoy granting them freedom of the press.
‘Word play’ was written as an introduction to Word Parts catalogue, 2023, and is reproduced here by kind permission of Alida Kusemczak-Sayer.
