Holmfirth Typographical Society

The Strange Case of Upper Lane

2010-04-20T18:15:00.003+01:00

This road sign has been bothering me for some time

it's in caps, but the first letter is lower case.

Or it would be in most typefaces,

but then a little sifting finds the typefaces where the uppercase U has a spur on the bottom right

UNDER A TYPE TRAY

2010-02-18T17:15:00.003Z

from the attic of the Old Printworks

Meanwhile back in the Gotthard-Base tunnel

2009-06-16T23:11:00.006+01:00

Deep under the Swiss Alps, just before midday, and half a year ahead of schedule, Gabi 1, the 500 tonne tunnel boring machine, breaks through the last few metres of rock between the Erstfeld and Armsteg subsections:

more on the story here

Found in the Oxfam shop

2009-02-26T18:39:00.003Z

Stories from the Printing Office, part I

2009-02-19T00:08:00.004Z

Washpit Mill, Holmfirth

2008-05-29T13:42:00.002+01:00

More clarification

2008-02-05T08:29:00.000Z

To create something it's necessary to be able to describe it's constituent parts as a result most everything has a name

[click to read in more detail]

Die Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei

2008-01-14T21:51:00.000Z

Some hand-lettering in the old wool spinning mills of Leipzig.
Admittedly it's not strictly typography, but hell, life's too short to bother about that kind of thing

Working Drawing

2007-12-23T19:54:00.000Z

French Homework

2007-12-11T16:24:00.000Z

learn all this by next week

Extreme Danger

2007-12-08T15:48:00.000Z

If Tunnel Men get into trouble they have to call in the Rescue Men:

image from Shorpy

Homework

2007-12-06T13:50:00.000Z

Learn all this for tomorrow:

[click it to see it bigger]

Life without rulers and string

2007-11-27T13:48:00.001Z

Mr Jones, our esteemed Chairman, had recent recourse to a dying art, namely: signwriting. Most things these days are computer generated, enlarged, laser cut and stuck on. But Mr Jones wanted it right, wanted it done proper, wanted it done, in fact, like these things used to be done. So a Signwriter was called in.

Now you’d expect all manner of strings and levels and marking devices, tracings, letter-shapes, layouts and the like. But there was none. Your man took Mr Jones’ business card, business card mind – not renown for their largeness it has to be said, put up two ladders, drew out the first letter and started in on the painting.

Ok, so the e is dropped a gnat’s gnidget, but, Hey! this guy did it all by eye, in about 2 hours.

Your present interlocutor has done his share of signwriting, oh yes, I’m not a stranger to Keep’s Enamel, nor Hamilton’s brushes, nor, indeed, the mahl stick.

It was the winter of ’81, if I remember, in the South of France, signage for a series of campsites, and I admit it, I used a ruler.

Tunnel Boys

2007-10-20T23:20:00.000+01:00

In Olden Days, before digital watches, when tunnels were low and dark, and before we knew better, not far from the Tunnel Men working in coal mines you’d find the Tunnel Boys.

They’d be working a 12 hours day, in the dark, from the age of 7 or 8 years.

A Trapper, sitting in the dark for ten hours at a time opening and closing a gate, or trap, every hour or so as a train of coal came through.

“The motorman would blink his light at me, and I’d throw the switch and open the door for him. Then, I’d jump into the manway until he was past, and run out and close the door. A trip would come along about every hour. Was I bored or lonely? Well, it was my job.”

A Greaser, clambering amongst the loaded tubs in the mine, greasing the axles, covered in oil and coal dust.

A Breaker- sitting astride a conveyor belt as the coal left the mine, sorting out the slate from the anthracite.

thanks to Shorpy for the photographs here.

That Helvetica Thing

2007-10-19T10:26:00.000+01:00

Helvetica is the only typeface to have a feature documentary made about it. Developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger, at the Hass type foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland, Helvetica was key in the paradigm shift that occurred to graphic design in the sixties. It was orignally called:

But this was changed to Helvetica [Helvetica being part of the Latin name for Switzerland] to make it more appealing outside, German speaking, Switzerland.

Two years later Letraset was founded in London and by 1960 it was producing the dry transfer lettering, with which is name is synonymous, and which allowed designers to break the shackles of cold metal type, shake off the chains of hot metal type and go round corners with relative ease. Helvetica together with Letraset was a powerful tool in the shaping of new typographic thinking.

In the early eighties when Microsoft wanted a typeface for it’s word processing software they approached Hass for the Helvetica typeface but Hass weren’t interested. Microsoft sulked, and threw a few toys out the pram before going round to Monotype where together they developed Arial. Arial to most people is indistinguishable from Helvetica, which is a shame because Helvetica is fonts ahead of Arial.

There was a lot of angry mutterings in the graphic studios of the Western World, the graphics studios in the Eastern World couldn’t give a fuck, they were too busy trying to get a typewriter that could operate with their complicated pictographic system:

Designers felt Microsoft and Monotype had just ripped off Helvetica, what with Arial’s glyph widths being almost identical to Helvetica’s and the fact that, to most people, they were indistinguishable.

How to tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial:

Gotthard Base Tunnel - UPDATE

2007-10-14T20:58:00.000+01:00

As of the 1st of October, the tunnel is 68% complete. Tunnel men have so far dug out 105.1km of tunnels out of the 153.5 km planned. In September they drove a total of 480m of tunnel, hard going at times clearly, in the Sedrun subsection, driving east, they are advancing 1.4 meters a day.

ETAOIN SHRDLU

2006-12-31T12:49:00.001Z

And while we’re on the subject of Linotype, we should pause for a moment and tell of the Great Etaoin Shrdlu. Etaoin was a Bangladeshi typesetter known for his speed and accuracy, it is said he could set lines in hot-metal faster than any man. Here he is as a young boy in his grandfather’s printing works in Dhaka:

In his youth Eato ik’olkjjjjjjF fhkm wqlKJNU ,.,2., IUYK,LK JKK;ok

The Holmfirth Typographical Society would like to apologise for this article, which, as you will no doubt have realised by now, is complete nonsense. The perpetrator has clearly been at the turpentine again. Normal service will be resumed just as soon as we get a new lock on the typewriter case.

Right, where was he? Etaoin Shrdlu, or rather, as it was wont to appear, either ETAOIN SHRDLU or etaoin shrdlu. These were the letters as arranged on a linotype keyboard:

[click on the image to see a bigger version]

Now when you’re typing at a linotype machine, as I’m sure you’re aware, you can’t correct a mistake, you have to go through the business of casting a whole line, then eject the hot slug with the mistake in it. If a mistake is made at the beginning of a line the operator would simply run their finger down the keys on the left hand side of the keyboard and PRESTO! etaoin shrdlu would be cast along with the mistake. If the slug wasn’t ejected a proof reader could easily spot etaoin shrdlu in the galley. But, such is the nature of human error, they would sometimes miss it and ETAOIN SHRDLU get through into the paper.

Indeed this happened so much that it got appears in dictionaries. Here it is in our copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language [unabridged]:

Mr Mergenthaler’s canny invention.

2006-12-30T17:33:00.000Z

Here is the man largely responsible for a great deal of teenage back ache:

Ottmar Mergenthaler, born in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in 1854. He made an impressive contribution to the story of printing, and enabled the Sunday Times to reach its unfeasibly large volume and weigh down the paper sacks of diminutive delivery people everywhere.

Here’s what he invented:

Now, I’ve picked over the ancient business of typesetting, with two cases of type [the upper case and the lower case, if you recall] and a composing stick. Well the compositors who handled these crude tools could set lines of type at a fair lick, even so, no newspapers ran to more than eight pages. Until Mr Megenthaler came along with linotype.

Basically here was a machine that set lines of type as fast as you could type a line. So papers grew in content and, to the abject disappointment of paper-boys and paper-girls everywhere, bulk.

My brother-in-law had one and I remember using it to set a line of type, or slug as it was known, of my name. The keyboard was not of a QWERTY layout,

You punched the keys and all hell broke loose. Little brass matrices,

tinkled down shoots into a line where, when a whole line was assembled wedges were driven up between the words

to justify the text, then a hefty lever shot them over to be confronted by hot lead from which the line of type was cast.

So rather than plucking plucky characters from the lower case, or indeed the upper case, Mr Mergenthaler’s machine used hot-metal. Behind this machine was a bubbling pot of molten lead. So there was a wonderful sound of crashes and clunks as lines of type-matrices were shuttered along to be cast and the tinkling of the brass tumbling down and back into the racks. Then there was the smell and warmth of hot metal, coupled with an ever-present twang of turpentine and printing ink. A heady cocktail indeed.

more information on linotype

Work progresses on world’s longest railway tunnel

2006-11-27T12:26:00.000Z

The Gottard Base tunnel, which will be 57 km when complete, runs under the Alps from Switzerland to Italy and takes Tunnel Men through some pretty impressive rock. From the abundant, though varied, Aar-Massiv through a slice of Tavetscher Zwischen-massiv, then a thin sliver [geologically speaking that is] of Urseren-Garvera-Zone, into the Gotthard-Massiv, with a hint of Pioramulde before they finally chomp their way through some Penninische Gneiszone. Ah! The romance of the Alps.

And you'll be please to note that, though 54 kilometres will be dug with Tunnel Boring Machines, 4 kilometres, due to the strata, will be blown away with explosives. Hoorah!

Tunnel Men examine the first blast on the Porta Alpina

Tunnel Men will be removing 24 million tons of rock, about the equivalent of 5 times the Great Pyramid on Giza

the Great Pyramid at Giza

Which if hollow could accommodate the five cathedrals of: St Peter's, Rome, Florence, Milan, Westminster and St Paul's, London.

Westminster Abbey, London

So, technically, and with a future increase in the following of certain Western Orthodox teachings, 25 big cathedrals could be built with what comes out the tunnel. But a lot of the spoil is being used to make an island in a lake instead.

There are two Tunnel Boring Machines, Gabi I and Gabi II weighing in at around 500 tonnes each.

Gabi I

latest update from Tunnel Men at Amsteg:

On October 16, 2006, the core machine was transported almost 11 km back to the assembly cavern on the construction railway. The journey was extremely successful and was completed in only five hours. The cutting-head centre, main bearing, and base frame of the TBM will now be transported out of the tunnel by lowloader. Dismantling of TBM Gabi I is 95% complete. To repair the collapse at TM 118,670, drilling work for the injection pipes is continuing. Dismantling of TBM Gabi II has already started. The status of the kicker construction sites is as follows: west tunnel 8,200 metres, east tunnel 6,250 metres.

the tunnel face after Gabi II was reversed out

Meanwhile on the Faido section of the tunnel concreting of the TBM driving invert in both single-track tunnels, and of the reinforced base inverts in the tunnel branchoff west south, is still in progress, you’ll be pleased to note.

Once the Conventional Driving [a term used by Tunnel Men to signify the relentless forward thrust of the massive TBM] is complete and the Tunnel Boring Machines have be removed, steel arches are inserted and the whole thing sprayed with concrete - made out of the graded spoil from the tunnelling no less.

reinforcing the Sedrun section

Guess what Tunnel Men call the fallen, shattered, blasted rock after an explosion?
Muck.
You don’t mess with Tunnel Men.

THINGS EVERY GOOD BOY SHOULD KNOW

2006-11-03T17:22:00.000Z

Not that we're ruling out bad boys you understand, nor girls, either good or bad.

Anyway, having cleared that up, here's what everyone [good, bad, mildly annoying, male or female] should know.

What! What? Where're We Been?

2006-09-21T11:32:00.000+01:00

We've been busy. Variously riding motorbikes to remote parts of Europe, filming in Kosovo, and generally expanding the Digital Universe.

BREAKING NEWS: Helvetica to be eponimous star in feature film

FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS: William Caxton, from piece dealer to printer.

A page from Caxton's edition of Chaucer - thanks to the British Library

Minutes of the meeting of the 25th of April.

2006-04-26T11:41:00.000+01:00

Present:
Mr. Jones, Chairman
Mr. Holroyd, Treasurer
Mr. Coombes, Secretary
Mr. Duckering

Mr. Jones [Chairman] leafed through the notebook and accepted the minutes of the last meeting, introduced Mr. Duckering and the meeting was brought to order,

Mr. Holroyd expressed his interest in Road Signs and proposed a special mention to Mr. Jeremy Tankard, who he believed was largely responsible for the typeface used on British number plates before they went all to shit and allowed any old crap typeface to define the letters. But this is clearly not the case as Mr. Tankard is no’but a lad, graduating, as he did, in short trousers, from the Royal College of Art in 1992 and The Great British Number Plate coming about in 1903.

Edward Johnston, now there was a designer, he designed the famous London Underground typeface.

He also clarified the London Underground logo

after its corruption from the General Omnibus logo when the Underground group bought the London General Omnibus Company in 1912.

However the main item on the agenda was Mr. Holroyd’s passion for vacuuming in general and Charles Dyson in particular. This may seem like an opportunity to go into the Life and Times of Mr. Dyson, but as he has done little to further the cause of typography, or tunneling, we shall have to pass on that one. Suffice it to say Mr. Holroyd was interested in challenging the patents on the cyclone system, which is so central to the operation of Mr. Dyson's Hoovers, with a view to patenting his own wind-up clockwork beer-mat vacuum cleaner for use in the Immerging World.

At this juncture Mr. Jones [Chairman] pointed out that the best van he ever saw was in Batley.

There was a brief pause [which in some of the cheaper Westerns would be denoted by sage brush blowing down an empty High Street] and the meeting moved swiftly on.

After a particularly smutty and unbecoming comment from Mr. Coombes, Mr. Jones [Chairman] proposed creating another website, that could be used for fun and profit.

Following a train of thought known only to himself, Mr. Holroyd pointed out that the famous climber and mountaineer Michael Schumacher, is also quite a good racing driver.

Mr. Duckering replied that they had a platen printing press in Trumpton, thereby confirming two things: 1. he's on the same wavelength as Mr. Holroyd and: 2. he's an ideal member of the Holmfirth Typographical Society. He went on to remark that said printer printed the poster:

DON’T FORGET
THE BAND CONCERT
AT 3 O’CLOCK.

But as the print rate was about one poster an hour most people probably missed the band concert. Whether Michael Schumacher uses a Dyson vacuum cleaner was not established.

As the meeting moved into its Twiglet phase the matter of Internet Chairs was brought up – after Mr. Jones [Chairman] pointed out that internet suits were available that enabled you to enjoy the murkier pleasures of the World Wide Web [see Mr. Jones’ Other Website] in a more intimate fashion. It was proposed that the Society look into developing Internet Chairs to help online customers experience their bank balances at a more fundamental level.

The Treasurer’s Report failed to materialize for the third week and certain members of the Society are beginning to doubt the commitment of the Treasurer.

Mr. Holroyd did however, proposed another excellent money-making venture for the Society, which didn’t involve either Charles Dyson or vacuum cleaners. He pointed out that some lesbian acquaintances of his were making a fine living by washing their nether garments in the local launderette, collecting the detritus from the filter in the drier and selling it as Lesbian Fanny Fluff for a 100 notes a bag on EBay. Readers wishing to purchase this kind of thing should go to Mr. Jones’ OTHER website.

Great Letter Men

2006-04-23T13:14:00.000+01:00

Claude Garamond

Born in Paris in 1490, at the age of 20 young Claude was apprenticed to the notable Parisian Punchcutter Antoine Augereau. Here Claude trained as a Punchcutter with Simon de Colines and Geoffroy Tory and went on to eclipse his masters.

When he were no’but a young ‘un Claude would spell his surname: Garamont, not out of ignorance or youthful high-spirits but because that was the custom. Indeed most things were spelt which ever way the writer wrote them, and everything was rather confusing. But seeing as nobody could read anyway this didn’t matter very much - as often as not it was the writer who read the writings. But with the onset of printing, and Adult Literacy Programs kicking in all over Europe, well-meaning philanthropists decide the Fifteenth Century was a good time to standardize spelling. It’s taken them five hundred years and we’re still arguing some of the finer points.

[can you have ill-meaning philanthropists?]

In 1523 Claude Garamond [now, you’ll notice, standardized with a d at the end] designed and cut a typeface which he derived from Griffo’s Roman typefaces, and he called it, not entirely unreasonably: Garamond.

The first book to use Garamond typeface was Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros Laurentii Vallae by Erasmus. Not one of his best sellers it has to be said – the film rights are still on option we believe.

Desiderius Erasmus, revising for a spelling test.

Smoke proof

2006-04-14T12:31:00.000+01:00

When the Punchcutter gets close to finishing cutting his punch he makes a smoke proof to check the quality of the letter. He holds the end of the punch in a candle for a moment then presses it onto some paper. The soot deposited from the candle flame creates a fine imprint which can be checked for accuracy and detail.

the punch my great grandfather used to identify his tools

smoke proof of my great grandfather’s punch

Scumfishing

2006-04-13T11:00:00.000+01:00

In the Dark Ages castles were both a Good Thing and a Bad Thing. It depended on your point of view. If you were in one and wanted to stop people pinching your chickens and your daughters, they were a Good Thing. If you were outside one with a view to a bit of pillage and a chicken supper, they were a Bad Thing.

Once the gates were shut, the portcullis was down and the draw-bridge was up just about the only option open to you was to lay siege to the place and hope they ran out of cheese before you did.

You’d camp round the castle for months or sometimes years and build huge siege engines that could hurl rocks into the walls. These had limited effect, it has to be said – some of the castles had walls sixteen feet thick.

the trebuchet

All this is well and good you say, but what’s it got to do with tunneling [or typography for the matter of that]? Well when they found they couldn’t get through the walls, and struggled getting over them, what does any self-respecting Siege Army do? Call in the Tunnel Men obviously.

The Tunnel Men or Sappers as they called themselves, because they also dug trenches, or saps, which zigzagged up to castle walls, would dig under the foundations and lay fires there to de-stabilise everything. By the 15th Century, when Black Powder had filtered through from the East, they were putting gunpowder in the tunnels and blowing up the walls from below.

On the Scottish Borders, where the living was hard, and the ground was harder, they couldn’t roll siege engines across the rocky terrain and they couldn’t use tunnels to get at the foundations so they would pile wood and damp straw up against the lower walls and round the gates and doorways of a tower and set fire to it to smoke the occupiers out – this was called Scumfishing.

Punchcutting and counterpunching

2006-04-12T16:39:00.000+01:00

To print a letter you need to make a piece of lead type, to make a piece of lead type you need a matrix, to make a matrix you need a letter-punch and to make a letter-punch you need a Punchcutter.

A Punchcutter cuts the punches that punch the letters into soft metal to act as a mold to cast a piece of lead type. The Punchcutter therefore is a Very Skilled Person, using files and saws he creates the letter punch from a bar of hard metal using the drawings of the typeface designer. In the olden days, the designer was wont to cut his own punches - Francesco Griffo did.

To cut the fine detail in the letters, and the insides of an e or a p for instance, the Punchcutter has a counterpunch which punches shapes out of the punch. [Who makes the counterpunch we have yet to ascertain, but - we think it might be a guy called Eddie.]

some letter punches

As a result those little bits in the middle of the letters a b d e o p q and A B D O P Q and R are called counters.

Thanks to Paul Shaw for the photographs of Christian Paput, a contemporary Punchcutter, and his Cabinet des Poinçons in Paris.

Next Post: Scumfishing

Great Punchcutters of the 15th Century

2006-04-11T10:38:00.000+01:00

Francesco Griffo

Born in Bologna in 1450, Francesco da Bologna, as he was also known, cut letters for one Aldus Manutius who founded the Aldine Press in 1495.

Griffo started off as a goldsmith, but went on to developed the first Roman typeface after studying Roman carved lettering. He didn’t just design the typefaces, he was a punchcutter which meant he cut the metal dies from which the matrices were made from which, in turn, the lead type was cast. Cleary he was a Main Man. He’s also credited with designing the first italic typeface.

His most famous typeface is probably Bembo:

This was cut specifically for an edition of De Aetna written by Cardinal Pietro Bembo, published in about 1496.

Cardinal Pietro Bembo by Titian

Now you know you’ve made it as a writer when they design a whole typeface for your book. [And I guess you know you've made it as a Cardinal when Titian paints your portrait.]

Francesco Griffo died in 1518. It’s thought that he was hanged for killing his brother-in-law, though some say it was his son-in-law that he set about with an iron bar during a quarrel. I don’t know, these typographers do live life on the edge.

The Little Gentlemen in Black Velvet

2006-04-07T09:55:00.000+01:00

When it comes to tunnelling your man the mole knows a thing or two.

The Standedge Tunnel, taking the Huddersfield Narrow Canal under the pennines, might be the highest [197 meters above sea level], the deepest [194 meters underground] and the longest [just over 3 miles] tunnel in Britain, and hewn out of solid rock by one man with a spoon. But it took 17 years to dig [understandable under the circumstances I guess].

These little fellas with the big paws can shift six kilos of soil every 20 minutes. We on the other hand would be required to shift 4 tons of soil in the same time to match them, so we cheat and use one of these:

The P&H 4100XPB can shift 115 tons in one scoop and can fill one of these:

in three goes.

Your mole can dig 18 feet in an hour, so it would take a mole 75 days to dig through the Pennines, though at about 3 inches wide you’d struggle to get even a narrow boat through their tunnel.

But perhaps the greatest claim to fame of the mole was it’s role in the Jacobite Risings. The Jacobites rose and rebelled, when James II of England & VII of Scotland was deposed by William III, because they wanted someone called Stuart on the throne. One of the main problems was that William was an Orange and therefore Protestant, whereas James was a Stuart and therefore Catholic.

Most of the Jacobite Risings were called the Jacobite Rebellions, which could lead to confusion if you’re not careful, and were mainly comprised of the Battle of the Boyne, and gave rise to an Old Pretender, James Stuart, a Young Pretender called Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Battle of Culloden, which in turn led to an outbreak of huge oil paintings of windswept Scottish valleys by eminent Victorian painters.

In 1702, in the afternoon, William III was out horse riding when his horse planted its hoof in a mole hill. The horse fell throwing William to the ground and breaking his collar bone. Complications set in and he died of pneumonia 16 days later.

A popular Jacobite toast was: “to the little gentlemen in black velvet”.

Let us not forget: they are primarily Tunnel Men.

The Holmfirth Typographical Society would like to point out that it has no idea about the religious leanings of James Stewart

Der Schriftsetzer

2006-04-06T22:16:00.000+01:00

Katrin has sent us a link to a German typesetting article where, as far as I can work out, the man actually makes the letters in the first place. Truly hard-core typography.

Here’s a translation, which I have to say does more to illustrate the short comings of mechanical translation engines [in this case: Babel Fish - eat your heart out Douglas] than explain what’s going on:

Oskar Bernhard is one of the last Schriftsetzer in Germany. He works in Noerdlingen in one approximately 400 years old house directly on the medieval stadtmauer. Still today it has orders, which reach from the birth announcement over the bill of fare up to the small book. In contrast to the standardized large-scale enterprise it makes its customers of suggestions, which character font, which size or color could have the writing.

Measure the height of pictures

Out in lead the schriftsetzer builds up poured letter, which the writing caster manufactures, a text, which to him an author submitted. The letters, which it uses, have an exactly standardized height. That is later important for a constant pressure in the printing machine. Also pictures or decoration components of the side must keep this height. Sometimes it concerns hundredth millimeters. So that the height is correct, the non--text components are measured individually, before they are built into the side and supported if necessary.

A metal lead mixture is poured into a form.

If the form is removed, the letter remains.

The letters must have accurately the same height.

The schriftsetzer determines the size of the writing in the unit "point". The expression "point details work" comes along. From a setting box, which weighs approximately 20 Kilos, the typesetter takes the lead letters and puts her one behind the other into a "winkelhaken" - mirror-operates and standing on the head. At the end of a line the line is fixed: In addition the schriftsetzer blind material takes, Spatien so mentioned. With them it varies the gap between the words so for a long time, until an even line developed. The line must hold with the pressure of the Spatien at the end automatically in the winkelhaken. Thus line follows after line, until a paragraph is finished. From even bringing in of the Spatien the impression of a text block results, to the grouped style.

Katrin lives in Bavaria, near to where this printing business all began.

Of Popes and Printing Presses

2006-04-06T12:27:00.000+01:00

Meeting on the 5th April, Farmers Arms, Holmfirth
Present: Mr. Jones [Chairman], Mr. Coombes [Hon. Sec.]
Absent: Mr. Holroyd [Treasurer}
Apologies were there none

It was proposed that the society buy a two and a half ton Heidelberg platen printing press as advertised recently on eBay.

The Hon. Sec. pointed out that the Chairman didn’t have space for it in his kitchen and even if he did it would be through the floor and in his garage before he could press GO [and he didn’t have space for it in his garage either]. And anyway the Treasurer hadn’t turned up so we couldn’t sanction spending 2500 notes of the Society’s non-existent funds.

Matters arising:

Platen printing presses.

“Presses that operate plane to plane are called platen presses. A vertical clamping contrivance clamps the bed, which carries the form into which the composed type is locked, and the platen, which carries the sheet of paper while it is being printed. When this clamping contrivance is open, the typeform is inked by a series of rollers that descend and then reascend, and the printed sheet is removed and a new sheet placed in position on the platen”

Encyclopedia Britannica

Heidelberg.

A town in South West Germany, in the Baden-Württemberg district, with a population of approximately 140,000 souls. Built on the banks of the Neckar river Heidelberg is dominated by the magnificent 16th Century Heidelberger Schloss.

It’s also famous for having the Oldest University in Germany, founded in 1386 because the Italians and French fell out over who should be Pope.

For seventy three years the Popes resided in Avignon, in a posh place called Le Palais des Papes, which was ok because they were all French at the time. Then in 1377, for reasons known only to himself though many suspect it was Catherine of Siena who influenced him, the seventh Pope, Pope Gregory XI, decided to up sticks and move back to Rome where, a year later, just as he was contemplating perhaps returning to Avignon, he, somewhat inconveniently as it turned out, died.

The Italians considered it a home fixture and thinking it was all over in France had sent out the change of address cards. But the French didn’t want to throw in the Papal Towel so easily, what with having a Grande Palais des Papes and all. So the Italians elected a Pope – and so did the French. Well you can imagine the trouble. Europe was in turmoil and the turmoil was called the Papal Schism.

Not to be confused with the Great Schism, when in 1054 the two main religious leaders of the time, Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I, managed to excommunicate each other [a neat trick if you can do it] over who had the best conkers and whether the Filioque Clause should be included in the Nicene Creed. But that’s a whole other Can of Worms, best saved for another day.

So anyway, back in 1378, the Italians had Pope Urban VI in Rome and the French had Pope Clement VII in Avignon. This was clearly a Bad Thing and led to a string of Popes and Anti-Popes, and everyone had to decide whose side they were on.

Germany sided with the Italians which upset the French who responded by kicking all the German students out of Paris. So the Germans rang the Pope and he sent them a Bull and they founded the University of Heidelberg, where a mere 429 years later a young chap called Karl Friedrich Drais enrolled as a student and went on to invent the bicycle as we know it today.

There are no known connections between the University, Popes, bicycles and the platen printing press, but by the Strange Nature of Coincidence there was a small schism in the printing press manufacturing industry in 1873. In Frankenthal, southwest Germany, not far from Heidelberg, Andreas Hamm and Andreas Albert fell out over the development of high-speed cylinder letterpress machines, as you do. Hamm got the edge and Albert was sucked down into ignominy and probable penury. After Andreas Hamm died his company was sold [by his son – children eh?] and the new company moved to nearby Heidelberg and called itself, not unreasonably considering it made high-speed presses, Schnellpressenfabrik AG Heidelberg.

The Heidelberg Lacrosse team, some of whom could work for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, though I doubt it as the main factories are now in Amstetten and Wiesloch. But, well, that’s the way things are in the Cut and Thrust world of the Typography Industry.

The Complete History of Typography part 3

2006-04-05T09:15:00.000+01:00

Inky fingers or why fish and chips are no longer wrapped in newspaper.

One of the earliest expressions of Green Politics, way before Joseph Beuys started the ball rolling in fact, was the re-cycling of newspaper in the fish and chip shops of the North of England. It’s a classic image, a battered fish and portion of chips wrapped in newspaper. But they don’t wrap the fish and chips in newspaper anymore, which is sad.

There were two fish shops in the village where I lived as a boy. There were many more in the village where I lived as a dog, but that's another story. There were two chips shops in the village: Hollowgate and the Church Yard. Both were run by fierce, overly large, dominant women, both had a skinny man in the background dipping the slippy silver fish fillets into the sticky yellow batter and lowering them dangerously fizzing into the hot fat.

You had to get it right, your order. Comers-in [as those not indigenous to the village were called] had a hard time. If an unsuspecting young couple went in and asked, in an accent not of the area, for two fish and chips, the nylon clad gorgon behind the hot counter would not blink as she placed two fish on the paper and one portion of chips.

Fish and chips twice wasn’t much better, you can guess what you’d get. To get a hot meal for two you had to ask for: one of each twice. This was ok once you knew, the variations were easy: one of each, one of each and a fish. Once you’d mastered the language the trip to the fish and chip shop became less terrifying.

And why do they no longer wrap your fish and chips in newspaper? I hear you cry. Poison, that’s why. It was discovered that this environmentally sound idea was slowly poisoning the population. Printing ink can, under certain circumstances, release tiny amounts of cyanide. Heaven forefend!

Certain pigments used in printing inks have chemical structures that utilize cyanide complexes. They are iron pigments based on ferro and ferric cyanides, such as potash blue or soda blue pigments. Under conditions that decompose the pigment, cyanide can be liberated. Some tests conducted to determine free cyanide in water decompose these pigments in the test protocol and find “free cyanide.” Pigments that may test positive for “free cyanide” under some test protocols include CI Pigment Blue 27, CI Pigment Red 169, as well as PMTA green and violet pigments.

A Brief History of Road Rolling

2006-04-04T16:42:00.000+01:00

Time was, horses or perhaps, more romantically, oxen would drag huge iron rollers about to flattern rough roads but their hooves would mess things up and road rolling didn’t come into its own until steam power arrived on the scene.

It all started around AD62, in Alexandria, Hero the Mathematician was making a cup of tea when he noticed the steam spitting out the spout of his kettle. He thought this would make a great Spinning Thing if he put two spouts on the kettle in opposite directions. And it was. And, Oh! how the Alexandrian’s laughed. “Have you seen Hero’s Spinning Kettle?” they’d ask each other, chuckling in the streets of Alexandria. And he might have been remembered merely as a cheap showman had he not gone on to write a Treatise on Pneumatics and generally Sorted Out a few things. Even so, I guess someone will have commented: “Is that it, then? Doesn’t it do anything?” And it didn’t, it just spun.

It carried on doing nothing for nearly 1600 years until 1678 when Thomas Savery converted Dennis Papin’s Digester – a crude pressure cooker – into a crude steam engine, pump water from a mine. [see how important tunelling is in the scheme of things?]

Well there was no stopping things now, next up Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith, built a more complicated engine which was far more efficient. Then came the Famous Inventor of the Steam Engine James Watt who improved on these other engines with all sorts of fiddley bits and technical stuff and his engine became Top Engine and was the main reason for the Industrial Revolution.

Back on the roads, another engine was gripping the nation – the Internal Combustion Engine and with the vastly increased speeds of transport the demands for better and smoother roads grew ever stronger. At first they used steam traction engines to pull the iron rollers, then found that the engine was doing a better job of flattening the road than the roller was. So Thomas Aveling decided to fix a giant roller instead of front wheels.

a 1937 Aveling Barford 6 nhp 10 ton Steam Roller, built to an earlier design by Ruston & Hornsby [see: a brief history of holes in the ground].

Aveling-Barford was formed in 1933, when Aveling & Porter and Barford & Perkins amalgamated. The question we need to ask, I feel, is why the new company wasn’t called Aveling-Perkins, or Porter-Barford, or indeed Porter-Perkins? Maybe Mr Perkins had been caught pinching biscuits from the biscuit tin, or maybe Mr Porter had been playing away fixtures with Mrs Aveling. Who knows, Aveling-Barford was the name on the Dinky Toy box and that’s good enough for me.

This Dynamite business

2006-04-02T14:08:00.000+01:00

It worked for them under the Mountains of Mourne, it still works today – only the drilling technology has improved.

slot drilling in the an iron ore mine in Malmberget, Sweden, using Wassara slot drilling technology for Blind Drop Raises.

“For inverted blind slot raise drilling and ventilation shaft drilling the Swedish mining company LKAB uses slot drilling technology in its iron ore mine at Malmberget. The first step is to drill the pilot hole. Then the pilot tube is inserted into the pilot hole. The second hole is then drilled parallel to the pilot hole thanks to the pilot tube. The procedure is then repeated, that is when the third hole is to be drilled the pilot tube is inserted in the second hole and so on. When the required number of slot holes have been drilled the blast holes are drilled. The advantage is that the blast holes can be optimized regarding direction and numbers with respect to the slot. Blasting is then performed towards the slot.”

Courtesy of Wassar AB, Stockholm – for all your drilling needs

Tunneling Tales

2006-04-01T20:54:00.000+01:00

Before we go deeper into the specialised world of typesetting, I must tell a True Tale of Tunnelling Men.

In 1947, in Ireland, 150 men began digging a tunnel, through solid granite, two and a half miles long, 800 metres under the Mountains of Mourne. Starting from each side of the mountain, with only candles and string, four years later the two teams met in the middle only inches out of line.

Oh, I forgot to mention they also had explosives, and this was the trick.

Now tunnelling with explosives is not a simple process, it’s not just a case of stuffing a stick dynamite in a crack, lighting the fuse and running away, as many a Western or James Bond movie would have us believe. Oh no.

First you’ve got to drill holes. Again this ain’t about setting the Black and Decker to hammer and getting it in the ear from your mum for all the dust on the carpet. These holes are nine feet deep. So you drill a series of holes in concentric circles, pack the explosives down the end of the holes and wad the whole thing up tight.

The charges are detonated in sequence a few seconds apart. The first explosion is the Burn Cut, a ring of holes in the centre which smashes up the rock and creates a space for the rest of the rock to fall into. Then the Shoulder Holes and Side Holes are detonated to ease the rock away and finally the Floor Lifters to, well, lift the rock off the floor.

Warning; DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

True Type

2006-04-01T17:28:00.000+01:00

In answer to the question in the previous post "Spot the faux pas" - If it were truly letterpress type, then it would look like this:

They didn't make letters the other way round, or if they did they didn't show me, or if they showed me I've forgotten, one way or the other letters for printing tend to be reversed...

The Complete History of Typography part 2

2006-03-31T11:41:00.000+01:00

compositing

The letters here, the ones you are currently reading, don’t exist in any palpable form, they’re the result, as you no doubt know, of electricity exciting a liquid crystal. They’re virtual letters and only come into touch with reality when ink is spat through those tiny jets. There’s no feeling to them, the breath of humanity passes them by, as indeed does the sweat of the compositor swearing shittyfuckbollocks as he drops a case of type.

Letters for most printed things used to be made of lead, well yes, you’re right, they were made of wood before they were made of lead,

but they were lead for a long time and they had weight, they had substance. As anyone who has brandished a bossing stick:

braying flashing over a bay window will know: lead’s a Nice Thing to Hold.

These lead letters were kept in type cases, which were wooden trays divided up into small compartments – now mainly seen on kitchen walls, usually containing things that should rightly be in the bin.

Of the two cases that contained the font of a particular typeface, the upper case had all the capitals, the lower case had all the small letters. The letters were all in individual compartments, in the upper case the compartments were mainly the same size, in the lower case the sizes varied with the popularity of the letter, the e compartment was the biggest.

Individual letters would be plucked out of the case. There was a nick on one face and you had to feel for this with your thumb nail so you could set all the letters the right way up. Your left hand [or right if you were left handed] held the stick, with your left thumb holding the assembled type in place.

The stick was set to a line length and as the words got close to the end of the line you would fill the gap with blank em’s or en’s or tiny slivers of brass to make everything tight. If the copy was justified you would have to have to insert spaces between each word.

You could set two or three lines of type in the stick then you had to transfer them to the galley tray. It was a good trick to get the type out in one piece, and a nightmare if you didn’t.

When the lines were set and the section was complete you had to wind a bit of string round all the type to stop it falling All Over the Place. The knot to secure this was a tricky number, sort of slipped and tucked under the winding at a corner.

Enough for now, go away and practice the above until it becomes second nature and your hand reaches automatically to the correct compartment, faultlessly plucking letters out at a mind-bending speed.

The Holmfirth Typographical Society would like to thank Matthew Kirschenbaum, Assistant Professor of English and Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland for some of the pictures in this article. To see more images and a good description of the process just click here and you shall be sped across the internet to Amerikey.

Spot the faux pas

2006-03-24T15:08:00.000Z

2006-03-24T14:56:00.000Z

Typographical Type Kinda Agencies (loosely associated) past and present:

The Chase (a rectangular iron frame in which a form of composed type is secured and locked by quoins for printing.)

http://www.thechase.co.uk

Still going strong in the Madchester

Kerning Pairs (Definition: Kerning is the adjustment of space between pairs of letters to make them more visually appealing. Some type comes with kerning pairs, commonly kerned pairs of letters with the spacing already adjusted for best visual appearance.)

Long gone Leeds typesetters. Anyone know who went where?

Letterror - http://www.letterror.com

Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum the Dutch nutters, still going strong by the looks of the things. I had the pleasure of meeting these 2 with Neville Brody back in the 90’s

Of Mouse Traps and Cartography

2006-03-24T10:53:00.000Z

The minutes of the last meeting were read and agreed by the Chairman [honest].

It was found necessary to fine Mr Holroyd for tardiness and the incorrect use of the term font. This latter offence carrying the maximum sentence of possibly stripping him of his affiliation. The matter has been referred to committee.

For the unsuspecting amongst us, let us remind you: a FONT is a collection of type in one size and style. A TYPEFACE is a design of type , including a full range of characters: letters, numbers and marks of punctuation, in all sizes. We really need to get this sorted out.

It was resolved that in future we should meet in pubs that serve only beer – from one pump. Considering the only known pub to do this is in Kent, future meetings might be delayed.

Mr Holroyd has a problem with mice, possibly caused by his habit of feeding them Mars Bars and Kit Kats, we’re not sure. Suggestions were made for the entrapment of said rodents and the efficacy of the Tilting Toilet Roll Humane Mouse Collector [patent app. for] was discussed.

The main objection being: what if the roll rolled sideways with the mouse inside would it not then miss the bucket? Mr Holroyd was fined again.

Mr Jones suggested we collect rice on a chess board, much in the manner of Persian Kings, putting a single grain on the first square and two on the second and four on the third, doubling it every time, and he spent a happy couple of minutes doubling figures until he lost the will to live on square 13.

Well further [exhaustive] research shows us that by square 64 there are 9,223,372,036,854,780,000 grains of rice, but the total, cumulative, amount of rice grains on the board is: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 which is clearly more than required for a byriani I think you'll agree. To put this in perspective it's been estimated [by Clever People at the University of Hawaii, where you can do a degree in Pure Maths and Surfing] that there are 663,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand in the world [where a grain of sand is specifically rock detritus with a particle diameter of 0.06-2 mm. according to standard sedimentological classification]. 43,252,003,274,489,856,00 is the number of possible combinations of Rubik's Cube, and the inventor of Mr Potato Head was one George Lerner of New York, in 1952.

Mr Coombes pointed out that you only need four colours to colour in a map no matter how complicated the borders are. Then talk turned to Samurai swords and we got confused and Mr Holroyd had to be fined again.

Before you knew it Mr Jones had his holiday health insurance policy out on the table and was trying to fold it more than seven times - there’s no stopping some folk.

Which brings us to rotoscoping.

Complaints were received that some junior members of certain affiliated associations were questioning the nomenclature of particular filmmaking techniques, especially that used in the forthcoming film A Scanner Darkly [an adaptation of a Philip K Dick story]. The Animation Committee was consulted and it was confirmed that the process of animating movements by directly tracing from live-action footage was indeed called rotoscoping.

Before the meeting came to a close Mr Jones entertained us with an amusing anecdote describing the art of making dogs defecate on demand. Apparently the insertion of a matchstick in the dogs derrière instantly produces the desired effect. Caution was advocated and the longer kitchen match was considered preferable to a Swan Vesta. Mr Holroyd graphically demonstrated the process on a larger scale with an oar and an elephant and had to be fined again.

Where it all started

2006-03-23T23:48:00.000Z

NINE LONG NARROW BOATS, FOUR SHORT Do.

Meeting

2006-03-23T17:53:00.000Z

There's a meeting tonight.
7:30 Farmers Arms, Parkhead, Holmfirth - where else?
Whether you're a Tunnel Man or a Typographer
Be there or forever be in the dark.

Before we go any further...

2006-03-21T17:20:00.000Z

...a glossary is perhaps necessary.

Uncial – written in or pertaining to a form of majuscule writing having no lower case letters and more curves than capitals, used chiefly in the 3rd to 9th century, as you'll no doubt remember.

Majuscule – capital letters

Minuscule – a small cursive script developed in the 7th century from the uncial form

Cursive – flowing strokes resembling handwriting, joined up writing.

Upper case – majuscule letters

Lower case – minuscule letters

Capital letters – in the upper case

Case – a wooden tray with partitions containing type, usually in pairs one set above the other. The upper case contains the capital letters and the lower case contains the small letters and auxiliary type.

Font – a collection of type in one size and style

Typeface – a design of type , including a full range of characters, as letters, numbers and marks of punctuation, in all sizes.

Furniture – see Dead Metal

Dead metal – pieces of wood or metal less than type high which are formed in amongst type to space it out to fit in a chase.

Chase – a rectangular iron frame in which a form of composed type is secured and locked by quoins for printing.

Quoin – a wedge of wood or metal, more recently an adjustable metal wedge, for securing type in a chase.

Bed – to lock up forms and chases in a press prior to printing

Form – an assemblage of type, leads and furniture secured in a chase.

Leading – a thin strip of type metal or brass, less than type height, used to increase space between lines of composed type ready for printing.

Kern – an element of a letter projecting beyond the body of the type, especially with certain italic letters.

Ligature – two characters made as one piece of type, often with kerned pairs: fi ff, not to be confused with diphthong: AE OE

Composing Stick – a portable, adjustable metal tray held by the compositor in one hand as they place in it type gathered from the case by the other hand

Serif – the small horizontal line finishing off the main stroke of a letter. Derived from Roman letters cut in stone where the letter-cutter’s chisel would begin and end the stroke. Believed to be derived from the Dutch schreef stroke.

Sans Serif – letters without serifs

Grotesque - see Sans Serif

Em – a measure, originally the width of a capital M

En – a measure, half the width or an em.

Point – a unit of measure, there are 72 points to an inch.

Point size – originally the distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender in points, now more commonly the height of a capital letter in millimetres.

A brief history of Holes in the Ground.

2006-03-20T10:30:00.000Z

Man has always scratched the ground, fascinated by his origins, driven by an urge for food, an unhealthy desire for untold wealth, or intent on shifting large quantities of the planet with a view to getting about more easily.

“Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface, relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid”
Bertrand Russell.

It was 1880, in Bucyrus, Ohio, that Daniel P Eells, with his friends and family, formed the Bucyrus Foundry and Manufacturing Company. In 1882 the first Bucyrus Excavating Steam Shovel left the Foundry for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. [See: Once Upon a Time in the West, director Sergio Leone]

In 1930 Bucyrus-Erie [as it was then known, after a breathtaking merger with the Erie Steam Shovel Company] merged with Ruston & Hornsby of the UK to form Ruston Bucyrus.

Specification of the Lorenz L8600 Earthmover:
Capacity, Heaped: 8 cubic yards
Width of Cut: 84"
Overall Width: 8' 6"
Depth of Cut: 8"
Depth of Spread: 0" to 14.5"
Ground Clearance: 12"
Overall Raised Height: 6' 5"
Push-Off Cylinder: 4" x 36"
Front Gate Cylinders: 3" x 10"
Tank Lift Cylinders: 3.5" x 16"
Sequential Front Gate and Push-Off: Standard
Rear Tires & Tubes: 14.9" x 24" 6 Ply, 12 Ply Optional
Front Tires & Tubes: 15" x 22.5" 12 Ply
Weight: 7000 lbs.
Tongue Jack: Standard
Heavy-Duty Reversible Cutting Edges: Standard
Replaceable Side Bits: Standard
Hydraulic Spool Required: Dual Spool, Dual acting
Horse Power Required: 150-225 HP
Hydraulic Supply Hoses & Tips: Standard

remember: DON’T MESS WITH TUNNELLING MEN

Next week: Aveling Barford, steam rollers and the desire for flatness

The History of Typography part 1

2006-03-19T13:43:00.000Z

How it used to be done…

Printing, as anyone who had a John Bull Printing Outfit will know,

used to be about putting ink on letter-shaped bits of metal or wood then transferring the ink to the paper. This was the case from 1448 [Gutenberg] to 1971 when the dot matrix printer came upon us. Oh yes there was etching and gravure and silk-screen printing, and Xerox must needs be mentioned. But for general, work-a-day printing, from your typewriter to the penguin novel, ink was smeared on letter-shaped metal and then stamped on paper. [okay so your typewriter used a ribbon, but let’s not get picky]. Today printing is all dots and digital and photosensitive. Hot metal has gone the way of all things.

It all started in China, in about 1045, Pi Sheng, with nothing to do one rainy afternoon, the television have not been invented and his home team playing away, began fiddling around with movable type,

then a mere 400 years later Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, by all accounts a blacksmith [and there’s nothing wrong with that] brought the whole thing together with a printing press in 1455,

a strenuous business befitting an ironmonger I feel.

Our very own William Caxton introduced us to printing in 1474,

though many were puzzled by this new high technology.

Underground Auction

2006-03-16T10:29:00.000Z

Members of the Holmfirth Typographical Society and Tunnelling Equipment Sales Team examining Lot 406: WAGONS, various &Do. under the watchful eye of chief auctioneer Vernon Dixon.

The stuff of tunnel men

2006-03-15T01:02:00.000Z

Air Scrubber
Annular space
Anti-roll Jack
Anti-rotation fin
Articulated cutterhead
Back grouting
Block catcher
Bob Point Bit
Boomhead shield
Buck Gear
Cake
Centrifugal separator
Clamping jack
Clogging
Coarse vibrating shield
Cutterhead support articulation
Digging bucket
Earth pressure balanced shield
Emergency Tail Seal
Exhaust dust cleaner
Filter band press
Finger shape shield tail
Foaming solution
Fullface cutterhead
Gathering arms
Gathering apron
Gripper carrier
Gripper shoes
Hinged scrapper wing
Hydraulic Slurry Mucking
Mucking bucket
Mucking scoop
Peripherical buckets
Ram pads
Regripping
Roadheader shield
Tailskin articulation
Thrust cylinders

Early days

2006-03-13T09:56:00.000Z

Some would say this is where it all started in the lettering Industry:

The Phoenician alphabet.

Phoenicians lived in the Mediterranean and so were also responsible for the Package Holiday. They were famous for having Phoenician Gallerys, huge ships with oars that carried great Works of Art about and often sank so that people could discover them later.

Known as the Purple People because of the much sought after purple dye they made in their city of Tyre [which they didn't invent - that was Charles Goodyear]. The greek for purple was phoinix which is why they became Phoenician, until Romans found them and called then Punic because their word for purple was puniceus. Which then led to the Punic Wars.

The Punic Wars were because the Romans wanted to holiday in Sicily and this belonged to the Cathaginians who were also Phoenician on account of their colourful language [see above]. In the First Punic War the Romans got their towels on the deckchairs after a Bloody Battle and subsequently enjoyed holidays in Sicily for thirty years until The Second Punic War which was famous because it was in the Second Punic War that Hannibal famously crossed the Alps with his Elephants. Hannibal won many battles because: 1, no one had ever seen an elephant before and: 2. everyone was off fighting in Sicily. But despite Hannibal's, somewhat misguided, victories, the Romans held onto Sicily and the Carthaginians had to be content with holidays in Crete.

Improvements in tunnel perimeter management

2006-03-07T23:56:00.000Z

Casagrande's new tunnel support equipment helps stabilize weak soils and broken rock by constructing an arch around the tunnel's periphery, ahead of the face, reducing the need for expensive temporary support systems.

The PG 125 in action

Mind you Thunderbirds never had this problem...

Great letter-cutters of our time.

2006-03-07T19:59:00.000Z

Eric Gill

Undoubtedly a Top Man in the world of typography, and a main player in religious art of the Catholic doctrine. But let's not forget his dubious appetite for those who tend not to shave in the morning.

And he wasn't worried what relation they were to him either. But he gave us Gill and Gill sans and Perpetua, which have a purity of line and deed in direct contradiction to his where he put his priapus.

So where do we go from here?
Is our behaviour any relation to our talent?
No, clearly not.
But is it easier to forgive the talented pervert
than the mediocre oddball?

I'll leave you with a poem:

Can you forgive the fastidious cannibal
His unusual pleasures? Does your charity
Embrace the noisy whore, forgetting her manners
In front of your daughter? The cocky-walker
Who teaches your wife to care about clothes again
And look in the mirror? And yet defend
Your wife from your enemy and your daughter
From the convincing whore, your life from the cannibal?
When you can do this, and this, and lose
Your wife, your life and always your curious daughter
Then we may talk of love and what we mean.

PJ Kavanagh

GOINGS

2006-03-06T23:24:00.000Z

David Lance Goings

Two floors up the Ramsden Street building, we used to run the stairs two at a time, so that, on arrival, in our calligraphy class, our hands would be shaking for ten minutes and we could delay the black ink business...

illumination

2006-03-03T09:26:00.000Z

photographs kindly supplied by our chairman
[using his phone ffs]

High definition images will be forthcoming, if the Hon, Sec. can get off his arse this forenoon

First Post

2006-03-03T07:49:00.000Z

During a regular meeting of The Education of Simon Jones, the Holmfirth Typographical Society and Tunnelling Company was formed, with a view to celebrating the rules and happenstance settings of the print medium and selling off excess tunnelling equipment for profit.