Squaring the Deckle

Preserving deckle edges and holding register is a common enough problem to warrant my suggesting the following method. Recently I was printing some invitations on a handmade from Cave Paper. By use of a steel perforating* rule I did some additional tearing in an attempt to square up one side of the sheet, as the two-color job I had in mind would present registration problems. To make sure the invitations fit the envelopes I decided to fold the sheets ahead of time. It then occurred to me that the fold presented a natural “horizon line.”

Pictured above is the setup I used to guide the sheets parallel to the fold.** I first lined the type up to a square setup sheet; then I lay parallel to the edge of the setup sheet (while in the guides) a piece of 72-point giant metal furniture.

I then used a triangle to create a guide-edge perpendicular to the side guide. By first bringing the folded sheet into the uppermost guide on the cylinder and then bringing the folded sheet back and flush to the long edge of the triangle I was able to get the type parallel to the fold. This was easily accomplished as the triangle was free floating, and I could easily slide it backwards and forwards along the piece of giant furniture. Then it was a simple matter of opening the sheet up and running it through the press. I found this quicker, easier (and more accurate) than lining up to a frisket overlay on a light-table.

To the right of the press in the composite photo is the completed invitation. Admittedly for all my talk of registration this is not very tight registration. Nevertheless, the two type blocks are parallel to each other, and the entire text block is imposed parallel to the fold so that it does not “slide” off the sheet.

I should think this technique could prove useful in bookwork, where one would want to preserve all the deckles. Certainly it would facilitate in ensuring that the text block remain perpendicular to the gutter.

A note on the type: the display type is Alladin (a digital incarnation of F. H. E. Schneidler’s Legende), a typeface commonly used in the past for “things Oriental.” The sans serif is FF Meta, a favorite of mine for its well balanced caps and small caps, and the ease with which oldstyle figures can be accessed through the Roman font. As they say on eBay: “Highly Recommend.” “Would Use Again.”

*In place of a tear bar I have found that a perforating rule can make an effective substitute. It is very sharp and can make a clean serrated edge; or by making small tears at a time, a wide, false deckle can be achieved. You have to be careful of the indentation that the rule may make, if you are too hasty. If this happens, slight dampening and use of a bone folder can be used to lessen it.

**You will note that the sheet is not under the grippers. This to show better the irregular fore-edge.

Anecdote of the Craft

Harry Duncan was fond of quoting the adage: “It’s a poor workman blames his tools.” Corollary to this is the concept of “the work-around,” whereby you sidestep the limitations of a computer program, and by application of Yankee-ingenuity, get done what needs to be done. Thereby demonstrating that limitation is not necessarily a constraint. I’m sure Robert Frost could weigh in on this.

In a similar vein is the notion that the skill of a workman may be judged not so much by the number of his tools, but by the condition of his tools. Barton Sutter, addresses this in his poem, “Tools”:

“Let’s have a look at your tools,”
The foreman said. He had to choose.
Grandpa’s were filed, slick with oil,
Obviously used.

The implication clear: Grandpa gets the job, based on an impeccable resume, the well-cared-for condition of his tools.

A printer friend of mine had a sign on his shop door—and I do mean shop, not studio—that read: Fine Craft Printing. As adroit a way as any for suggesting “fine press,” without coming right out and saying it. And this during the heyday of the journal, Fine Print.

Seeing as I have opened the door to equivocation, I may as well hang myself out to dry. I have several poems which attempt to mediate the vagaries of craft. Here is one of them.

The Arrivistes

To say that we have no standards or that our standards vary is to evade the issue. Everything we do is our best. More to the point is that some occasions allow a better best. Anyone who understands contingency understands this.

Furthermore some things need only be good enough and on which perfection is wasted. Corollary to this is that in terms of the job although good enough may not be perfect it may be acceptable.

The secret to this is procedure: it allows us to mediate and be fairly arbitrary about it. We call this rapprochement which is French for “getting close.”

For example this example.

©2009 — Philip Gallo

Want more? Go to Cloud Cuckoo Land for “Imagine You Are A Craftsman.”

Apollinaire Redux

Were a literary critic writing copy for Advertising Age, you might find the following headline: Celebrex® TV Spot Reclaims Ground Expropriated By Visual Poetry.

Pictured above is a montage of three screen shots taken from the 2009 tv commercial for the controversial arthritis drug, Celebrex. I have pieced them together to show the movement toward the viewer of the snowflake copy. The commercial itself can be found on YouTube.

The entire voice-over of the commercial is handled graphically as pictograms. A dog. Two bicyclists. A leaf. A kite. Snowflakes.

They call to mind the calligrammes of Apollinaire. But the commercial goes further: the pictograms support a narrative. Rather than subvert the commercial as some have done on YouTube, I suggest take advantage of this narrative technique and put it to another use.

One need only look at the advertisements for Absolut® Vodka, where famous writers were employed to write “stories” around (both literally and figuratively) the Absolut bottle, to see the insidious, if not pernicious, effect of advertising.

To my mind one of the best instances of expropriation of a product is the coca cola field, done by the Brazilian concretist, Décio Pignatari. By a series of substitutions he transposes

beba coca cola (drink coca cola)
to cloaca (cesspool)

all on a field of red, very near the PMS red of Coca-Cola®.

If I may be self-referential, the intent of my post entitled, “Seizing the Tools of Art,” was exactly that: expropriation. Art is not the exclusive province of “artists.”

Steinway of the Typewriters: The Olivetti Underwood Dora

Seizing the Tools of Art

Recently closed at The Tate Modern is the show: Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism.

Hard not to like those big block letters on a field of flat black or red.

It reminded me of the Russian Contructivist Show at Walker Art Center in 1990. I was standing behind a man and a woman. They were looking at an advertising poster by Rodchenko, when the man turned to her and said, with some pride, “We can do that at our shop.”

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Click here to ascend to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

WYSIWYG

The first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) that I encountered was the Compugraphic 4800, ca. 1983. It was a standalone module with built-in keyboard. After having command-keystroked the job, the operator could then display it in WYSIWYG form.

Shown above is the typescript of an original typewriter poem a former student of mine composed as a class assignment in 1969.

The handwriting alongside the poem is the markup I gave the Compugraphic 4800 operator. The obvious typeface to have used was American Typewriter, but for some reason—delirious, no doubt, from a bad case of “serious-osity”—I called for Zapf International Light. Today I would call for Schmutz or FF Trixie.

The tree displayed in orange on the screen. The refresh rate of the 4800 was slow, and it took approximately thirty seconds to “draw” the tree. As the image displayed from the top down, one could not “grow” the tree. And as my impulse for setting the tree in the first place was the potential for interactive effects, I did not continue along these lines.

When I informed the operator of this decision, she gave me her absolute best “I could have told you so” world-class smile.