The Book of the Erinyes

I’m mak­ing very good pro­gress with the Let­ter­press part of the Book of the Erinyes at the moment — I’m man­aging to fit in 2 ses­sions of work at Brighton Inde­pend­ent Print­mak­ing each week, and I’m really on a roll.

Proof prints for chapters 6 and 7 below (click through to see lar­ger ver­sions & leave comments):

I’ve been put­ting some hours into the Let­ter­press side of the Book of the Erinyes recently, and have made a fair bit of progress.

Yes­ter­day even­ing I man­aged to print out the text for the first sec­tion (there’s only one page of text per section).

I’d spent an even­ing the pre­vi­ous week metic­u­lously set­ting most of the type (shown inked up and sit­ting on the press, below), which just left me to fin­ish it off this week and start printing.

After a hand­ful of adjust­ments for typos or overly-worn let­ters I was lucky enough to get a decent print on the first real attempt.

In some ways it’s strange — I could type and print the text for this page on my com­puter in less than five minutes, so why spend six hours slowly pick­ing each indi­vidual let­ter, arran­gingthem, ink­ing it up, run­ning test prints…?

The answer is in the fin­ished res­ult.  If you’ve ever seen a piece of letterpress-printed type you’ll have noticed the way the metal let­ters slightly indent the paper and the shine of the oil-based ink (it sparkles just a bit when it catches the light).

The Book of the Erinyes is being prin­ted on a heavy (220gm) cart­ridge paper, which is prob­ably the thick­est paper I can get away with put­ting through the press. The body text is 12pt Goudy Old Style, with lar­ger sizes of the same font being used for headings.

The com­bin­a­tion of let­ter­press prin­ted type and a good qual­ity paper makes the fin­ished page really enjoy­able to handle and hold.  I was think­ing of scan­ning a copy, but a scan just can’t catch the tact­ile qual­it­ies of the paper or the look of oil-based ink sit­ting on the sur­face of it.

I’m happy to say that I’ve prin­ted out the title and half-title pages.

On Wed­nes­day at the Let­ter­press work­shop I mono­pol­ised the press to run off 30 cop­ies of each (I’ve final­ised the lim­ited edi­tion to 30 copies).

Due to the nature of Let­ter­press there are slight vari­ations between each one — dif­fer­ing amounts and dis­tri­bu­tions of ink because of how I inked the text on each pass.  This is one of the things I really like about Letterpress.

Next up will be the Con­tents page (which I’ve already set, and is wait­ing in a gal­ley) and the first actual page of the book.

I’ve just got back from this week’s let­ter­press work­shop where I man­aged to print some proofs (photo below) of the title and half-title pages of the Book of the Erinyes.

These two pages will make up the first sig­na­ture of the book.  The sig­na­tures only con­sist of 2 sheets (8 pages in total, Crown Quarto size — 7½″ x 10″) because of the thick­ness of the 220gm cart­ridge paper I’m print­ing on.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, and the title page is in vari­ous smal­ler Goudy & Goudy Italic type with a dec­or­at­ive block.

link to high res­ol­u­tion scan of title page (JPEG ~415KB)

Last year I did an even­ing course in Let­ter­press Print­ing at the Brighton Inde­pend­ent Print­mak­ing centre. Last week Les Ellis, the course tutor, invited me back for a 4-evening follow-on course where I could work on my own pro­ject, but with Les Ellis and col­league John Packer on hand to refresh my memory and provide expert advice.

I’ve just got back from the first of these four 3-hour Let­ter­press Print­ing work­shops, and I’m happy to say that I man­aged to remem­ber most of what I was taught on last year’s course.

This even­ing I man­age to get the half-title and title pages hand-composited and locked into chases, ready for proof­ing and print­ing next week.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, while the title page is a mix­ture of 30pt Goudy (for the title), 24pt Goudy Italic (for the sub­title), and some 12pt Goudy for the small print.  It also includes a very nice dec­or­at­ive block.  I hope to be able to show you the res­ults next week.

I’m really pleased with the pro­gress today — I man­aged to get more done in one ses­sion than I’d hoped. Next week’s ses­sion can’t come soon enough.