Wednesday, June 5, 2013

production restart on Jenson's Greek

fresh paper arrived yesterday from Magnani Papers Australia - mouldmade not handmade -  and which I will experiment printing dry, particularly with larger more solid color areas than 12 pt type - like these, from the forthcoming ode to Nicolas Jenson - 
whether these colors will be preserved is another matter - but I do like them nonetheless - from left to right the letters are 1) a double sigma/theta, in English 'sth', 2) psi, English 'ps', and 3) pi, English 'p' [even tho it looks like omega, in English a long 'o'] - since fifteenth century types, a number of joined and other forms of the letters have dropped away - 

right now I seem to be involved in a kind of revolution in thinking about what I do & how I do it in the printery - as much as anything by reading three things : David Pye, The Nature & Art of Workmanship; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour; and John J McKendry, Robert Motherwell's "A la pintura", The Genesis of a Book - the proposed connections of course are within mine owne fever'd minde - but while I have often made, in the words of one reviewer, 'colourful books', I have never explored what happens to various colors in the mixing of 'em, nor other color ranges than the traditional printers' black first, then red, then blue, then a few others - among the 'others' have been the metallics silver, gold & copper, but nothing of the the earthy tones used by printmakers, burnt & raw sienna, Umber, red & yellow ochres - and the hell of it is that I have always responded feelingly to these latter colors while using the traditional ones instead - what a conservative & unadventurous lump I have been all these years - SO - a few cans of colored Graphic Chemical substances have arrived from Takach and a few more are coming soon - by the time I get to the type specimen book, the "&" project, there'll be a color shift in the Electio printshop - and I too will therefore be watching this space - I should never forget Alfred North Whitehead's lovely remark, All is there for feeling, plus Keats's note that he wished for a poetry in which thought & feeling both happened at once - if you don't feel it so, don't do it so - my lesson to myself today -