What are the criteria for excellent letterpress printing?

Perhaps this is a dumb question, I'm not sure. I've been collecting fine press books for a few years now and I have found that the printing (or 'presswork' if that is the correct term) varies tremendously amongst the established fine presses past and present, and there can even be considerable variation between books from the same press.

The things I have tended to notice most of all are:

1) The consistency of the printing (i.e. are some words, sections, or pages printed more lightly or more heavily inked?)

2) The crispness of the printing (i.e. are the edges of the characters mostly sharp or slightly uneven?)

3) Depth of impression or 'bite'

I imagine all these are very much interconnected. Are there other criteria I can be looking out for?

I guess the difficulty comes when we are dealing with so many different methods of letterpress printing. Should I hope for ultimate consistency and crispness whatever the method? Or, do expectations need to be adjusted according to the printing method (e.g. a Heidelberg vs a hand press, metal vs polymer) and the type of paper that is being used?

I understand and agree - to some extent - with the view that the imperfections and inconsistencies can be what makes letterpress printing charming and demonstrates that it is handcraft. On the other hand, when I look at the presswork of John Henry Nash, for example, it seems so beautifully crisp and consistent to my eyes, and I find that it's very satisfying to read because of that.

I welcome everyone's views or advice. I'm interested to hear what you all look for.

The factors you list are indeed important, and interrelated as you surmise. One that I would add as crucial is design.

At first blush this might seem like less of a factor, since every letterpress printer is ostensibly doing the same thing (arranging metal type or polymer plate on a bed). But once you begin to appreciate the (often subtle) genius of good book design, it quickly becomes an obvious demarcator between adequate press work and great press work.

Now naturally design is an important part of every book, but outside of letterpress you can do a lot of digital jiggery-pokery. Letterpress, by its more constrained format, requires a special talent in order to manifest brilliance. Typeface and ink choices, page arrangement, margins, and the like take on greater import in letterpress because they are the key methods of expression.

There are some active presses (No Reply, Nomad, Factotum Pers to name a few) whose book designs are so superb that they are a pleasure to simply look upon. Though of course they are also a delight to read. Anyway, this is something I consider a signal trait of great letterpress.

I would also add general quality control. The focus on making everything conform to a vision, the willingness to redo or replace errors even at cost. The care to make sure page alignment is correct after gathering. Etc. It's not exactly quality of press work, but stands alongside evenness of inking, control of impression, and other qualities of printing that are easier to isolate, and seems closer to press work than any other clearly distinguished domain of book making. GAF is king.

I think this is one of the major aspects that makes the excellence of books from presses like the Officina Bodoni stand out.

I do think the choice of which point on any dimension one prefers is relatively arbitrary (printer kiss versus deep impression, for example, or choice of smoother versus rougher paper). But once a lane is chosen, consistency and excellence of follow through is what distinguishes the merely competent from the top class. For example, my Bodoni Etna is highly refined printers kiss technique while my Taller Martin Pescador Green Knight is thick thick handmade paper with deep impression. Both are in my top ten favorites from my collection.

Another dimension to add might be integration of illustrations, not in a layout design sense but in an execution sense. Effectiveness of using multiple passes to integrate wood engravings (or similar relief methods) or multiple colors.

>2 Shadekeep: Excellent points. In a sense, I am trying to isolate the printing itself, but that may be a fool's errand as I imagine it's a holistic process for the printer. Appreciating all the subtle magic of letterpress design and typography must take a lot of experience, and I feel like there's plenty that goes over my head at this stage. Perhaps it's understood on some level when I see a page that looks 'right' or harmonious, and eventually I will be better able to appreciate or articulate why (I hope)! I think there's something partly instinctive about noticing when spacing and proportion are a bit off.

>3 abysswalker: Well said. The willingness to redo and replace must be a huge and very testing part of the printing process, especially when you are dealing with labour intensive methods and expensive materials. So, would you say you are more forgiving of imperfections or inconsistency based on the printing method e.g. if a book is printed on a hand-press or proof-press rather than a Heidelberg? Or, to borrow your metaphor, once a lane is chosen do you expect excellence (and pay accordingly)?

>4 GardenOfForkingPaths: I think you covered a lot of what is crucial regarding the actual printing in your first post. I would still weigh typeface selection and point size into that mix, as those can have an impact on related factors like bite strength.

Also, in addition to ink choices, I really would count paper selection as a major contributing factor. It has a huge influence on the overall effect, and can further guide decisions going into the physical printing. An impression style that works wonderfully on one paper may not be at all suited to another. A great printer knows how to adapt to each paper for best effect.

>4 GardenOfForkingPaths: I wouldn't say I'm more forgiving exactly, but I do expect different kinds of products. A book printed on thick handmade paper has some qualities that can serve a particular book well or poorly. It's going to be thicker (most of the time) and have greater rigidity, making it well suited for larger page sizes and not too many pages per volume. It's also probably going to be a bit more irregular if the natural deckle is maintained. If someone tries to print a 500 page doorstop novel on such a paper expecting it to be a single volume, it's not going to come out well, no matter the "luxury" of the materials. It's like someone that tries to put caviar and truffle on everything just because it is fancy. Doesn't result in good food.

Same with higher end offset work printed on a precision fabricated machine made paper.

There are probably some parts of the craft that will just about always be "better" when using labor intensive manual methods and luxury materials (hand sewn head and tail bands, for example) but generally speaking I'd rest on the principle of the best tool or material for the job. If I'm mixing an old fashioned, it's going to be a waste of the finest aged whiskey (for example). If you're printing a long book on a thin wove paper, using a hand press is probably a recipe for heartache, as both artisan and customer, even though it's probably the most prestigious method.

(The worst offender in the "caviar and truffle on everything" school of design is probably leather bindings. I love fine leather bindings, but leather in generally is probably overused. I'd take simple cloth or buckram bindings over mid grade or lower leather with uninspired design any day.)

>7 abysswalker: Agreed, and I generally prefer cloth to leather most of the time. Also, not an especial fan of gilt, but I do like decorated edges on the right book (particularly marbled edges). Not an option for deckled paper, obviously!

>1 GardenOfForkingPaths: For me, the goal is always to try to print the letter as the punch cutter carved it, adjusting the press, the inking rollers, the make ready, and dampness of the paper to avoid ink on the shoulders or salty color. Thereafter, since letterpress is by definition an impression in the paper, we can expect some depth to the impression, but punch through to verso should always be fought against. Not many know that some amount of punch through can be addressed after the fact, but mainly must be done on the press, whatever the brand or style of press one uses. And it doesn't always work, some days the demons battle hard and win.

I could have printed several more books for all the folios I decided to reprint due to consistency issues or typos. And, en route to 'fixing' things, made more mistakes. Why bother doing it if you do not choose perfection as your impossible foil? It's a maddening enterprise.

My teacher always famously said: 'Imperfection is incidental to the hand process." That is not to say that imperfections add to the charm of an object by revealing that it is handmade. That is not a thing.

Luckily, there are more ways than just printing quality to judge a book!

Interesting question and one I’ve been wondering about myself, having recently acquired my first couple of letterpress editions (from pretty well regarded presses).

Having little personal experience to go on, how acceptable do people find occasional page ‘smudges’? Not in the type itself, which is all fine from what I can see, but in terms of what might be described as dirty marks on the pages.

Is this just part of buying letterpress or should we expect pristine printing?

>10 cyber_naut: Try using a gum eraser gently on the smudges. If you bought direct, some presses might offer a replacement if the smudges are too troublesome.

Great conversation. Thanks for posting this, Mr. Garden! I think excellence in printing is an enormously complex, three-dimensional thing. I don't know any excellent printer who doesn't hate everything they've ever printed. (Well that's an exaggeration, but not by much!)

Chad's like a 9 with aspirations to be a 10. (Nobody has ever been a 10. Chad is as good as they get.)

I'm like a 5 with aspirations to be a 9. (I wanna be YOU when I grow up, Chado!)

This is a topic on which somebody should write a book, or, maybe, an essay for a forthcoming book...

P. S. I think I've only ever held one book where I would describe the printing as "Flawless". Chad, I wonder how many truly flawless books you've come across?

>12 grifgon: "Nobody has ever been a 10."

How about McGrath, Mardersteig, Newdigate at their very best? Just curious about your opinion, not challenging you to defend it. :)

>14 a.friend: A rating of '10' implies perfection, and no one is perfect. You might get to 9.9, though.

>14 a.friend: To be totally honest, my guess is that if I were to be handed one of their very best books at random, I (and probably you!) would be able to find a couple of real flaws at least. (And that's just real flaws – not considering difference of opinion over excellence at all.)

Calling somebody a perfect printer is like calling somebody a perfect basketball player. What does that even mean, really?

I think that printing is a bit like shooting free throws. Each one is pretty easy, but nobody shoots 100 in a row. The very best hit like 90 percent.

Not sure about McGrath or Newdigate – haven't seen enough of their work – but in my (very) humble opinion, Chad is a better printer than Mardersteig. (And they're both using hand-set and hand-press so maybe it's a fair comparison, too.)

Edit: Of course Chad and Mardersteig were trying to accomplish very different things and working at a very different scale, so maybe the comparison isn't fair...

>16 grifgon: Perfect printing is neither very definable, nor attainable. You find yourself in the pursuit, however.

Mike Peich was always a very, very clean printer, especially important for the austerity of Van Krimpen's types.

I also see no flaws in the very expert printing in 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' recently from No Reply, so I don't know where 5 out of 10 as a rating comes from. It is near perfect and wonderfully consistent!

>5 Shadekeep: That makes sense. Assuming I like the work that's being produced, and I know the printing will be good, paper choice is probably the most important factor for me in being attracted to a fine press edition. More important than the binding and illustrations, certainly.

>6 abysswalker: Thank you. Best tools and materials for the job is a great principle, I think. At the lower end, a well designed trade book can still be very satisfying if all the elements are working in harmony.

>9 SuttonHooPress: Wonderful insights, thank you. I love what you said about trying to produce what the punch cutter intended. Your pursuit of perfection definitely shows in your books, as it does with @grifgon's. I'm interested to know how you can address the punch through to verso after printing? (I'll understand if it's a trade secret though!).

I also agree there are many other ways to judge a book than the printing. I have a few Tern Press books and notice that the printing is not always the best, but the books are still lovely in their way. On the other hand, I find John Henry Nash's presswork to be very good, but I do not always love all the design elements he used.

>12 grifgon: Is printing on a hand-press or proofing press much more difficult than using a Heidelberg or does it just take longer to print and allow for more exotic papers?

If someone with no experience or training bought a Vandercook, how long would it take them to learn how to fairly consistently produce sheets of text printed to a high standard (months, years?)? Are these things almost always done through transmission of skills and knowledge from one person to another, or can someone work it out for themselves without going insane with frustration?

>20 GardenOfForkingPaths: I sometimes "dampen" punch-through by applying pressure to the paper with felt under a screw press. But I also like bite, so I don't do it often. Curious how Chad does it.

Is printing on a hand-press or proofing press much more difficult than using a Heidelberg or does it just take longer to print and allow for more exotic papers?

Difficulty among presses, hmm. I guess it depends on what you find difficult. They're all very different. I'm not sure any of them are particularly difficult to operate, at base. I think anybody can achieve a great print right away with a little guidance. The know-how comes in diagnosing and addressing issues as they arise. Let's say you're on a proofing press, and the form rollers begin to rattle as they pass over the bed. What's the cause?? What do you do?? Also, the stamina and patience to keep operating at a high level. The issue with Heidelberg printing is that it's so easy to just let the press run and stack up mediocre prints by the inch. With a hand-press, you're putting in a lot of work to get a mediocre print, so you might as well take care and get a good one.

Maybe the sign of a quality printer is in achieving the result you want, not just the result you can manage to get. There's a lot of letterpress where you think, "I don't personally like this, but this was obviously the intention." You also see a lot of letterpress out there where you think, "They couldn't have possibly intended this – they just got what they could get."

If someone with no experience or training bought a Vandercook, how long would it take them to learn how to fairly consistently produce sheets of text printed to a high standard (months, years?)? Are these things almost always done through transmission of skills and knowledge from one person to another, or can someone work it out for themselves without going insane with frustration?"

I think the problem with starting out with zero experience is that you don't know what you don't know. Like, this person might buy their Vandercook, memorize the manual, set everything perfectly, and get great prints on their first day! But then if there's nobody looking over their shoulder asking, "So what deglazer are you going to use?" their printing might not look as good in a month. (And, worse, they have no idea why. Or, even worse, they misdiagnose the problem and cause more problems.)

I'm entirely self-taught, insofar as I've never had another printer in a room with me showing me how this or that works, and I wish I had had a yearlong apprenticeship or something. Imagine learning how to drive on an 80-year-old car while simultaneously learning to be a mechanic for that car. While sometimes gratifying to "learn the hard way," it can also just be pointlessly stressful.

I find this a very interesting discussion, and it brings to light a lot of questions on production of Fine Press books.
I consider myself a Private Hand-Press printer, who is self-taught. Hand-press printing is far more complicated than using a proof-press for example (in my opinion), inking is probably one of the most difficult things to master, it takes time to check each pull to see if more ink is needed, as too much ink is as bad as not enough! This is why some pages look slightly different to others and if I laid out 10 copies of the same page, one could tell from each page where more ink was added. Handmade paper is also difficult, too wet, too dry. I spray my sheets then I have some special absorbent sheets that interleaf each of the sprayed sheets, by doing this one can dampen the sheet again at a later date, the thing with dipping the sheets is they loose a little amount of the external size, meaning if they were dipped again the sheet would start loosing is crispness. Just a couple of things that need to be mastered, along with makeready and registration, etc. etc...
Hugh

>21 grifgon: Brilliant explanation. I think the combination of the different skills - mechanical, technical, creative - is what makes it such an impressive craft, at least to someone looking in from the outside. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insight!

>22 TudorBlackPress: Thanks for giving a little glimpse into the trials and tribulations of the hand-press printer. I have two of your books and find the printing to be excellent and impressively consistent.

>20 GardenOfForkingPaths: If you bought a Vandercook in decent nick, and consulted with another printer who does what you want to do, you'd be printing well in no time. There is no reason to work it out by yourself unless that is the challenge you want. Where do you live? (I'm no good and matching LT handles with people I may know elsewise!) You could do it yourself, but you'd be re-inventing a lot of wheels.

Talent is a product of desire.

I have a Vandercook 4 with a compromised rail that I've worked around for decades. I don't think I've ever seen a Vandercook manual in my life. Are they still around?

If we kept trade secrets, we'd never improve. I want to know everybody's tricks!

I had a desperate problem with punch through when I printed 'a Brief History of Punctuation,' a book with Large sumi ink images. They needed to be very very black, and so pressure was one way to accomplish this rather than sopping on a bunch of squeezy ink. The problem was that the reverse of the paper had to carry the poems, and the punch through was a garish distraction to reading. putting the images on their own page without text on the other side would have made the book gratuitously thick and clunky. I printed the text first, so they would not create negatives in the large images behind them, I kissed the text on as much as I could, then I backed up the images to text. After many experiments, the one that worked best was to print (I always print on dampened paper), dry the sheets between blotters until they were really dry, then I passed them through the water again, this time really soaking them since I did not have to worry about printing them again. That brought the knap back up and swelled some of the punch out of the page. A lot of libraries have that book, so depending where you live you could visit it and see how it worked. I was pretty happy wth the result.

There are times when I get punch through, getting something to print correctly, on little sections of the page for some reason, sometimes about the size of a quarter. I don't know why they happen, and I try everything to get them to go away. In the end I depend on the redampening technique to try to mitigate the problem. One can only spend so much time getting precious about getting the damn thing to print before one must just get on with it and print! This was the case in the last book I printed, the Daubeny from The Last Press. Anyone who can find the page and bring it to my attention can get a $100 credit toward the next purchase.

I've never printed on a Heidelberg, or on a C&P. Can the rollers and make-ready not be adjusted on these machines? I know on a hand press, one of the elements of the process, the dwell, where you hold the platen down for a second during the impression, seems like it is without cognate with the other machines, but there have been times on the Vandercook where I have found a solution by radically slowing down the pass of the cylinder over the form, allowing me to use less ink and get the sharper impression.

Talent is nothing more than supreme desire.

>24 SuttonHooPress: On my last project I had one problematic lock-up (difficult to describe the problem in words) but the solution was to change the speed of the pass midway. But the variability in my experience is nothing like what's achieved through dwell on a hand-press. (Or a manual tabletop platen press – which I have much more experience with than hand-presses.)

>23 GardenOfForkingPaths: Thank you. If you or anyone else is interested in makeready, there is a new book out from the Florin press, Make-ready by Graham Williams, designed by Mark Askam. https://florinpress.com/books/

>26 TudorBlackPress: Ooo thanks for this, Hugh! I didn't know this was forthcoming. A must-have.

>25 grifgon: The thing that works is usually the thing that works, no matter the machine. . . . sometimes a different music.

>24 SuttonHooPress: I'm in the UK. Perhaps like other people here, I have occasionally had the dream of investing in a Vandercook and printing my own books...Who knows, maybe one day, but mostly I'm just interested to understand what goes on behind the scenes of all these lovely books I have started collecting. Thanks for explaining your techniques for punch-through. The whole printing damp thing still surprises me. It seems so counter-intuitive to be getting paper wet. The results speak for themselves though!

>26 TudorBlackPress: That looks interesting. Having seen some of Mark's other work and his Gruffyground bibliography, I'm sure it will be beautifully designed and laid out.

>29 GardenOfForkingPaths: Indeed, paper is born from water. . . .

>26 TudorBlackPress: Fab, thanks for the heads-up Hugh! And is that a (wayz)goose I see on the cover?

The posts from all the professional printers have been very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to post here.

>31 Shadekeep: It is. And there’s more of it inside!

>29 GardenOfForkingPaths: Thank you for the last comment. That’s very kind!

A follow up question to the discussions about depth of impression and punch-through:

It seems like many (perhaps most?) fine press collectors enjoy seeing a significant impression or bite to letterpress printing. Why, then, does it seem that a lot of modern letterpress printing has a light, sometimes barely discernible impression? Is this due to practical or aesthetic reasons?

I have often read that one of the factors that made a light impression preferable, back in the day, was the desire to minimise wear to the metal type. Is this something that fine press printers worry about today when the books are printed in such small quantities? Presumably only if they are setting type from a finite stock?

Or is it tied to the closure of paper mills in recent years (this was mentioned in another thread)? Are the papers we see more of these days not as conducive to a deep impression?

Or do some printers just favour a light impression for aesthetic reasons?

I’ve boiled my criteria for contemporary letterpress printing down to very simple terms:

Is there some visual, tactile or contextual benefit of the text being letterpress?

>35 GardenOfForkingPaths: It's a bit of a non-answer, but I would say that impression depth is best considered in context. There are certain papers, and even certain typefaces, which are more conducive to a strong bite, and other pairings which may be suited to a gentle bite. There are further mitigating factors, such as artwork (one prefers to avoid strong punch-through affecting an image). And of course there are the preferences of the printer themself. The final success of the printing is weighed when the work is taken as a whole. Just as some paintings are better served with thick, textured paints, and others fine, level paints, so too some books are more aesthetically appealing with stronger or gentler bite.

Personally I tend to prefer a strong bite as I like both the look and the feel of the impression, but there are books in my collection which are far better with the gentle bite the printer chose. Again, it's ultimately down to how well the final synthesis works, rather than an always/never type of rule.

>35 GardenOfForkingPaths: The thing I like to consider the most is the interference to the reader caused by deep punch through or super dark printing on the reverse side of the page. Interference can manifest as a raised surface, obviously, of the previous page's printed text, but sometimes just the knap of the paper being pressed down from behind, creating a sheen that takes the eye from the line of type at hand, or worse still the black surface of a woodcut.

Some may also consider that a good readable impression that is as light as possible is a good measure of the skill of the craftsman. This is probably true, as it is difficult to mitigate the very feature of the process that puts the ink on the paper. Since there are techniques--some of which can be quite fussy--that allow for a clean solid letter and some impression without punch through, and since those techniques require patience and experience to master, it is reasonable to assume that a clean letter without ink squeezed on its shoulders, laid cleanly of the page without punch through, is the product of a finer hand. Of course we make these assessments in concert with the demands of the paper type and book design. A fairly transparent Japanese paper is a difficult surface, as is a hard and inexpensive sheet like Mohawk Superfine. To print well on Mohawk so that the back side does not interfere with the front side takes a very soft touch and a very fine application of ink. Japanese Washi sometimes seems to repel ink, creating a salty mess, unless it is dampened, and it is the hardest paper to dampen. Recently I have printed some Washi dry for the first time in my career with mixed results, some trade offs to get a cleanish letter with the smallest amount of punch through. If I were to do it over, I would dampen it.

The metal type is made of these days has much less antimony in it and is much softer that the foundry types of old. A dampened sheet which allows for less ink and less impression does indeed help preserve our types cast from composition metal. As a practicing printer who sees his type collection as the only type he will ever use for the rest of his life--this is a real concern. Nevertheless, the tools are all there in service of creating the best product, so I would not hesitate, and haven't, if I had to sacrifice and make some irreversible wear for a project.

So in the end, strong bite or not, the question for me is "does the reverse side suffer? does it distract?"

>38 SuttonHooPress: very much appreciate that post. Thanks!

>36 NathanOv: What would you consider to be a contextual benefit to a text being printed letterpress?

>37 Shadekeep: That makes sense, thank you. I too prefer a stronger bite - I love seeing the text crisply sunken into the paper like a pillow! Like you, I also have lovely books on my shelves which have a shallow bite, and I agree context is really important. I'm currently reading the 1932 LEC Three Musketeers, printed at the Halcyon Press on a thin and delicate laid paper, which is very nice in its way. It feels quite appropriate for the text and keeps the two volumes at a nice size. The impression is very light, but it is just there, and the printing is mostly crisp and consistent. So, once the delicacy of the paper had been decided on, it seems like they executed the printing very well within those constraints.

I do find that when the printing is in the realm of just a 'kiss', that the loss of the tactile or visual benefits (to borrow @NathanOV's criteria) means that some of that enjoyment has to be replaced with a more abstract appreciation of it being a handcraft, or perhaps I'm not experienced enough yet to recognise the other cues. Of course, letterpress printed books may often have superior design and typographic layouts too. It seems like many people enter fine press collecting via better-than-trade-quality offset printed books. For me, two really important differentiators between those spheres, in addition to superior type-setting and design, are 1) beautiful paper that is not commonly found in 'quality press' books 2) excellent printing, ideally with a noticeable impression.

>38 SuttonHooPress: Thank you. I always learn a lot from your posts, and it all helps toward a greater appreciation of the books I collect. I'm not sure I have ever noticed a sheen on the reverse side of paper from the impression of the text on the other side, but I will look out for it now.

I have generally thought of Mohawk Superfine as an entry-level fine press paper (hopefully that's not unfair) so it's very interesting to read about the printing challenges that it poses. I won't look at a page of that paper in the same way again. I also thank you for being willing to sacrifice your metal type!

>40 GardenOfForkingPaths: Sure thing - fine press is abundant with books about type, typography, printing and heritage book making. In those cases, I think it's meaningful regardless of other factors when the actual type, typesetting, printing method or other book arts discussed can be incorporated into the work.

>41 NathanOv: Ah yes, of course!

>40 GardenOfForkingPaths: I would more highly value a book by a young printer well-printed on a Mohawk paper that her young budget could afford, one in which she found a text that she and we could all be passionate about reading, and with which she could exercise her budding knowledge of book design and experimentation, than I would a tired text badly printed by a famous printer on Barcham Green handmade paper. I have both in my collection to illustrate the point to newcomers who visit.

I will have this rant elsewhere and with more measured rhetoric, but the idea of valuing books by the pound--big ones are worth a higher purchase price than small ones--or feeling that a 'paperback' is worth less than a book in boards, even though the paper might exceed the cost of the board stock and binding time for the printer--or in general valuing books for their materials over their vision and production values (read 'skills of the pressperson' and appropriate design and editorial mission)--seems like backwards thinking to me. One of my best early books was on Mohawk; I still pull it down with pride and pleasure, and good luck trying to find a copy! And I plan to use what Mohawk I have left on an upcoming edition, 35 years later.

Mohawk Superfine is a terrific workmanlike sheet, and a wicked task master. Someone tell me if it is still being made, and if not, what its replacement might be. . . .

>43 SuttonHooPress: Hear, hear, sensei. This is all about heart and time.

>43 SuttonHooPress: >44 grifgon: Which is why a chapbook by a press you've probably never heard of can be well worth owning.

>43 SuttonHooPress: Someone tell me if it is still being made

It t'is indeed - https://www.mohawkconnects.com/products/paper/mohawk-superfine

And I concur heartily with your sentiment, as well as that of @Glacierman re: chapbooks.

>43 SuttonHooPress: Mohawk Superfine is a terrific workmanlike sheet, and a wicked task master. Someone tell me if it is still being made, and if not, what its replacement might be. . . .

TALAS has it!

>45 Glacierman: And why a folio from a famous press made with the skins of a hundred dead pigs can leave me yawning!

By the way >35 GardenOfForkingPaths: you are asking splendid questions with complex, varied answers. I think the short answer to your base question – "~If we all prefer a bit of bite why are contemporary presses often so kissy?" – is that it can be an aesthetic choice but is often due to practical constraints. Large chases, printing dry, printing on hard machineable papers, etc. all constrain a printer's ability to execute even, visible impression.

>43 SuttonHooPress: Can I ask what was the book you mentioned that you printed 35 years ago? I'll have to keep my eye out!

Would you say that after 35 years of printing there is still a learning process going on, and that you are always refining your technique, or would you say you pretty much have it down now? I don't mean so much with the design aspects, which I imagine are ever evolving and different with each project, but more so with the mechanics of printing.

>48 grifgon: That makes sense, thank you. I imagine the practical constraints come into play more and more with everything becoming more expensive these days, and materials and equipment becoming more difficult to source!

Also, for those wanting to test your printing discernment, here's a fun little test. If you've got them, grab your Thornwillow books from the past decade, 2015 – 2025. Thornwillow has had several printers during that time. Can you tell printer from printer? Can you tell when the printers change? Can you tell what the printer is going for, if they're going for something in particular? Same publisher, same papers, same Heidelberg press, same assortment of typefaces, same book formats, same typesetting method, different printers.

>1 GardenOfForkingPaths: Thank you, what a great thread. I have been toiling away, learning the various parts of the 'book arts' for about 8 years (after 25 years of printmaking and painting) and just launched my own private press. I have made several books and every one is an education. I also LOOK at lots of other peoples work, not to steal ideas but to get a sense of how they do (or don't) communicate to me. A book is an object of communication - does the text read well? The images help? The 'feel' of the object, please me or not?

I suppose everyone has their niche interests. My ideal book to make is bounded within the playground of hand press, engraving or lino images, deckled edges (ideally handmade paper), hand binding, limited to 100 or so. Nothing too polite or wordy!

Someone I know recently pointed out, that the amazing thing about a private press book, is that they are - or were perhaps - a place where so many different skilled artisans worked together. Just think: the papermaker, the inkmaker, the board and cloth makers, the leather tanner, the binder, the designer, the author, the illustrator, the press builders, the marbled paper artist, the type casters, the machine smiths, the engraving block maker, the compositor, the press worker, and probably more. Each of these, would have had a 7 year apprenticeship. This was such a useful thing for me to hear, as I attempt to do all of these jobs, and create a holistic object that hangs together successfully - or at least achieve some basic competence and make something presentable! So much work goes into the bin, before I let it out of the building unseen.

So for me, the most enjoyable and pleasing books, have skilled work at all these levels. Someone described it as the 'crystal goblet' effect - we enjoy the wine and don't notice it is in a beautiful crystal vessel - the wine of a good hand made book, is that numinous and mysterious pleasure of engagement with the mind and hand and skills, of all of those skilled people striving to make the best work they can.

>51 HelenMoss: Well said, Helen. And it is fascinating to see something so complex effectively scale down to the "cottage industry" level and still produce such remarkable works.

>49 GardenOfForkingPaths: to answer your question, about all I have down is the technique for learning each process. Choosing new challenges keeps it fresh. When I taught poetry at the university I always promised students that I would never ask them a question I already knew the answer to. That single policy made a great class discussion in which I flat out learned stuff that I never thought of before from first time poetry students. Would that we could take a similar approach with texts, each one dictating it's own design requirements against what I know and what I can learn from expanding the vision. So, too, for the mechanics of printing. Sure, I've used the same press for 35 years, and I know that if things are not going well, I need to lift the rollers and walk away for an hour, for a day. . . . more often than not, the thing I need to do to make it work is something totally new, if there is a discernible 'thing' that can be done. 60% of the time, the elementals just decide to give me a break and allow me to continue unmolested and things magically print fine. I think they count my years of service. . . . haha

We might think of a machine, a printing press, as a big jig, and printing as an example of what David Pye refers to as 'the workmanship of certainty' as opposed to 'the workmanship of risk' (freehand woodcarving is an example of the latter). But I have learned that an old press moves and wears and changes with the weather, and is not as certain a prospect as one would think. Too many different sorts of elements come together to make it happen smoothly every time: paper, ink, rubber, metal air, water, serotonin, coffee, muffins, lady bugs, house flies, dogs, dog hair, paper fibers floating in the ink, alcoholic adult children. . . .

The first printing day of a project remains a nervous start.

--Holding the Air--by Pamela McClure is the book. someone at a letterpress fair once accused me of printing it off-set. HA!

>49 GardenOfForkingPaths: BTW--the worst monstrosity of a book I ever printed was also on Mohawk. Don't ask me which.

The most "I can't believe it's not offset" fine press book I have is Rampant Lion's The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. It's so inhumanely precise that it exists in the uncanny valley.

>55 Shadekeep: The Uncanny Valley, a great book title!

>57 LT79: I feel the "kiss" was a sign of true mastery over letterpress decades and decades ago. These days, people want a good bite in their letterpress. But that said, I would argue

1)Even a kiss is distinguishable from offset where in the latter the ink is just floating on the paper.
2)The ink used in letterpress is higher-quality than offset ink. Having done a bit of letterpress, I can say the ink isn't cheap, and is not only typically much better quality but it requires more skill to use properly.

So at the end of the day I would argue it is distinguishable, even if the bite is not that strong.

>59 LT79: I've heard more than once – and I sort of agree with the analogy myself – that letterpress printing is comparable to winemaking. The vast majority of those who enjoy wine simply have a sense of what they like and don't like, and can perhaps discern a cabernet from a pinot noir. A sommelier or winemaker certainly can, and what tastes good to them is maybe secondary to their appreciation of what other winemakers are doing. And then there are those freaks of nature who can really taste the exact hillside, year, and salinity of the bedrock. I had a printer over to my workshop last year who, from a single printed initial letter (a W), named the typeface, type size, that it was polymer rather than metal, the paper, and that I had printed it dry rather than damp. It was spooky!

Maybe it's a bad analogy, but it does share the feature of being extraordinarily hard to discuss over text without the actual thing in front of you.

>55 Shadekeep: Are you sure it's letterpress? I completely assumed it was offset! And, besides, it's a 150 page book with an edition of 500 offered for $30 – surely it's offset? If it's letterpress than "uncanny valley" is absolutely right.

>58 astropi: Well stated. A fair part of the bite/kiss argument is indeed the moving standards of the art. In the earliest days you pretty much had bite as an artifact of the process, so those who could reduce it were seen as more skilled. Then offset printing eliminated it entirely and bite returned as a distinguishing trait for "made by hand" rather than "made by machine".

You can see a similar pendulum in art - when the rules of perspective were first codified then artists embraced it pell-mell, creating dimensional works that looked amazing after the flat style of medieval art. But as time progressed perspective also became the tool of draughtsmen, engineers, and now computers, and getting away from it and into other kinds of portrayal (such as abstraction) became a signifier of artistic talent versus "mere" drafting skills.

>60 grifgon: Nay, I'm not sure it's letterpress, which is why I take it as an article of faith. The listing for it on https://rampantlionspress.com/list-of-titles/ says "Set in Baskerville and Porson Greek and printed on mould-made paper.", and I generally take "set" to mean "letterpress", but defer to better judgement if it's not. If it is offset then it does explain why it's so achingly precise to me!

>53 SuttonHooPress: Thank you. That's kind of what I envisioned - part science, part art, with a sprinkling of the unquantifiable. I am imagining that lots of printers are good problem solvers with some solid reserves of patience.

>51 HelenMoss: I love books where the design, printing and binding all takes place at the press. I wish you the very best with your new endeavour!

>57 LT79: The art of fine press is certainly not about imperfection at all, but rather the opposite. The ideal is that the design, typography, materials and presswork is of the highest quality — The Ideal Book, or Book Beautiful, as TJ Cobden Sanderson put it.

While the many hand and antiquated processes make perfection seriously hard work, it is something that many printers spend an age on getting as close to as possible. Sure, there are imperfections in a great deal of fine press, but that is down to the nature of the craft rather than a desired aesthetic.

However, I will concede that there is a lot of charm in imperfections. They show the human touch and have warmth to them as opposed to the bland, clinical perfection of offset litho.

The main things of importance to me about fine letterpress are the sensory and high art elements. The visual and tactile joy of a page of characterful paper finely impressed with type makes the reading experience so much more enjoyable than any modern offset litho equivalent. Plus, original artworks such as wood engravings, linocuts and etchings for illustrations again absolutely trump offset litho reproductions of artwork.

These are obviously just my own thoughts, but I think they will likely be echoed by many fine press printers and collectors alike.

>59 LT79: Fine press today is much more about the physical aesthetics of the page than, say, 60-70 years ago, when kiss impression was a bit more widespread. Kiss impression is a masterful thing to achieve, but I would say it is pretty much only viable on really plain, flat papers, plus it’s not as visually appealing as an impression with a bit of bite to it. I do have some beautiful kiss impression pieces in my collection, but as said elsewhere, they generally still have a perceptible impression. I do, however, have a couple of books where the impression is almost imperceptible on the page. This is really impressive as a feat of printing, given the process, but it doesn’t fit with the desires of modern fine press printers and buyers that want something more visually exciting — something more obviously not press-a-button offset litho

>61 Shadekeep: that RLP book is letterpress. It’s a great example of Sebastian’s ability to achieve an exceptional kiss impression when given the right paper. There are other RLP books that are equally as impressive in that respect.

>65 ChestnutPress: Thanks, that's what I've been told before, so it's great to have it reaffirmed. Sebastian is indeed a paragon of the art with amazing skills, and I like having this book in my collection both as an exemplar and as a contrast.

>66 Shadekeep: ‘The Book Becomes’ and ‘The Rampant Lions Press: A Printing Workshop Through Five Decades’ are two other exceptional examples of Sebastian’s kiss presswork

>63 ChestnutPress: Well said!

>63 ChestnutPress: And, btw, the 'kiss' is not necessarily the goal of perfection. Our classic metal types are designed for a bite. When they were adapted by Adobe for the computer and offset, they were changed. An impression with ink at the bottom (none at the shoulders) and no punch through sets my heart ablaze. . . .

I recently came across the following beautiful quote from William Everson which is also mentioned by Rollin Milroy in his Elements in Correlation: Printing with the Handpress at Heavenly Monkey (2009):

“When type is cleanly inked with solid ink, dense and well seasoned, and laid on ever-so-lightly with a true roller, the ink carefully built up through stroke after stroke, placed always on the very face of the type, never squashed down upon the counters; when this finely-inked type is pressed into the paper and held there in what is called the “dwell” of the hand press, to lie at the bottom of the Impression, then when the sheet is removed all about it the light refracts from the crimp the letter made in its strike, and glows there, and the whole page becomes radiant with a suffused, and a subdued and upcast light. You see it at its most gracious and most pure in damp printing. For as the sheet, utterly virginal, without blemish, truly a holy thing, is lifted from the tympan and held lightly in the hands, seemingly so receptive as to almost show the impress of your breath, then all your labor, the interminable hand-setting, the exasperating requirements of careful make-ready, the sweat of rolling ink and pulling of the press-bar—all that accumulating endeavor floats there in the soft upgiving of its light, wholly resolved and made proportionate before the awareness of a perfect page. It is the final joy of printing."

So, no kiss for me. If it is letterpress, I want the bite.
PS: It will take many years, but I hope to buy the Elements book one day.

>70 ManishBadwal: Beautiful!

>69 SuttonHooPress: oh, I agree, Chad. I do not view kiss as perfection at all. True perfection for me is an impeccable impression with some bite, with solid ink coverage that hasn’t spread. Now THAT really is ‘chef’s kiss’ rather than just kiss!

>70 ManishBadwal: Absolutely this! A perfect summation from Everson. I don’t own that HM volume, but going by the ones of Rollins that I do have it will be a gorgeous printing of those words.

>71 LT79: Sebastian’s ‘Four Quartets’ is a magnificent book, and one that has really jumped in price lately. It’s a pity as I think you’d love it. Fingers crossed that a copy turns up at a reasonable price before too long, as it was only five years ago that £400 was the asking price! I think the cheapest I have seen it of late was about £600.

The Psalms is a lovely volume and it’s good to hear you have a copy.

>71 LT79: Good job acquiring a copy of Psalms, it's a handsome tome. Alongside the Agamemnon it remains one of the easier to acquire and reasonably priced RLP titles around at the moment. Both are still sold directly from Sebastian if the list remains current - https://rampantlionspress.com/list-of-titles/ . Also on the list and a lovely book is The Unknown Masterpiece.

>76 Shadekeep: Talking of cheap RLP books, I just saw this bargain on eBay and thought I would share it here. Colin’s essays are superb.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/167317848580?_skw=%22rampant+lions+press%22&itmme...

>78 ChestnutPress: That is a good deal! And I had to laugh at another listing they suggested alongside it: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235972766736?_trksid=p2332490.c101224.m-1

I wonder if Richard knows his book is being hawked already this way? ^_^

>79 Shadekeep: All exposure is good, I suppose!

>80 ChestnutPress: Perhaps, though it's a bit marked up from a brand new direct buy at £31!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Small-Presses-Rocky-Mountain-West/dp/B0DR32RSRP

Though they don't charge shipping, so that accounts for some of the difference.

>81 Shadekeep: I suppose that if the seller sells his five copies with his mark up then it bodes well for the general value of Richard’s work.

>79 Shadekeep: Yeah, I saw that earlier. The book is showing up all over the place. I note they say 5 copies available...well, they haven't bought them yet per KDP sales data.

There are several e-Bay listings at varying idiotic prices. It has even showed up on a NZ seller's website at an insane markup.

>83 Glacierman: I imagine there's a number of such sellers with automated alerts set up, looking for any new POD title they can hawk...

>84 Shadekeep: Yep.

>79 Shadekeep: This seller is going to be wondering why there are already 35 views of the ebay listing from the past 24 hours.

I feel like a member of the LibraryThing flashmob now, by adding to those page views.

>86 Tuna_Melon: Heh heh, could be a bit of karmic justice however. If the seller thinks this is super-popular perhaps they'll actually buy some for stock.

>52 Shadekeep: Indeed!