The Florida Letterpress Listgroup

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Since I started this blog, I have been contacted by persons all around this State (Florida) mostly regarding getting started. There is a growing interest in Letterpress Typography, and I believe that Florida is prone to be very active in the Art. At this point we have two Colleges that have Book Arts related activities, and at very least two Museums that feature Letterpress. This year's American Amateur Press Association conference was held at the University of Tampa, as covered on this blog.

It seemed to me that it might be good to have a place for folks in Florida who are becoming interested in pegging type and heavy iron to come and meet each other, exchange information, procure parts and equipment, network, etc.

I might emphasise parts procurement. As activity increases, so does availability of parts and equipment. An active community in any endeavour triggers this phenomena. Things get circulated, news gets spread.

Thus, for anyone interested, be they in Florida or not, Check out the Florida Letterpress Listgroup on Yahoo at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FloridaLetPress/ or just click here.

Keep in mind that as of Sept. 23rd, I am the only member! So there will not be a whole lot of activity until more folks join.

-gary

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Recent Technology: The Ultimate Cutting Edge of Robotics!

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Straight from the Houston Space Center: recently declassified footage of the latest in Post Glastnost robotics technology. Note that this technology has never actually been successfully perfected, but as of 2008 stunning achievements have been meticulously recorded by US Bureau of Robotic Research and Development.

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This video is subject to applicable Federal declassification regulations, and must not be exported to countries listed on the Federal Banned Countries List.

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The Making of a Book, circa 1947

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Thought this old Brittanica Edu-Series 16mm film video from 1947 might provide a bit of insight on how typographed books were made in the age of Stereo Metal plates, or "Stereotypes". My prized 1936 copy of "Gone With the Wind" was made in exactly this manner.

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Hope you enjoy it. If for no other reason than to bring back memories of Junior High School (remember when they called it by that name?)

-gary

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"20th Century Mortise Cuts"

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These come from the ATF type specimen book, c. 1915. These are vectored at a fairly large size, mostly for editing which I do on FreeHand. Some of the editing I do involves adding crosshatch shading to the area which originally contained the mortise. This gives the effect of some of the postal designs of France or Germany of that time, where coloured numerics or figures appear in a shaded recess.

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No. 83

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No. 9627

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No. 12023

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No. 12024

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No. 12025

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No. 12026

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I'll be slowly adding more as time permits.

-gary

Vector Cuts

Hi, again:

This post is sort of an experiment. I have converted several of the ATF Knickerbocker cuts from out of the 1915 ATF Speciment book into .pdf files. The purpose is to import these images into Freehand, Illustrator, Draw, Inkscape, etc. for use in designing letterpress plates. Vector files can be infinitely sized without distortion because they are not bitmapped, but rather mapped out by algorithm. Line images (ultrahigh contrast images) are particularly good subjects for vectorization.

What I will show is a bitmapped image of the Specimen, and provide a link to download the Adobe Acrobat .pdf file. Save this file and import into your own vector IDE (fancy acronym for InterDevelopmental Environment - FreeHand, Draw, etc.)

The following are "Kickerbocker" cuts. In these, I left the catalogue number. You can delete these numbers in your own IDE.



Knicker51.pdf

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Knicker52.pdf

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Knicker53.pdf

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Knicker54.pdf

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Knicker55.pdf

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Knicker56.pdf

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Knicker57.pdf

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Knicker60.pdf

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Knicker61.pdf

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Let me know how these images work out for you. Contact me at:

wd4nka@bellsouth.net

Tschau!

-gary.

The Desert Rose

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A little hard to see in .jpg imagery, the actual file is vector. It was the project of the day. I'm working with my little sis on her wedding announcement, and she thought she would like to have a Cactus Flower design, to key into the desert setting of the place the ceremony will be performed. So her fiance photoshopped a clip-art cactus flower and text to give me an idea. This image had to be vectorised for plating, so I printed off the image, and carbon-paper traced it onto bristol board. Then I used india ink and a Hunt mapping pen (a crow quill would have done) and retraced over the carbon tracings and applied stipple and hatching for tonal variations. This, in turn, was scanned at 1200 dpi and traced into vector via an amazing programme called "Inkscape". I traced the bitmap at 2-colour, hard edge setting. This rendered a wood-cut looking vector graphic. I then exported it into .pdf, which works with my version of FreeHand. So the process went from bitmapped clip art to hand-rendering on Bristol, scanned back into bitmap at high resolution, then traced into a vector algorithm. It is shown here in bitmap form.

If anyone is interested in using my little Desert Rose for their very own, e-mail me for the .pdf file.

-gary.

The Ludlow at the Settlement

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I am posting these for the benefit of some Letpress Members whom I have enlisted to give me their input as to whether or not this machine is worth restoring, fixing, or just letting it go. There are NO mats, No sticks and NO maintenance tools. I was totally bummed about not having mats.

These photos will probably be here only temporarily.

-gary.

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