Hornbook FAQs

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Why do you make Hornbooks? Largely because I'm a history student. Hornbooks represent America's first school text "books". Long before the Battledore, the Chap Book, the McGuffy Reader - there was the Hornbook. The tradition came over from Old World Europe, where these devices date to the middle ages. They represent Old World artisan-ship from a time when things were made by hand, one at a time.

Are your Hornbooks for sale? Yes. While usually a "batch", or production run is the result of an order or several orders, there are usually some left over which are available. If enough orders are requested, I'll double the batch. More than likely sixteen would be about the maximum number that I can produce at one "run". That would represent about two weeks production time.

All Hornbooks are priced at $35.00 plus $5.35 for shipping. (Price updated 11.3.2013 due to increase cost and Flat Rate shipping.)

Orders can be placed by posting an e-mail to me at: paperwrenpress@gmail.com

Pmt can be made by personal check or PayPal. Please note that PayPal incurs a $2.00 charge for use of their service, thus total for Hornbook and shipping via PayPal is $42.35

(update 9/27/2014: Coming Soon! look for Hornbooks to be offered from Paper Wren Press' Etsy Shop!  These will be linked from our website at www.paperwrenpress.com )

Are your Hornbooks a specific copy of any particular specimen? No. The local printers of the 1600's or 1700s - printers did not proliferate in the Americas until the very early 1700s - followed a familiar Old World pattern which was traditionally used. It was more of a format with variations unique to each printing house, and dependend upon what "founts" and cuts were available to them. Almost all followed the tradition of the "Criss Cross", the "Cross Row" of the lower case alphabet. Most started the lower case row with the cross and upper case A, followed by the lower case alphabet. Nearly all utilised the Exorcism ('in the Name of the Father . . .' ) and the Lord's Prayer. The fonts used, point size, the types of crosses or the number of crosses varied. Some used borders, some did not. If I were a printer in 1730, and I was asked to print a few Hornbook pages for the local artisans cutting the wood and heating the horn, these are what I would have produced, proudly displaying the brand new Caslon faces from England. I probably would not have had a superabundance of type available, so I would have distributed the type back into their cases when I was done. So the next time I was asked, the Hornbook would have looked a little different.

Photos of originals show a sort of frame around the printed sheet on most Hornbooks. Why is that? Yes, and you'll notice mine do not. Those old Hornbooks actually used animal horn as a protective covering for the printed page affixed to the board. This thin piece of heated, smoothed and cut horn was held in place by what was usually a lead frame. There are two issues here: the lead and the horn. You might note from the photos on line and in books that the horn is usually missing. Or very deteriorated. Horn is organic and is subject to rot. I chose not to use a frame simply because of the modern day fear of lead. Especially since these Hornbooks may - as their predecessors - find their way into the hands of kids. Museum or private gift shops may have a problem with the use of lead, too. I opted instead to use another form of protection which, though not as ancient as cut horn, still goes back about a century and a half: decoupage. There are several techniques used for this process, originally layers of varnish which were dried and sanded. I use a water based sealant, each thin layer polished with steel wool, the last coating cured for a few days, then sanded and polished by steel wool. The water based sealant does not adversely affect the paper, and is extremely durable. This last batch utilised copper tacks to hold the paper in place. There are examples of Hornbooks that do not use frames, thus the use of frames to hold the horn was not universal. Personally, I think the Hornbook looks better without a frame, which tended too be too large for the diminutive size of the book itself.

Who buys Hornbooks these days? So far, it's been a matter of letting folks know what a Hornbook even is! What used to be a ubiquitous part of childhood has now slipped from social memory. So far, Museums, folks who like Colonial and Early American accents for their homes, Home Schoolers and some private schools have been interested or have placed orders. Although, admittedly, I don't ask. But the niche market I am aiming at would be the above. The gift shop attached to the Oldest Schoolhouse in Old St. Augustine, Fl. has expressed interest in carrying these Hornbooks. Thus, as folks become aware of the Hornbook, I suspect more folks may wish to have one. The chalk-and-slate board of your great grandfather would have been the "Hornbook" of it's era. Both carry the same early schooltime aura and legacy. Heh, just thinking about it, I used a slate and chalk pencils made by Pelikan when I went to primary school in Germany in the middle 1960s! The slate was ruled on one side, quadrille on the other. That's where I got my history-streak!

Hope this page has been a little more point specific and helpful.

Good Providence in all your endeavours!

-gary

Hornbook Production Part 3: Finishing the Process

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One popular wood used in the period of the American Revolution was cherry. Clear Pine actually bears a grain resemblance to cherry, so cherry stain seems appropriate. The eight blanks stained very nicely. Funny how that even though these blanks were cut from the same cut of Clear Pine, each one looks different from the other. There are no two Hornbooks alike.

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Just like soldiers at attention. Took me the better part of Tuesday Afternoon to get through all these, and another few hours to sufficiently dry. One thing that I noticed that I thought was odd: usually, stain raises the grain fibre. This is why a lot of the New England cabinet makers used to wet down their wood, then sand. The carpenter that I learnt from called it the "hackle". Raised grain is a raised Hackle. These blanks had no raised Hackle after staining. Thus, re-sanding after the staining was minimal.

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Very satin smooth. It pays to work with good woods. The stain is darker on the end-cuts, naturally, owing to stain absorption.

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The next step is to apply the copper nails and printed text. Now, here is where I depart from the original Hornbooks by necessity: the original Colonial Hornbooks used a Leaden Frame and a small sheet of Horn for the covering. I could have done the leaden framing, BUT . . . I am offering these Hornbooks to Homeschoolers, Public Schools and Museum / Private gift shops. I do not wish to run afoul the FDA or the State of Florida, or expose any of my clients to any potential health risk related litigation. So, the Lead Framing is omitted in favour of a non toxic water based sealant that applies like Envirotex, but must be painstakingly applied in thin layers, sanded, re-coated, sanded, re-coated, at least six, and as much as ten layers. This process is called Decoupage, and is in itself a process that goes back about a century and a quarter.

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This is the Decoupaging process line, taking up a part of my kitchen. The front, top, bottom, and sides of both paddle and handle are coated and dried for half an hour. After the half hour, the layer is steel wooled or sanded. After the coatings are built up to my satisfaction, they are wet sanded, and polished with steel wool. The whole process can take about three days, unless you dedicate an entire day, sun-up to sun-down, then it might take two days.

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Here is a closeup shot of the "cross row", showing part of the Lower Case and Upper Case rows. The paper is behaving, and actually starting to appear like "skinside" Vellum! The Sealant is giving the paper an almost translucent effect and "floating" the printed images similarly to how pounced vellum gives an almost floating effect to gall-iron based inks.

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Here is a close-up of the Scottish Thistle Border motif. This font came from Quaker City Type Foundry of Honeybrook Pennsylvania. Bill Reiss has awesome turnaround and a great selection of classical figures and ornaments. Another foundry that I use is the foundry that - according to the old Hall of Printing that used to be at the Smithsonian - supplied both them AND Colonial Williamsburg, M&H Foundry, San Fransisco, California. Much of my "house-founts" come from both M&H and Quaker City. The tall "s" that you see is an M&H casting.

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There you go. Tall 's' figures. I secretly wish that I could use them in all my publications, but the 21st Century eye gets tripped up by them. In fact, so did the 20th and the 19th century eye, they dropped this convention right around 1800. This was also the time that Caslon began to fall out of favour with American Printers, being substituted with the less delicate, bolder Bodoni faces.

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Well, I am now about one week into these Hornbooks, the last remaining step of the process is the wet sanding, and polishing.  More to come.

Stay tuned.

-gary

Hornbook Production Part 2.

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This is the completed Forme. There were several edits, one 'd' was inserted upside down, a few coppers had to be inserted into one of the 'Criss Crosses' to enable a tight lock-up. Oh, heh, yeah, I forgot one of the letters of the alphabet. Figures.

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This is the chase lock-up. You cannot tighten the lock-up too much or too little. Two little and the forme spills, and you have a very frustrating pied pile under the press . . . in the oil. Too tight, and you can potentially warp your chase such that it cannot rest level against the press' type bed. BTW, you Kelsey aficionados: notice what I am using as an imposing surface for my 8x12 chases? None other than the type bed of a 9x13 Kelsey. Best portable imposing "stone" I've ever had. And the rails serve as convenient handles!

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Here is the progress in mid-run. I have one copy laying on one of the unfinished blanks to serve as a sizer. There have been some design changes in this batch of Hornbooks to bring it nearer to it's 17th Century origins.

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A closer look at the unfinished blank and print resting atop. This gives me a pretty good idea of the finished product. One consideration is the placement of the nails that hold the sheet. It cannot be too close to the edge of the wood, and must also be slightly angled inward.

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There are three design changes. First, notice the Thistle border. This calls to a Scotts background.  Of course, you know that Scotland was saved from her Norse Invaders by the lowly Thistle? Actually, the ancient symbol was the bent, or broken thistle.  The second change was the addition of the crosses. This is a significant inclusion in that these "printer's crosses" were almost universally used on Hornbooks, even in Europe. These crosses were built up from the upper case letter 'I', either locked together with quads around an ornament as seen here, or mitred together. These were known as "Christ Crosses", which over the years became called the "Criss Cross". At least one appeared at the top, usually before the first letter 'A'. Many used two, bracketing the alphabet in a more pleasing symmetry. The third change is the upper case 'O', using instead a more authentic 24pt. Caslon upper case letter. As mentioned, on my last run of Hornbooks (which was my first run, produced before I had more research information) - I used an ornamental 36pt. Goudy monotyped ornamented 'O'. The letter is beautiful. But it dates to 1920. Not very colonial.

Today is printing day. I'll be running as many of these as I can. The next stage will be staining the blanks. After that, the mounting and decoupaging of each Hornbook. Then they go to the client(s).

Stay Tuned.

-gary

Q5 Studio and Pretty Good Letterpress
wd4nka@aim.com

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Another Hornbook Production.

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Another production run of authentic early American Hornbooks! After receiving an order for four, I decided to do an actual production run. What is a production run? Well, for one thing, it involves me putting on my woodworker's hat and locating the proper wood. Since these books typically took a student through all their early years of primary education, the wood has to be somewhat durable. But to keep costs down, I have to find a cost effective wood stock that would be both affordable for the client, yet durable for use. In a sense, in my mind's eye, I see these "books" as actually being used for their intended purpose. In this case, I traditionally use clear pine. Not construction grade, but furniture grade.

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The process begins with cutting the wooden "blanks", which involves three basic processes: (1) cutting the wood into 3.5 by 8 inch squares. (2) Then running these squares through an angled table saw to notch out the handles. (3) Then sanding. What this photo shows are the blanks cut, but not filed and sanded as of yet. The sanding takes the longest time. After this, I might add a fourth procedure, that of staining the wood if called for. Sealing waits until the text is nailed to the blank, whereupon the whole is decoupaged together. Originally, animal horn was heated, separated, cut and affixed over the text with a lead frame held in place by nails. I omit the lead because these are being offered to schools. As it is, many of the samples I've seen used nails only without the frame, so either way is authentic. Animal horn is subject to decay and rot - which is why the actual 300 year old specimens that exist are almost never intact. Thus, I use a decoupage process which is safer, longer lasting, yet retains the look of antiquity. The nails used with this run are copper. Iron was used as well as brass rivets, but copper oxidizes with that ancient greenish tinge, which is classic. These will age very nicely. Especially as the wood reddens with age.

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At this point of the process, I begin the composition of the text which will be eventually printed and affixed to these blanks. The font used is authentic to the era, an early 18th Century Caslon, supplied by M&H Type Foundry, San Fransisco. The type is composed in three sections, or "charges". When the composition stick fills, the type is removed and lined up on a "galley" tray. After all the charges are compiled, and are ready to be mounted into the press's chase - which is an iron frame that holds the type in place - the assemblage is called a 'Forme'.

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This is the first charge. Two more to come. The tool on the left is a slug cutter, which trims leads to the proper width.

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This is a photo of the blanks and the finished product which I ran back in the early 1990s when I owned and operated "Heirloom Press" out of Palm Harbor, Florida. The design on these new Hornbooks will differ slightly to incorporate the "Printer's Cross", or the "Christ Cross", which became known as the "Criss Cross". These are crosses composed of four upper case 'I's, sometimes mitred, or sometimes composed together with a centre ornament. Also, the upper case letter 'O' in the Lord's Prayer is more authentic. Formerly, I used an ATF Goudy ornamental cap from 1920. This go 'round, I'm using a 24pt Caslon Capital, of the same era as the rest of the composition. Of course I include the archaic tall 's', which looks like an 'f'. These were used prior to 1800, a throwback to the ancient blackletter types. The tall 's' was used for the letter 's' at the beginning and middle of a word, never at the end.

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That's were I am now. Printing will commence on the following day. It is a complex composition which can take a long time to arrange so it holds together in the chase without spilling out. It's a skill the curve of which I still reside. All in all, these eight Hornbooks should take me about five days to produce, including the various drying times. But it is worth it.

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Hornbooks represent to me not only a valuable and important part of United States History and the first Colonial Societies that laid the foundations of our representative Republican Democracy, but also a product made in the United States, made using the original and authentic processes with American materials, using vintage iron presses, using a time honoured process requiring an unusual amount of attention and care to produce a quality product. This was the Hallmark of American Industry at one time. I intend to perpetuate that legacy. Q5 Letterpress' Hornbooks will never be made in China!

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That's it for now. More to come. Stay tuned!

Good Providence to you in all your endeavours!

-gary

Q5 Studio & Pretty Good Letterpress
G. Johanson, Printer

"Old School" Designing for Letterpress

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The project on the board right now is creating a scalable vector image of the main building of the Florida Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts. This would be used for anything from Stationery Letterhead to Name Badges to Greeting Cards. Initially I sought for line art already created. Surely in the past one hundred years of this structure's history somebody did some sort of high contrast (pen and ink, likely) rendering. But all I could find was a hopelessly re-photocopied image that was of no use for conversion to Vector.

So . . . I was on my own.

I did a photo-shoot of the place in an attempt to capture the heavily tree shaded building's very unique front and cupola without so many tree branches in the way. It was nigh unto impossible. I had to shoot images closer than my design requirements. So just shooting black and whites, running them through a Cut Line Filter or some other photoshop trick to produce tertiary shades of gray out of dots, cross hatch lines or stipples were out.

So it was up to me using some good old tools I haven't touched in years: India Ink, Paper and my trusty fine tipped Rapidograph. For those who are not familiar with the Rapidograph pen: these were commercial artists bread and butter tools at one time. They are essentially hypodermic needles with a sort of piston inside which, when pressed tip down on the drawing surface, releases a quantity of ink from a pre-loaded cartridge.

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So, with these basic but time tried tools, I stepped back to 1974 when I actually made money doing these sort of things. I was a calligrapher and free lance commercial artist. My last gig was illustrating a technical handbook up in Chicago back around 1991.

In the photo above you have tracing paper, Rapidograph pen, kneeded eraser, mechanical pencil (soft) and a cork-bottom steel rule. I won't be using Bristol Board this go-round because were not doing camera-ready art, were doing scanner ready art for vectorising.

I did a direct trace of the main elements of the building. This would serve as a sort of framework for the ink fill, which will be the really time consuming part of the project.

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This is the photo that I used.

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You can click on each photo for a larger image. So, this was Night One, laying out and tracing the image. Night Two, (tonight) was laying on the ink. I am using a combination of different strokes, primarily stipple rendering, essencially very small dots which are concentrated or spread out to give the effect of tones of grey. Not unlike half-tone dots. For some of the denser fields I make use of direct line and hatching.

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Above is a close up of the rendering. So much of pen and ink drawing is simply suggesting an object rather then contour drawing of it. It's what you do not draw that matters. My technique almost omits any highlight rendering, but rather I fill the shaded areas only. This adds a dimension of "believability" to a pen and ink image.

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Above is what I managed tonight. About 40% of the ink is laid down. About four hours worth of work, plus one pot of coffee. The final two shots below are just other perspectives of the same thing.

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I am largely sharing these just to let folks know - in case they are interested and wondering - that good old fashioned hand rendering on artboard or Bristol board with india ink is still alive and well . . . at least at Q5 Studio and Pretty Good Letterpress, anyway. Another reason is to give you a peak into a little bit of how we "did it" in the past, as far as copy work prepared before the Computer Era. Of course, I use digital techniques as well, it's a great tool. But sometimes it just pays to grab a pen and "do it yourself". Keeps you in practice, too.

I may add one more note for those of you who think that computers have rubbed you out of relativity. I met a man who runs a company here in Central Florida, who designs props for Hollywood, specifically Steven Spielberg. He hires designers. He told me that before he hires a "graphic artist" that knows everything about Illustrator and In Design and Quark or FreeHand, he first sets them down at a drawing board and has them render - by hand - something. If they can't draw, he doesn't hire them, MFA or not! He told me that it starts with the hand and eye. If you can't design with the hand and eye using basic tools on paper, you will be lacking if you depend on the computer to make up for the deficit. So chin-up, fellow Old School Rapido-jockeys! There is need for you yet!

I will continue posting the progress on this project, all the way through the finished piece, doing the vector work (fingers crossed), sending the digital off to the Platers and receiving and running the final project.

Stay tuned!

-gary

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Behind the 7x11 Pearl OS Model 3

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This installment is specifically to provide some details of the Pearl for a Fellow Printer who is in the process of restoring a Pearl. What you will see is the rear mechanism. On the back of the roller casting there is a lever upon which the base of the pawl shaft rests upon. It acts as a sort of cam which moves the pawl shaft foward. This in turn moves the pawl up, engages the ratchet teeth at the base of the ink disk, rotating it about one degree.

My Aussie Blue Heeler will serenade you as we go along. She hates it when I'm in the shop and she's not.

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Here are some still shots, including one with the ink disk removed. Also, as a note, the only place that a spring is located on my press is the chase clamp. It anchors to the neck casting with receives the ink disk.

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I hope these images are helpful, Rachel.

Good Providence in all your Letterpress endeavours!

-gary

Q5 Studio and Pretty Good Letterpress

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Q5 Studios Resurrects the QSL Postal Label

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Ok, so I have way too much time on my day off, apparently. I spent a good part of the day designing the tee-shirt for the Central Florida Pregnancy Center's "Walk for Life". As long as I had FreeHand up and running, why not see what we can do with that frame I made up for Q5 Studio.

So, what's a QSL? Firstly, "QSL" is the International Code signal for "Confirmation of Receipt of Message". In other words "Yeah, I heard ya". Now, the thing you must know about Radio History is that from the beginning, wireless communications was a grass-roots thing. Yes, it's true that Marconi had the British Navy equipped with wireless by 1898 and managed to sneak the letter "S" across the Atlantic in 1903. But all during this time, wireless circuits had been published and copied by Hobbyists the world over. In fact these "Amateurs" began to organise, and by the time the Titanic went down, Amateur Radio was firmly rooted, with the U.S. Dept. of the Navy issuing code endorsements. Amateur Wireless operators began to establish themselves on the cutting edge of radio technology, and by the time of the closing of the First World War became seen as an important public service.

As equipment improved - largely due to developments by Hams - so did distances wireless signals could both travel, and be heard. As standard radio frequency allocations placed Amateurs on what became known as the Short Waves, Continental and International communications became not only possible, but eventually - common place.

When one station contacted another station, it became a tradition to send a Post Card confirming the contact. These cards contained information regarding time and date of contact, the frequency used, the condition of the signal, the equipment used, and maybe some personal comments and greeting. These became known as "QSL Cards", and date as far back as the first decade of the 20th Century.

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Most of the early QSL cards were printed by Letterpress. Sometimes a standard post card was used with the addition of a special QSL Label. As international trading of QSL cards began to become voluminous, QSL "Bureaus" were organised as a central collection and re-distribution point. Hams would subscribe to these Bureaus which could be a Radio Club sponsored endeavour or a National Organisation operation such as the American Radio Relay League, the roots of which go back to 1914. QSL stamps were often affixed to the envelopes that contained QSL cards sent out to recipients. Thus we have privately produced QSL Labels - or Stamps - being utilised by both private radio stations, commercial stations, QSL Bureaus and Wireless Organisations.

There were other para-postal ephemera that found their way onto the mails. The Ham Radio version of the Telegramme is the Radiogramme, which at one point in time was one of the fastest ways of getting communication in or out of any region. Disaster areas in particular. Radiogrammes were typed up on special stationery, and were usually hand delivered to the recipient. Sometimes a label may have been affixed, corresponding to the old Telegraph Receipt and Commutation stamps of the 19th Century. I've seen only one in the flesh, myself. Heh, in fact, it may have been mine. Oh well . . . .

Shortwave Listeners - who were not licensed Amateurs in that their hobby involved only listening and logging the signals they could pull out of the Ether with their usually hand-made receivers - would send reception reports to Short Wave stations and receive in return a QSL Card from the commercial (or otherwise) station in return. At one point, Domestic and some foreign broadcast stations issued "EKKO" stamps. These were beautifully engraved designs executed by the American Banknote Company - a company that at one time produced regular postal issues for the United States Post Office Department.

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This particular specimen is typographed. Letterpress Printed.

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This is and example of an EKKO stamp. Both of these come from Fort Wayne's "WOWO". When the sun goes down you can still hear this Clear Channel powerhouse just about anywhere east of the Mississippi. Brings back a lot of memories.

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Ok, one more design from Q5. See those wires on the ship? This was wireless in the heyday of Spark, when a radio signal sounded like a medium-pitched buzz sent at a code cadence. Some of these big bruisers ran several Kilowatts of raw spark. Talk about ozone! When Debernet et Cie. engraved this center cut in 1910, a radioman's position was a guaranteed Officers Commission. They used to call him "Sparks".

That's all for today. Another eccentric post and another piece of oddball history.
Welcome to my world.

Good providence in all your endeavours, and give a listen on the old AM Broadcast band one clear night. You might find yourself unexpectedly entertained. And hooked!

-gary

G. Johanson, Printer
Q5 Studios and Pretty Good Letterpress