Books. It all begins and ends with books here at St Brigid Press. 

Personally and professionally, my life has been significantly shaped by the encounters I’ve had with literature ~ I bet many of you have similar stories. Early in my continuing apprenticeship to traditional printing and book-making, kind friends and mentors in the craft directed me to essential volumes about letterpress, typography, printing history, and more. Those folks and the books they recommended got me started on the right foot, and I return again and again to their wisdom. 

Over the years, through the generosity of others and through my own acquisitions, the library at St Brigid Press has grown into a rich repository of texts. I thought it might be fun for us all to take a brief look at some of these volumes ~ from type design to press maintenance, printer’s biographies to sewing books.

So, here’s the first installment of “Book Looks” ~ short spotlights on some of my favorite volumes from the Press library. Enjoy!

BOOK LOOKS, PART 1

Well, the beginning is a very good place to start, says the song, so I thought I would share a few of the very first books I read when I set out on this letterpress adventure (almost ten years ago!).

1. Printing For Pleasure, by John Ryder

John Ryder’s Printing for Pleasure was the very first book I read on the subject. I’m grateful, as that delightful, witty, wise volume helped set the tone for the rest of my letterpress life. First published in 1955 and updated with new material in 1976, Ryder’s volume manages, in less than 150 pages, to tour us deftly through the basics of type, typography, inking and printing, and some fine examples of the work of small presses. He encourages the new printer to develop an eye for detail and a spirit of experimentation. Throughout, the book is chock-full of an inspiring curation of illustrations. Published in the US by Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1977.

2. Letterpress, by David Jury

In the beginning, of course, I had no idea what “letterpress” printing was. The second book I stumbled upon, a sort of alter-ego to John Ryder, was Letterpress: The allure of the handmade by book and print designer David Jury. As elegantly efficient as is Ryder, this tome is eclectically lavish. Jury piles illustration upon illustration to give an eye-popping tour of printing that may begin historically but is anything but “traditional.” It helped give me a sense of the broad applications of letterpress, introduced me to new ways of imagining the page, and allowed me to begin forming my own sense of what I was and was not interested in. Published by RotoVision, 2011.

3. These Were The Hours, by Nancy Cunard

Robert Graves. Ezra Pound. Henry Crowder. Samuel Beckett. Some of the early 20th centuries most well-known artistic names were published by a woman with a historic name of her own, Nancy Cunard. Granddaughter of the founder of the Cunard ship company, she was a British heiress who became a poet, printer, and activist against racism and fascism. In France, she established The Hours Press, where she published dozens of literary texts, songs, art catalogues, and more in a flurry of intense work between 1928 and 1931. This book is her fascinating first-person account of her experiences of printing, editing, and the luminous personalities she encountered. Published by Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.

Stay tuned for future installments of “Book Looks,” friends. In the meantime, be well and read on!

Emily