Washington College Alumni Magazine Summer 2011 : Cover2
>d;I>PQFKDd;FJMOBPPFLK T ·´½ ¼È daughter Hillary announced her engagement last summer, we threw our-selves into the fray of wedding planning. We studied bridal magazines and Web sites with a singular focus: how this celebration might reflect the personalities and the “casu-ally elegant” aesthetics of the happy couple without break-ing the bank. As a family that is loathe to pay anyone to do anything we could do ourselves, we committed to several DIY projects where our talents—and those of our friends—could shine. Candy favors? Check. Table runners? No problem. Wooden signs directing guests to the outdoor venue? Thanks, Dad. Ceremony music? I happen to know a very talented harpist. Then I received a propitious message: a campus e-mail announced an introductory letterpress workshop in the Rose O’Neill Literary House. It dawned on me: we could print the wedding invitations ourselves! How hard could it be? As a magazine editor, I know some-thing of type and paper and ink. I’ve collected the lovely Christmas cards and poems hand-set and printed on the antique letterpresses that were installed in the Lit House 25 years ago. Still, I had never tried my hand at letterpress printing. I reserved two spots for the evening workshop. Under the tutelage of Mas-ter Printer Mike Kaylor, we soon realized that the work of committing words to paper takes time, thought and care. Fine printing and bookbinding require an appreciation for history and literature as well as an artist’s eye. In the press-room, we saw dozens of student projects underway: poems set into forms, press proofs cover-ing the countertops, heavy papers stitched into tiny books and journals and wrapped in marbleized papers. In an age of mass production, Washington College students are experi-menting with an art form that has nearly been lost. For our project, there were fonts and papers to choose, inks to custom blend, pieces to measure and cut from large sheets, and the mechanics of the press to master. But first, we had to study the history of the printed word, understand the evolution of paper and ink, and grasp the lexicon of letter-press printing. Did you know that, when you are feeling “out of sorts,” you might just be missing the vowels from your case? As I picked out the metal type and clumsily arranged them in the composing stick, I understood the dysfunction of the dyslexic. I had to mind my p’s and q’s, to say nothing of my b’s and d’s. Happily, Hillary caught on quickly and she designed a “Save the Date” card with a flourish of tiny fish—orna-ments she found among the cases of type that line the walls of the Literary House Pressroom. She and Mike Kaylor printed the cards one afternoon and they were in the mail the next day. The wedding invitations, I mused, would be a snap! Fine letterpress printing is enjoying something of a renaissance among the Mar-tha Stewart crowd as well as among devotees of the book arts. There are companies employing artisans who pro-duce stunning work by marry-ing old and new technologies. We decided to forego the tedious business of setting type by hand and have poly-mer plates made from Adobe InDesign files. I enlisted the services of this magazine’s creative director to interpret Hillary’s vision and design a two-color, six-piece package that, we failed to consider, would require 13 runs through the press. The devil is always in the details. We sweated the small stuff: the size and balance of the fonts, the weight and finish of the paper, the position of the ornamental knot, the color of the second ink—which looked like pureed peas on the ink disc but was gorgeous on the natural white paper. Feeding sheets of paper into the let-terpress is actually the easiest part of the process: we would have been lost without Kaylor’s expertise in setting the chase bed and adjusting the tympan on the platen to get that deep impression of type onto paper. The details, after all, are what matter most as we strive to create something meaningful, something beautiful, some-thing lasting. For all my angst, I was astonished by the beauty and permanence of what we had created. I ran my fingers over the surface of the fine paper, feeling the deep imprint of the letters. I touched the names of the bride and groom, their love and their promise com-mitted to paper in a lasting impression. — MCL
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