Type that still has to be lifted

Setwidth is one Vandercook, four cabinets of foundry type, and a stubborn preference for doing the arithmetic before the ink. These pages collect what gets learned at the stone — mostly by getting it wrong first.

Everything printed here is set by hand. That constraint decides more than it sounds like it should: a line either fits the measure or it does not, and no amount of afterthought will change the width of a piece of 12-point Caslon. The notes below are the record of that negotiation.

Diagram of a chase locked up on the press bed with standing type, leaded matter, furniture, and quoins — A forme locked up badly enough to teach something. The furniture on the right was two picas short, and the whole right-hand column crept during the first eight impressions.

Recent notes

14 August · composition Kerning by hand, and when not to bother
2 July · makeready Damp paper, three days in advance
19 May · inventory What is actually in the cases

Commissions

Short runs only — broadsides, colophons, and the occasional stubborn book page. Turnaround is measured in weeks because the type has to be distributed again afterwards. There is no order form on this site by design; correspondence goes through the post.