Dear Reader,
At some point in the design of On the record, I decided to use ornaments between each of the sections. It was a lovely idea. I had the perfect ornament. Emphasis on The. Singular. It was all fine until I needed to print it twice on one page.
As I'd already printed the first page (and put all the letters away to print the next page), I was in a bit of a pickle. Changing the decorative ornament would have meant re-setting and re-printing four pages. This would have been a time-expensive problem. With nothing to lose, I put a story on Instagram and emailed my type casting friends.
Tiny miracles! Andrew Doliński (Carpathian Type) has the matrices for this particular design. Thanks to his enthusiasm, I've purchased not only enough for this job, and also enough of the ornaments to print a full border in future. Hurrah! Click through to his site for a look at the gorgeous brass matrices that are used to cast metal type.
In related the-letterpress-community-is-marvellous news: I had a terrible accident with a piece of new-to-me kit. Remember the gauge pins from last week? Well, truth be told, there were only two in the photo because I crushed one by mistake. It was a devastating loss because I love them very much. Not being entirely sure if it was repairable, I posted it to Win asking for help. More miracles: she has replaced it for me! I could not be more happy. (And I promise to be more careful in future.)
For the month of April, I'm writing about printing as we create On the Record: a short essay on the pollen record of Dartmoor. I'm covering all the steps from typesetting, printing, through to binding. There will only be 100 copies available. You can reserve your copy now.
Best inky wishes,
Emma