No. 1: The artist composing the image in his studio.
No. 2: Extracting the limestone.
No. 3: The studio for lithographic reproduction.
No. 4: Making press proofs.
No. 5: Printing the final large press sheets.
No. 6: The final trimming and collating of the cards.
The highly regarded German chemist, professor, and a founding father of organic chemistry, Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), invented a way to produce beef extract from carcasses (hmmm) as a cheap alternative to real meat. In 1865 he formed the Leibig Extract of Meat Company and like many businesses of the 19th century, he advertised his business with beautiful sets of trade cards. Nearly 2000 Liebig cards have been documented since the Liebig Company began issuing them around 1872. They continued to produce them for over 100 years on everything subject from famous Belgian scientists to masters of illusion, usually in sets made up of 6 cards. The earliest Liebig cards were printed using a method called chromolithography, and are prized among collectors for their fine quality of printing and design. This set of 6 cards displayed above, from User Online, illustrate the actual production of chromolith printing of the day. The process of Chromolithography was invented in the late 1790s, 40 years before the invention of photography, and it was an alterative to the woodcut or engraving process where you carve into the surface in order to create a relief image. Chromoliths, (sometimes referred to as chromos), are known as planographic prints, meaning the images and text were drawn on a flat, limestone surface with a greasy crayon and when it chemically treated, the drawn areas would attract ink and the stone would repel it. Each color represented a different stone and press run, so the task of producing this method of lithography was not only extremely labor intensive, but an art that few mastered. The subtle texture of each print comes from the irregular grain of the stone. Some of the finest printers were in Germany and France where much of the best quality limestone was mined. The set of 6 cards above illustrate the entire chromolithography printing process in consecutive order. In one corner of each card is a small infographic of ink colors next to a portrait of Mr. Liebig. Each card progressively adds 2 more colors resulting in a combination of 12 ink colors for the final portrait. The background on each has an illustration of the one step of the print process beginning with the first card of your average long-haired, pointey-beard artist at his drawing table. Next, in consecutive order, is the extraction of limestone (a nice word for mining); a factory of artists painting stones; making press proofs; the printing; and then the final trimming, collating and packaging. I regret that I could not find larger versions of this set of Liebig cards, but the Princeton University Library reported on a larger rez which I've included below. It is a German version of the same French card No. 4 you see above. Interestingly, they were probably printed at two different printing houses and you can see some dissimilarities in color and detail. The text at the bottom of the German version is also much nicer, which leads me to think it was likely the original or first edition. Granted these are at 2 different resolutions, but it does appear that German card has more definition and detail overall.
Another version of card No. 4, but in German this time. Below is a photo of 2 litho stones which I took this past summer at the wonderful Museum of Printing in N. Andover, MA. The people at the museum actually printed from the stone recently and you can see an example of it next to the original.
Below you can see a 1907 Liebig card on Venezuela from Four Ages of Sand. A magnified portion of it displays the extraordinary detail and combination of colors in a typical Liebig color chromo.
If you are interested in learning more about the stone lithography process, you must visit The Museum of Modern Art's site, The Printed Picture, hosted by noted author, former Dean of the Yale School of Art, photographer and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient, Richard Benson. In addition to a video on chromolithography, Benson has a total of 8 hours of videos there discussing every printing process from early Lumière autochromes, Japanese woodblock printing, wood engraving to printing processes such as the old piano roll. It is an incredible archive of material and extremely well-documented. His beautifully designed companion book to the MOMA site and a 2008 exhibit, The Printed Picture is one of the most comprehensive guides on printing processes I have ever seen and an essential resource for printers of all stripes. You can read a great book review of it by Jerry Kelly on AIGAs site.
As a side note, Richard Benson just happens to be the uncle of Newport, RI stonecarver, Nick Benson who is also a recent MacArthur fellow. For those not counting, that is two "Macs" in one family! Nick was honored with a "genius grant" just last Fall for his lettering and stone carving work. I reported on Nick last Winter here on Letterology and for AIGA's Voice series, and I had the wonderful honor of visiting him and his brilliantly talented father John Benson in their RI shop in July. John's father, John Howard Benson began the family stone carving business at The John Stevens Shop in 1927. He was an artist, calligrapher, teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design and author of The Elements of Lettering. At the time of my visit I learned of yet another talented Benson; Nick's brother, Christopher, who lives in New Mexico and is a very fine painter in his own right. He also designs and publishes some very fine-editioned portfolios of artists work at The Fisher Press. I found it hilarious that each one of the Bensons will independently claim the other is more talented than the next. They are a one-family art colony—the art gene runs very deep in that family!
From the 2005 New York School of Visual Arts exhibit, The Next big...Ding! which took place at Grand Central Station. Will the student who created this gem please come and reclaim it? ::Via Poetic Home
There were few textbooks available to young students in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead, students would use blank books, more commonly referred to as copybooks, to copy their teacher's lessons entirely by hand. Many of these early books were made by hand, until the local stationers eventually began supplying ruled and plain copybooks, often with advertisements on their wrappers. My photos of the penmanship copybook shown above are from a 2008 exhibit, 350 Years of Books for Children at the University of Washington's Suzallo Library. Penmanship exercises were a common form of copybooks. This one is from a Hampstead, Massachussettes student, Tristram Little, and dated 1823-1826. I do love the text in it; Be careful to keep your book very clean.
The copybook above is a math book from the same exhibit and it belonged to Catherine Palen, in 1825. This was also at a time when students were expected to hand-copy their arithmetic problems from the blackboards. Catherine must have been a serious over-achiever. No one decorates titles like this at the top of their pages unless they're aiming for extra credit. Nice layout I might add. I'd certainly give her an A+ regardless of her square roots. Although this next copybook below is undated, I would suggest it is from the early 1700s. Based upon the unlined paper, the lettering and penmanship style, and the puritanical text, it appears to be at least this old. I purchased this book years ago from a rare book dealer and it had no documentation. The pages appear to have been very fragile, so someone went to great lengths to preserve it by glueing it on a similar weight and kind of paper in a professional manner. Some of the original pages were separated and the remnants of these are glued in place onto new pages as well. The restored booklet is only 4 pages measuring 5 x 6".
Below is a great example of a typical 19th century copybook. This one belonging to Eli Lee Harrison, is estimated to be from around 1850, according to Pat Pflieger at the Merry Coz where I found this example. It was produced by the L.S. Learned Company (love the name) of New England. The woodcut images on the front and back covers portray the Pilgrim's landing on the shores of Cape Cod near Eastham, MA (lovely place I might add). The inside pages are pale blue and filled with Eli's rather poorly-executed penmanship exercises such as this odd little verse; Idleness and ignorance are the parents of many vices. Well ok, I'll take less ignorance, but I could surely use a lot more of the idleness vice.
When Worlds Collide, and exhibit of large-scale photos by Beijing artist Wang Qingsong, one of China's most highly regarded contemporary artists. Now showing at the International Center of Photography museum in NYC until May 8th. Great work filled with irony. See the online exhibit here.
It's ironic that an exhibition on the history of printing is available only online, but in this case, I am delighted it is available. One of the country's premiere libraries on graphic communication history and practices, The Cary Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology, presents the online exhibit, The Printer's Manual, An Illustrated History. There are 31 images on classic and unusual texts on printing from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Curator David Pankow provides excellent documentation on each item in the exhibit.
The image at the top is from The Printer's Grammer, or Introduction to the Art of Printing, 1808 by Caleb Stower. The bottom image shows some word and letterspacing run amuck in the Scottish text, The History of the Art of Printing, 1713 by James Watson. Pankow describes the work as an extended poetic metaphor on the relationship between God the master printer and the creatures of his creation, symbolized as pages of type.
Seeing the Modern Architecture 101 work above from the guys over at TheAllNighter the other day, reminded me of a font design based upon architectural icons created by my former student, Shinya Iwaki. I posted about it two years ago along with a crowd of other wonderful experimental fonts, all designed for my xType class, but this one really deserves far more attention. It is called Cityscape and it is populated by 26 architectural wonders. Students were each tasked with an assignment to design a font of their own choice of any media and Shin chose to design one based upon buildings. He spent many hours pouring through architecture books at the library and researching online for buildings that vaguely simulated each letter of the alphabet. He illustrated, (or hand-built) each building in the context of a letter it most closely resembled. Each letter consists of a real construction and he has included the name of the building, the city and the date each was completed. Shin's Cityscape was originally produced as a poster and much later as an impressive deck of 26 letterpressed cards in an edition of 100. He is now living in Brooklyn and I don't know if posters or the cards are for sale, but with enough encouragement, maybe we can persuade him to print a 2nd edition!
If you haven't yet seen my student's work from the past two xType xHibits, I highly recommend it to you. View some from the 2009 class and 2010, and take time to watch the videos too, as they are each amazing. Oh, and one more unforgettable font here which you should not miss! I wish I had more of this kind of work to show you for 2011, but the xType class was cancelled this year }: - ( I may now have to take it on the road somewhere, some day. Hmm...xType hits the road. I like the sound of this!
Update:I received a note from Shin just 2 days after the earthquake in Japan. Shin tells me he has recently returned to live in Japan and he is okay. I hope he continues to do well as Japan recovers from this disaster. He is interested in selling some of his decks of the Cityscape alphabet, and if you are interested he can be contacted here.
Please excuse the alliteration, but the exhibit, Ex Libris opens on January 26th and extends to February 26th at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in NYC. The exhibition will focus on art about books and will feature 28 artists spanning more than a half-century of work: Ed Ruscha, Chris Ware, Maira Kalman, Chip Kidd, Seth, Roz Chast, Robin Tewes, Ruth Marten, Richard Prince, David Hockney, Jean Lowe, Cyrilla Mozenter, Charles Burns, Richard Baker, András Böröcz, Vivienne Koorland, Saul Steinberg, Jennie Ottinger, Nan Swid, Bette Blank, Josephine Halvorson, Molly Springfield, Rebecca Bird, Ryan Brown, Tom Burckhardt, Alice Attie, Renée French and Adam Dant. Get a glimpse of the exhibiton here.
Molly Springfield Untitled (Negative/Positive), 2009 Graphite on paper 8 1/2" x 11"
Jennie Ottinger In Cold Blood, 2010 Hollow and summarized book: gouache on paper 6" x 9"
Roz Chast Nancy Drew Mysteries, 1998 ink on paper 5 1/2" x 7"
Maira Kalman Proust’s Notebook, 2006 Gouache on paper 8" x 6 3/4”
Two words easily make me light up...Road Trip. When school was out in June, I was ready to play. My husband and I packed the car grabbed our photo gear and went looking for sun and fun in Northern California in late June. Our destination was a small cottage in Berkeley that belonged to our friend Matt. It was just large enough for one piece of luggage if you put it under the bed and one person to stand up at a time. We were happy to be there however after several days in the car and went off to explore in the city. I have to be honest, the primary reason I wanted to visit SF at that time, was to see Maira Kalman, artist, author, illustrator, designer and person-whom-I-would-most-like-to-meet, at her exhibition opening on the first of July at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum. And she was delightful and so approachable and to see her original work was the highlight of my Summer. To early attendees, Maira hosted a Milton, her reference for a conceptual space for whimsy and exchange as she explains. In a nutshell, it was her personal store of miscellaneous stuff she sold out of an old suitcase. Balls of string, an old book, cans of sweet peas, envelopes of ephemera–all stuff she sold with proceeds donated to the SF Food Bank. I bought the ephemera and our host, Matt bought me a can of Ralph's Peas, which she signed (and which we later ate with dinner and is now my favorite pencil cup). Maira also beautifully inscribed our several books before we all attended the exhibit. Upon first meeting her, I expressed my disappointment about leaving behind the bag of fresh moss from Mt. Rainier which I intended to give her, Maira was absolutely charming and gave me her personal address to mail it later. I have since accumulated more little bags of moss to send her from the Olympic Rainforest, central Oregon, North Andover, MA and my roof. Did I mention that she also collects moss? If you haven't had an opportunity to discover Maira's work, begin here. And here. And here. Her exhibit at the CJM ends October 26th and will then move to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on November 16th to February 13th. Following this it will be at the Jewish Museum in New York next Spring. For more Maira, you can watch her TED Talk here.
The month of April marks the 2nd Annual Student xType Culture Show at the school's Hunter Art Gallery. This show features the work of 48 students and their experiments creating alphabets which are fantastical, found, illustrated, photographed, videoed, animated, 3D, baked, stamped, stenciled, sketched on pavement, burned in grass, and imagined. The rules of play were to construct an experimental display font of 26 letters out of any media (with the exception of flammable, toxic or xRated, but this edict was even ignored), and they were bound only by time, money, materials and their imagination. After enduring a previous quarter of intensive book design where micro-typography conventions were the order – this was a big paradigm shift. I confronted them with new objectives; be playful, be expressive and examine what it means to create a font without any fundamental notions of legibility, readability, function or aesthetics. By challenging them to avoid these traditional typographic principles – where the function of type and reading are impaired – it made for some very surprising and creative results. It allowed the students to view the alphabet (whether real or imagined) in an entirely new context and challenged some of their own preconceptions. They were compelled to often carefully examine each letterform and in some cases deconstruct them into vaguely pixelated shapes. These playful typographic experimentations take flight in all directions and their results continue to impress and amaze me. I am happy to provide a sneak preview of some of their alphabets here. The show opens on Thursday, April 8th at the Hunter Art Gallery in the school's atrium from 5 to 8pm. The gallery is open M-F, 9:30am–3:30pm and also T and W evenings from 5-7pm. 1701 Broadway on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
Sand Serif, the elaborate video above, created with sand on top of a light table in a darkened room, is the work of two multi-cultural and multi-talented students, Mykhaylo Sinenko, originally from the Ukraine and Priyanka Basu from India. It is beautifully choreographed, and with over 7 hours of video editing alone–is a marvel to watch.
The Leitura Paper Swashes film below, is a stunningly beautiful stop action video created by Chloe Scheffe. She brings Leitura Swashes to life with cut paper, fishing line and tape.
Populations, above, by Erin Kendig is an interactive demographic of the population of 26 letters on page 167 of The Great Gatsby. Erin presumes that letters are a metaphor for humans as they have feet, legs, arms and she goes on to illustrate how they each populate the randomly chosen page 167. Give it a whirl here.
The following works are Fleuras, by Donna Belnavis, a font produced with forsythia flowering branches; Enlightened Letters, by Jee Lee, a paper engineered pop-up book structure electrically lit by an LED bulb. I hope to get a video of this book up here soon; GemType, by Wyatt Carroll, a font designed with amethyst crystals in Photoshop; Boundaries, by Ross Coyne, a tunnel book structure of a stencil-cut alphabet; and Egg Fancy, by Chieu Van, a font with each letter illustrated on an egg in the tradition of Ukrainian egg dyeing, using wax resist and colorful dyes.
