D'OH!

It's a complex book. Historically it's had "untouchable" status, but these days people have been pointing out weaknesses (which it does have). On the other hand, those -the few- who really bag on it have got it all backwards.

It's really a goldmine of type knowledge, and brings together many historic specimens, with usually expert analysis from an actual user of type - and a proficient one. However it's also a very personal book - not a "scholarly" one deep down. Like when Updike makes Dutch type sound like trash and Spanish type like the best thing since sliced bread. But if you take his particular opinions in stride and realize it has some historical gaps, then it's really uniquely useful - there's nothing like it. However, it's also a specialist's book. It's all about type, not much more. You really have to love type to enjoy it.

BTW, there have been three "historic" editions: 1922, 1937, 1967. The first one is supposed to have the best reproduction, the second one has new material, the third neither - which is I guess how I managed to buy a copy of that one (both volumes) for only $75. The Dover (?) reprints are not considered very good, but the textual content of course is there (as opposed to the fidelity of the specimens), and that's most of its value as far as I'm concerned.

hhp

I looked on the Dover site and they had no record of any Updike books nor did their search engine recognize the title or ISBN #.

I finally got myself a set last week. 1951 second edition with DJ. $40. Now I can return the university library copies I have had out for a while.

BTW
Oak Knoll has re-issued it and I would suspect it is a bit better than the Dover reprint.

AND they have a 50% off sale going for a few more days!
http://www.oakknoll.com/results.php?s_CriteriaAlias=SALEBOOKCRITERIA&s_PresetName=SALE%20BOOKS

Good stuff - though not a leisurely read.
I picked up the 1980 reprint for $7 at a
public library clearance sale.
As mentioned, not the best reproductions,
but not terrible either.

The Oak Knoll reprint isn't exactly cheap
so the 50% sale is your ticket.

Actually, in terms of reproductive quality, even the first editions were hardly anything to write home about. You don't often see superb reproduction in book materials from that era, mainly because of the paper that was used. And the out-of-print Dover, by the way, is much superior to the Oak Knoll reprint in quality of reproduction. Someone just had the Dover up on eBay, think they were asking $25 for the two volumes.

You don't often see superb reproduction in book materials from that era, mainly because of the paper that was used.

A notable exception to this general rule is Victor Scholderer's Greek printing types 1465-1927, published by the British Museum in in 1927 and printed at the University Press, Oxford, by John Johnson. The reproductions are printed collotype, and they are still the best reproductions of type I've ever seen.

Recently I purchased another great book on Greek type, Nicholas Barker's Aldus Manutius and the development of Greek script & type, 1985, which also has exceptionally fine reproductions (printed at the Meridien-Stinehour Press), but even this doesn't compare to the quality of the Scholderer volume.

The best type reproductions that I've seen are photographic, in an article by Philip Gaskell titled "Photographic Enlargements of Type Forms" (Journal of the Printing Historical Society, issue #7, 1971). He used the best available sources for a number of "classic" designs. Here's Garamond's gros romain of 1551:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Gara1551.gif

hhp

Gaskell's photos are enlargements, so I don't think it is very fair to compare their quality to that of reproductions of type at original sizes. The very wonderful thing about collotype for this purpose is that there is no dot pattern.

John

Yes, there is no dot pattern with collotype but there is reticulation (zero to infinity on the grayscale) and often extreme exposure variation. I do know this as my partner and I spent six months researching how to do collotype and another six trying to do it. After all that time we actually got 146 pretty damn good copies (!!!) printing on an Albion iron handpress

But, that was just the results of a couple of enthusiastic learners. I'm quite sure, that as you say, the Oxford collotypes were quite on the mark. That was somewhat the peak of commercial collotype production.

Shortly afterward, the process began to disappear from the commercial scene. I have a very intriguing French literary magazine, published immediately after WWII, that has wonderful photos of the French Resistance Printers. And they were all in collotype, very, very rich in tonal quality. In the postwar years the process fell into the domain of fine printmakers. Very few folks are masters of it today.

Gerald

Gerald,

I remember, I think, a firm called Black Cat Collotype. I suppose they are no longer with us.

Printing Types - Their History, Form and Use
by D.B. Updike

It would have been difficult without my two volume hard bound set. I do agree with Hrant though, there are gaps. Or opinions easy to ignore. I recall a text on Caslon which was word for word out of Calson's type catalogue. I am not sure one should rely that strongly on advertising material. Still a great resource.

A recommended buy.

Gerald

Close. Black Box Collotype. In Chicago. They are still with us but haven't done collotype for quite some time. Sold off the equipment. They only do digital now and have dropped the word collotype from their name. We did consult with them regarding various procedures.

That's right. Now I remember, I smoked Black Cat Cigarettes. Gerald, I'm getting old. The people that bought the equipment, are they using it? Or have you heard?

Gerald

There was a nice little fine press in Chicago way back when called Black Cat Press. Affiliated in some way with Middleton. I have a tiny book he did with them on typecasting.

Conflicting reports on where the equipment ended up. I think it may have been acquired by an institution in Arizona. Have not heard of any activity on the collotype front that would indicate it has been set up for use.

Updike was a myopic snob (an attitude not uncommon amongst typophiles of the time).

You would think from this book that there was no typography outside of "fine books", and that no typefaces were produced during the majority of the 19th century (a cultural period beneath contempt for Updike, those Victorians don't get no respect.)

Strangely, this typographic elitism helped give mass market magazines of the early 20th century the look of noble old books from centuries before.

Nick

Updike was a working printer with an intense interest in his heritage, and followed in DeVinne's path in this regard. Like DeVinne, because he was a printer, he brought a prospective to printing history that was refreshing clear compared with previous scholarly efforts.

This book is actually the first encompassing look at the history of type design and development. It is quite important despite any views we might choose to project from our contemporary perspective.

Updike had prejudices. He denigrated blackletter, had little use for the travesties of the nineteenth-century... He was a revivalist and sought to understand and explain that lineage, in doing so he discarded what would not fit.

He was no elitist (not in the way you choose to see him at least), just a proud working stiff, with, actually, very little use for work outside the commercial sphere. For instance, he had little respect for the private presses of his time period, oddly, as they contributed significantly to changes in the industry that Updike himself championed.

The typographic revival was not started by Updike, he was simply one of those who had a hand in legitimizing it.

Nick,

I am a little confused, does this mean myopic snobbery is a good thing? Some people think I am a snob. So I hope you say yes. By the way there is a great East Indian restaurant in Toronto. I think a lot of great typograhy got rolled out in the twenties. Talking to you makes me hungry. I will look for the business card of the restaurant. There is never any cheap flights to Canada. Updike printed a really lovely corporate book for a wicker funiture manufacturer. I actually read the book, it was interesting. He got pretty wealthy with his shop. Both Updike and John Henry Nash.


Gerald,

Middleton was one great guy. Well in any event I am envious you had the chance to experiment with the collotype process. I think I still have all my technical books on the process. One of these days we are going to have to get together. How about Toronto, this is terrible I have to go eat something.

But before I forget, I am sending you to a link to see a picture of the fellow I trained under. I just rediscovered him in BC. Wil is building a steam engine for this thing. http://lanstontype.com/Wil-Hudson-Typographer.html The page isn't finished but the picture is. Great Typographer, he quit.

Gerald

You never cease to amaze. Thanks for the pic.

I met Middleton once. Quite the distinguished fellow. We were brought in to help get a book arts program started at the Chicago Institute of Art. There was some opposition by the young turks in the printmaking department. During a round table meeting, as a form of rationale Middleton began discussing the wonderment of some stone cutting he had seen on one of the buildings outside. Two turks turned to each other in bewildered astonishment and one of them said, "he's talking about _letters_ again"! This took place, of course, at a time before type was cool. Despite their noble or ignoble efforts, the program was established.

Gerald, thank you for pointing out Updike's position as an innovative historian.

When you say he was a working printer, do you mean that he actually got his fingers dirty?

You are right, a little historical relativism is called for: what we would today call snobbery was, in the context of the class system of his time, merely "pride".

But by the same token, you shouldn't describe Updike as a "working stiff", with today's connotations of exploited labourer.
Updike's prejudices were those of his time. Book printers (such as he?) looked down their noses at jobbing printers who did commercial (ie advertising) work, did they not? So, in that sense, it is incorrect to describe him as a commercial printer.

Wasn't there a "class" system, with private presses at the top, the Updikes and De Vinnes in the middle, and jobbing printers at the bottom?

To revise my point: the idea we have now of the importance of popular culture didn't emerge until the 1960s. So Updike, in writing a serious history of his discipline, ignored popular (commercial) culture.

(Mind you, things haven't really changed, it's still only a small "arty" part of the graphics industry that gets the trade press coverage and the critical analysis in books.)

All the marvellous typographic inventions and virtuosity (you consider these "travesties"?) of the mainstream 19th century, Updike regarded as degradation. So, there are no showings in his book of fat faces, Clarendons, Sans Serifs, etc.

The founder's specimen books of the 19th century give a far broader idea of what was happening than Updike's narrowly focused exposition.

So, Updike: big ommissions, if you're expecting a broad coverage of type history. But at the time, innovative, and substantial in those areas he did cover. And very relevant to the graphic historicism of the early 20th century.

Nick

I don't consider the typographic explosion that occurred in the nineteenth century a travesity, but certainly those who had hopes to revitalize and improve typography in the early twentieth century did. Even good ole bad boy Marinetti hated the typography of the nineteenth century. At the time, I suspect most folks in the industry were quite pleased to get beyond it, or there simply would not have been the intense interest in the revival and, as well, in the modernist approach.

There is unfortunately no study yet compiled that provides a good prospective on nineteenth century printing and typographic innovations and developments. Certainly, the great strides that occurred in the twentieth all were put into place the century before. I'm much more interested in the nineteenth century than I am the twentieth, but NOT a nineteenth century based on twenty-first century cliches.

I'm certain you are right that Updike considered many nineteenth century faces as degradation, even ahistorical, but he was hardly alone at the time. But yes, he was a working printer, in the guts of it, not just books. I have a nice little book of his called, I think, A Day in the Work, something like that. Pretty much the routine of the printshop.

Don't know that one could strategize the various kinds of work of that time into anything like a "class" system. Many of the typographic high-rollers in the commercial realm, Gill, Goudy, etc., were also involved with the Private Press Movement. I doubt the output of the private press was considered high class as much as it may have been considered archaic, and perhaps of interest because of that, since therein lay the roots of the revival. But the mixing only occurred because of the players involved, who straddled many fences.

Popular culture is derived pretty much from the sloganisms of any period isn't it? As much as it can be defined at that time, I assume through advertising, etc, yes, Updike would certainly have been part of it. I assume you are talking typographically. If anything, he wasn't purposely ignoring it, but unaware of it since as you point out, it wasn't a defined concept. But, as far as the commercial printing industry's influence on distributing the slogans of commerce, yeah, certainly Updike was instrumental in evolving that.

The first work I was aware of that applied serious critical analysis to pop culture was "Icons of Popular Culture" in the late 60s (I forget the author and can't find it on my bookshelf) -- it discussed the Coke bottle and VW beetle.

It was at that time that music critics also compared the Beatles to Mozart, and "auteur" theory emerged, identifying the movie director as the major artist in a film, not the star actor.

The very term "popular culture" reveals that the mass media were not even considered culture, let alone art. Anthropologists built the bridge.

Nonetheless, it's still hard to fathom how Updike, a hands-on, working stiff, could print "a really lovely corporate book for a wicker funiture manufacturer", and not consider similar works by his forbears for discussion in his history.

Nick

Typographically speaking, I think the auteur theory has been around for some time, if not defined as such. Wouldn't William Morris be the auteur of the Kelmscott Press output even though he had little workaday involvement in the actual production? I'm sure one could find all kinds of examples that go way, way back. (???)

I think Updike's history was actually a map for the future. He probably thought what he considered deadends were not worth inclusion. He dismissed letterforms that had no defining historical lineage or linkage. I think that's pretty much it.

I don't know that one can make the case that there was some kind of opposition or counter-action going on at the time. I'm wondering if you think there might have been? Diehard nineteenth centuryists or something like that. I kind of doubt it. The future was a big deal. Even the Arts & Crafts Movement was an attempt at salvation rather than a looking backward. The attendant typefaces of the Industrial Revolution that evolved out of nowhere for the sole purpose of selling the commodities that came out of industrialization were considered dehumanizing, no matter how funky or attractive they may seem today. Without previous investigations to lead the way, I suspect neither Updike or anyone else at the time could really make head or tail out of the nineteenth century's typographic cornucopia and so it was pretty much sidestepped.

>>This took place, of course, at a time before type was cool.

!? Woohoo! I must be in the right department then! When
did this happen? ; )

> There is unfortunately no study yet compiled that
> provides a good prospective on nineteenth century ....

What about Nicolette Gray's book?

hhp

Hrant

It's only a slice from the pie. Good pie though.

Gerald

Gerald,

Updike was not alone in being unable to "see" the 19th century. To this day, the standard conception of modernity is that there were political and industrial revolutions c.1800, but that modern art didn't ramp up till impressionism, and take off till the 1900s, a century later. This viewpoint has been challenged recently by post-structuralists (eg "Techniques of the Observer, by Jonathan Crary) but there is still a huge amount of work to be done unearthing the modernity of the 19th century. Of course, type designers were right there early on, with the unicase bold sans serif!

As a counterforce to Revivalism, I would say that Cheltenham bridged the gap between 19th and 20th century modernism. It had a big, systematic family, printed well on coated and uncoated, in text and display, hot and cold. It's definitely not a Didone Modern, but in true Victorian fashion combined pseudo-historical forms with precisely engineered serifs. It was massive exactly concurrent with revivalism, until the 1930s. The Century typeface can also be seen as an evolution of the 19th Century modern. I have a 1921 edition of De Vinne's "Correct Composition", still set in -- De Vinne.

For editorial text type, revivalism never supplanted the "numbered romans" (Victorian didone) in mass market magazines, books and newspapers. Even the Linotype "Old Style" is pretty much a Century (except for its italic).

Nick

This is good stuff. There were a lot of train wrecks with the turn of the century. Or perhaps the problem has been to make distinctions between the centuries. Its very difficult to sort out the Northern European transistions for instance. To have clean cut ideologies like Revivalism and Modernity unfortunately serves to both clear and cloud the vision. Thanks for doing the work.

Gerald

Some considerable comment could be made about general quality of printed products during the nineteenth century.

Washboard type heights, multitudes of point standards unsuccessfully mixed into a singular type forme. Some reflection is more than deserved pondering master/slave working conditions non-conducive to fine typography. The results are generally best appreciated if you consider yourself viewing a typographical freak show.

Not to mention such things as cylinder presses that were built for one thing in mind, production. Quantity had clearly surplanted quality. The same could be applied to the inventions of both the Linotype, and Monotype machines. The mother of their inventions was Mrs. Get The Lead Out.

Later, Monotypes machines were tinkered with by the why can't you crowd such as the great Bruce Rogers. Cylinder presses were adapted for fine printing by John Henry Nash and Fount le Roy. The latter pioneered fine press work aboard semi automatic cylinder presses. A very novel idea at that time. I remember in my days this had been reversed and I was told that cylinder presses were superior to platens for fine printing. Both opinions are non sense if applied generally. Compare the problems of rule work on a cylinder press, vs. rule work on a platen press. Simplified, the purchase of a press was not a mechanical decision, it was a marketing decision.

Also the nineteen century was plagued by insidious optometry experiments regarding spacing techniques causing our great grand daddies to either become blind, or wishing they were blind. Pages with mutton spaces after a periods. (A frightful eyesore that lingered on even into my own day.)

This period of typography I hope does not inspire typographical nostalgia. Rightful it would be banned along with the past Chinese custom of binding young woman

Gerald's comments are exactly why the nineteenth century was such a mess typographically. The concern for preserving type design (or wishing there had been more concern) that we may share today has nothing to do with the reality of the type industry at that time. The turn of the century brought with it a massive change in technologies and standards. No one wanted to look back.

Today there is growing nostalgia for the faces of photofilm but the reality of that technology was that it was a bloody degradation of quality. Welcomed when it superseded metal, but its demise was cheered as well.

> nostalgia

I have to think that's what it mostly is.
All this revivalism of "fauve" 20th century type seems like an escape to me - either from the cynicism of contemporary life, or the rigors of true text face design.

hhp

Gerald G,

If you were a myopic snob like Updike, you would now write a history of types that ended with the eclipse of metal, ignoring that which is immediately in front of you, phototype and digital type. Not to mention dry transfer type.

But from any meaningful historical perspective, surely the work that is most expressive of an era is done when designers come to grips with the new technology of that era. (Although, as you say, this takes no account of the social consequences.)

For instance, the ability of the phototypositor, and Letraset, to set type extremely tightly, overlapping and negative leaded even, produced a style of setting, starting in the early 60s, that later informed a generation of type designers such as Lubalin and Benguiat. Whatever one thinks of the quality of photofilm, At the time, it ruled.

Working with filmset ITC faces as an art director in the 70s and 80s, I always felt as if there was a wall between me and the ancient noble essence of typography that I sought to somehow incorporate in my work, yet at the same time, I have to say that the way the typesetting industry was set up put a lot of typographically skilled, knowledgable people into the production process workflow, and accorded a huge importance to typography -- just look at its prominence in the print ads of the era, in the awards annuals.

And although Ed Benguiat thought Herb Lubalin was the only one who ever used Avant Garde's alternates with any taste, those alternates made typography a lof of fun for---the working stiff.

Nick, Updike's book is from 1922 (with a revised edition in 1937).

hhp

If you were a myopic snob like Updike, you would now write a history of types that ended with the eclipse of metal, ignoring that which is immediately in front of you, phototype and digital type. Not to mention dry transfer type.

You really know how to hurt a guy Nick. Photocomp went right past me unnoticed. Much later I found out that Compugraphic was controlled by the CIA. This is not a hair brained conspiracy theory.

To get back on track!!!!

I reviewed the Oak Knoll printing a while back and this is the information on the various editions from that review:

Updike

Oh, just to put a better light on Updike. He championed the young Dwiggins. WAD's early illustration work (which was unfortunately critically derided - the work is amazing in its detail and sensitivity) appeared in Merrymount Press books.

myopic snob

Snobs overlook good. I do not believe it possible that all typography was terrible throughout the nineteenth century.

I have become curious.

I'll agree that it is a goldmine in many ways, but for historical accuracy, you will need to have other sources with which you can compare.

Joe -- there's a copy of Volume Two on Half.com for $4.95.

http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cgi?cpid=3159226&domain_id=1856&meta_id=1