A printer

The first skill a printing apprentice was taught on entering the composing room was how to handle metal type. In particular, the manner of its transfer from case to stick and vice versa. There was general agreement that the nature of engagement with this mundane but crucial and much-repeated task demonstrated the apprentice’s character and aptness for his chosen career by those charged with monitoring progress. Later he would be invited to step up to the stone and, shoulder-to-shoulder with more experienced comps, lean over a forme and learn from their appraisal. 

Judgment would be based on an allegiance to conformity. A book should look like a book and function like a book. It had to feel like a book should feel in the hand – in fact, the more ‘bookish’, the better its design. Not that ‘design’, as such, was a concern. Pencil and paper might come together to make a discrete calculation, but never to plan a layout. Indeed, the need to plan (design) was a sign of incompetence. The trade printer was expected to know ‘instinctively’ what was required in the making of a book worthy of the name so there was barely any need to ‘think’ at all. In other words, craftsmanship for the commercial printer had become ossified. Beatrice Warde, Editor of the Monotype Recorder and publicity manager for the Monotype Corporation in England, justified the printer’s disengagement with design when she wrote in 1955, ‘Since the sixteenth century [printers] have been depended upon to know how a given book, pamphlet or broadsheet ought to look – in effect, how to prevent it looking ‘different.’ The notion of actually encouraging lads to ask irreverent questions about the look of print [...] is alien to the atmosphere of the normal printing office.’ 

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Until the 1980s, many art colleges in England had a letterpress workshop, principally as an aid to the teaching of typography. These facilities had been originally established for the benefit of print apprentices attending college on ‘day-release’ from their company premises. When these schemes began to fail during the 1960s, the type and printing presses were often inherited by the art school, which retained a member of the printing staff ostensibly to help in the teaching of typography in conjunction with print technology. However, print-trade allegiances ensured that the printing lecturer maintained a discernible space between his teaching duties and the creative aspiration cultivated by the design lecturers. Despite having been retained by the art school, adherence to the doctrines of the printer’s own creed rarely wavered. 

In the context of an art school, the print lecturer offered an eccentric learning experience; a down-to-earth, rational, often brusque attitude, with little patience for solutions that did not take account of the practical limitations of the printer’s tools and machinery. His attitude was, ‘if you want to use this equipment then use it correctly and with respect, otherwise leave it alone’. Design lecturers, on the other hand, enthused about testing the limitations of this same equipment and, by default, the printer’s knowledge and craft skills. The pained look of disdain shown by the printer at such ‘childishness’ discouraged many students (though not quite all) from exploring letterpress and so missed the opportunity to appreciate the practical and cultural value of those crafts associated with printing. Worst of all, such ideological differences gave credence to the notion that designing for print was a process quite separate from printing itself. Worst of all, a lack of respect on both sides for the other’s intent was established. 

The prestige of the commercial printer fell away at the precise time print media itself was at its most influential as a mass communicative, cultural, aesthetic, as well as commercial medium. It was the designer of print who was triumphant and Pop Art, Fluxus, the rise of zines, fanzines and ‘alternative’ or ‘underground’ newspapers all celebrated the creative opportunities, mass-accessibility and the broad, cultural appeal of print. Meanwhile, the activity of the trade printer, no longer responsible for the appearance of what was being produced, was reduced to that of a ‘copy-shop’ and his presence eliminated from the material he printed. Pop Artists appropriated print but were not interested in the craft of its making, nor for that matter, the preoccupations of those who were now designing print, other than to ‘ironically’ regurgitate their more mundane image-making. Fluxus used print to record and disseminate its events and performances, printed cheaply, often badly, and designed with self-conscious Dadaist impropriety. The underground press, a vast network of loosely affiliated, radical tabloid newspapers, was quite different and, arguably, more significant in its cultural impact. The rude energy, homespun design, and crude printing proved alluring, if short-lived. 

The successes of these cultural movements encouraged a lack of craft to become the new benchmark and a catalyst for a perverted ‘positivity’ now heralded as ‘cool’. Without craft, so the argument went, expression was unencumbered by practical considerations related to durability. ‘Here and now’ was the sole concern. What is more, without durability documents were more ‘democratic’ because the materials from which they were made and the processes utilised in their production were inexpensive. A document made from elemental materials such as copy paper and staples, and duplicated on a mimeograph machine or photocopier, need only cost pennies to make. This fact alone became sufficient reason for high praise. 

In 1976, Printed Matter, a non-profit organisation, was founded in New York, ‘dedicated to the dissemination, understanding, and appreciation of artists’ books and related publications.’ Printed Matter’s initial purpose was to act as a publisher but when this failed their focus shifted to distribution and in so doing transferred the financial risk to the artist. Or, as Lucy Lippard, art critic, curator, and one of the organisation’s founders explained; ‘Publishing was too expensive and distribution seemed far more democratic.’ By this time Edward Ruscha’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962) a photographic survey of commonplace commercial architecture, was being heralded as the first artist’s book and a beacon of ironic cool; ‘ironic’ because the subject matter was banal and ‘cool’ because an unexceptional, standard, ‘commercial’ printed outcome had been sought. As Ruscha (ironically) explained, ‘My books end up in the trash.’ 

Ruscha’s notion of the book became the prototype for Printed Matter, turning the absence of craft into an ideological imperative. Lippard also leaned heavily on Ruscha’s stance, ‘My own definition of an artist’s book was quite strict: mass-produced, relatively cheap, accessible to a broad public, all art and no commentary or preface or anything that wasn’t part of the artwork by anyone.’ Owing nothing to the past or the skills previously required, the concept of the artist’s book was ‘liberated’ by allotting it the rank of printed detritus. This is vividly demonstrated by the photograph on the home page (August 2019) of the Printed Matter website which shows a pile of thin stapled books, carelessly scattered to approximate litter on the pavement. 

Next to the 'litter' is Printed Matter’s description of the book: ‘The book is a medium that allows an artist’s work to be accessible to a multitude of people in different locations at any given time. The more copies produced the more widely the work can be distributed; it is this potential to reach a larger audience that lends the book its social qualities and increases its political possibilities.’ The controls being applied here undermine the creative integrity of the maker. Printed Matter’s concept of the artists’ book turns purpose and motivation into a political rather than creative opportunity: ‘The simplicity of a book that is small in scale, costs relatively little to produce, and is easily replicable allows the work to flow outside of mainstream channels and reach an audience without institutional or commercial consent.’ That is if it obtains Printed Matter’s own ‘institutional or commercial consent.’1 

The successes of Printed Matter (it now holds book fairs in New York and Los Angeles) have had a profound influence on the way artists’ books are perceived, so much so that for many, artists’ books are synonymous with cheapness. (Until recently, the Tate Gallery purchasing policy regarding artist’s books was that books must be £60 or less.) For some artists, low cost will have been wholly intentional and appropriate – having embraced the elemental desk-top, or high-volume commercial print processes and the cheapest papers in order to create an impactful (though, perhaps, no less profound) statement. But for others, the limitations imposed by Printed Matter: that a book must be an ‘open’ edition (meaning it is capable of being mechanically reproduced to order, without further intervention by the artist) is a severe impediment. 

When an artist reaches the point where materials need to be less customary, when type must be more precise, colour more intense, and when it is important for a page to feel and move in a particular way, a closer affinity with the practices that make materials function is required: craft. It is creatively wretched and intellectually stunting to separate art and craft, but Printed Matter is determined to do so. 

The ideological intent behind low-cost, easily extendible ‘editions’ is that art should become ubiquitous; bought with no more ceremony than a loaf of bread. As Lippard wrote in 1977; ‘One day I’d like to see artists’ books ensconced in supermarkets, drugstores and airports.’2 However, the reality of competing with the cultural wasteland of the supermarket aisle is that what began as an imaginative concept can slip into imitation, causing the faltering artist to sacrifice the same moral values that made him or her choose to be an artist in the first place. In the maelstrom that is Printed Matter’s annual book fair in New York, artist’s have learned that it is helpful to have badges, tote bags, paper hats and dumb, badly-printed-on-purpose aphorisms, the equivalent of ‘home sweet home’ on their table in an attempt to catch the eye of the ambivalent passer-by. I doubt this was the ‘democratic’ vision imagined by Lippard in the 1970s, and by 1985 she readily admitted that, ‘Some [books] are one-liners, and once you’ve got the punch-line you have no urge to take it home and get punched out daily.’3 Welcome to the supermarket aisle. 

However, Printed Matter’s depiction of books on their website clearly has resonance; the organisation currently (2021) claims to hold 45,000 titles. Digital technology has been integral to Printed Matter’s success as an international distributor by enabling every artist’s book, – or the cover at least – to be displayed on their website. In contrast, their current brick-and-mortar store on 11th Avenue is cramped, despite most of the books it stocks being too slim to have a spine. This means that each must be pulled off a packed shelf to reveal any information at all and is then all but impossible to put back without causing damage. Taking these practical issues into account, plus the fact that the book’s physical structure, including choice of paper, is generally of no consequence, buying such books via an image on a computer screen is an appropriate, though perfunctory, process. 

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At the same time that artists were emerging amid the tumult and excitement of a proliferating print culture in the early 1960s, a new wave of writers were also experimenting with the new, cheap and accessible means of print reproduction. Writers were creating autonomous printed material to circumnavigate the commercial printer and a trenchant publishing industry; much the same reason artists were looking to print as an alternative to the gallery system. The process of editing and assembling material for print caused some to recognise the potential of the document itself as a stage that could contribute to the wordplay. For example, Bill Bissett’s Blewointment Press, in Vancouver (1962–1983) and d. a. Levi’s Renegade Press, Cleveland, Ohio (1963–1968) both utilised a mix of typewriter, mimeograph, and letterpress processes and incorporated pages from newspapers, clip art, and cuttings from type catalogues. The crude physical state of these documents, created by hand and in very small editions came to be admired for their own sake, their distinct hand-made appearance described as a potent symbol of resourcefulness and a rebellious spirit.4 

Other writers had finer aspirations. The eminent poet and independent magazine publisher George Hitchcock, self-anointed maverick editor, designer, and printer of kayak (1964–1984) explained: ‘I am inclined to think the chief prerequisite for any editor is to learn to print. Of course, one does not have to approach printing with the zeal of a William Morris at Kelmscott [but] I am with Morris and Blake in prizing the written word that you have designed and made with your own hands over and above the product of alienated labor. [As for kayak] it is in its design and production – always with the freely given help of a sodality or brotherhood of poets – that the joy of the thing lies.’ The magazine’s idiosyncratic appearance was a major feature. By cutting up engravings from various nineteenth-century print sources and arranging them in proximity to the poems or assembling them into collages, Hitchcock was able to interact with, and comment on, the texts he had chosen. The rough-hewn collage technique reflected kayak’s rich cultural mélange. The warmth of Hitchcock’s words – ‘the joy of the thing’ – echo a common reaction by those who have cause to set and print their own words with their own hands. 

The sweet pleasure of causing words to appear freshly printed and still glistening on pristine paper, led many to want more. That it was writers before artists, words before images, that would restore the status of the ‘printer’ as an agent of his own cultural destiny should not be a surprise. The history of the book is rife with scholars, poets and authors who drove print toward the extraordinary with the result that some of the most visually astonishing books ever made have, in fact, been created by writers. 

In 1979, an exhibition of books was held at the Memorial Union Art Gallery at the University of California, Davis. Titled Five Fine Printers: Jack Stauffacher, Adrian Wilson, Richard Bigus, Andrew Hoyem, William Everson, all the exhibitors were writers, scholars, typographers, and fine printers. Significantly, all were also comfortable flaunting fidelity for what Sandra Kirshenbaum described in the accompanying catalogue as ‘the heritage of the book [and] the signs and symbols refined and distilled over centuries to conform so perfectly to the cognitive faculties of humankind.’ A heritage generally denied honour, relevance, or value by a conceited art industry was here gaining cultural signification, purpose, and desirability; qualities with which the writer as printer, or indeed anyone seeking to print ‘typographic books’, might feel a kinship. 

The initial intention of a novice writer-printer is not, necessarily, to become a fine printer, and certainly not an artist, but ‘merely’ a published writer. However, seeing books such as those in Five Fine Printers on public display, and in an art gallery, changed perceptions. These books were objects of substance. Complex in their making, yet every mark, letter, and stitch was carefully judged, a process of time and collaboration but with a distinction that strained at their ‘fine print’ designation. A book printed by its author/editor/artist had become far more than a rigorous practical undertaking; it also raised a multitude of questions about intent, identity, ambition, and purpose. The act of making words visible on a page was no longer an innocent activity. 

When Kirshenbaum proposed the term ‘printer’ be used to describe the maker of innovative books it was an audacious statement. It was also elegantly simply and indisputably appropriate. A ‘printer’s book’ she explained, is a book in which ‘the creative impetus [which] originates and flows not from the artist/illustrator, nor from the author/publisher, but from the printer, the person who actually makes the book.’ The printer as the maker of extraordinary objects had returned. 

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The assumption of infallibility exuded by the print lecturer some fifty years ago at my art college in the UK was intriguing and his air of ‘no surrender’ laudable, although no one understood what it was he was defending or why it was us – naive eighteen-year-old art students – who appeared to be the enemy. Thinking back, it is disappointing to realise he could never have appreciated, let alone conceived, of a book such as Stauffacher’s Plato’s Phaedrus (1978), or Everson’s Granite and Cypress (1975). Nevertheless, I enjoyed testing his stoicism – he was, after all, the sole arbiter of information I sorely needed – and yes, he handled type as if a precious heirloom. 

On the other side of the world, ideologically as well as geographically, Kirshenbaum’s printer was (and is) a writer, artist, philosopher – perhaps all three – who uses typographic and printing craft to his or her own aberrant ends. A printer, beginning a new project’s journey in which the outcome – to be discovered through experiment, mistakes, and eureka moments – has craft not at the service of art but playing an integral and utterly inseparable role. Such a visionary could just as easily be called an artist, and many, no doubt, would consider it a compliment if they were. But Kirshenbaum’s ‘printer’ (unlike Beatrice Warde’s) ensures that critical discussion remained focused on the nature and integrity of typography and print as well as a maker who demands that intellectual and creative processes ‘ask irreverent questions about the look of print.’ 

The apotheosis of Kirshenbaum’s reconstruct was the establishment of the Codex Foundation in 2006 by Peter Koch and his Meisterstück, a retrospective exhibition, Peter Koch: Printer, held at the Grolier Club, New York in 2019. Koch was a writer long before he was a printer, but emboldened by Hitchcock’s kayak; ‘poorly printed but filled with intellectually challenging poetry [...] I found it vital and exciting and weird and wonderful’ led Koch to set up Montana Gothic, a journal of poetry and literature – and Surrealist ‘Hitchcockesk’ collages (1974 – 1977). Hitchcock had stopped short of approaching printing with ‘the zeal of a William Morris’ but Koch took this task more seriously – serious enough to move to San Francisco and seek out the cultural opportunities of a cosmopolitan center that had an established and compelling fraternity of fine printers. Some of these were already pushing at the boundaries Kirshenbaum was suggesting could, and should, be breached.

 The aim of Codex was, and remains, to provide a platform for what Koch describes as ‘high craft–high concept’ – the highest levels of exactitude sought in the pursuit of a creative accord – in other words, breaching the cultural barricade between fine printer and book artist. Choosing to describe himself as ‘printer’ rather than, for example, ‘fine printer’ or ‘book artist’, both of which arguably hold cultural precedence over the more prosaic current status of ‘printer’, was not faux modesty on Koch’s part. ‘Fine printer’ and ‘book artist’ are self-assigned attributes signifying technical or creative prowess, both of which were abundant in the Koch exhibition. However, the preference for ‘printer’, coarse, uncomplicated yet comprehensive, leaves the work free of persuasion and the viewer unencumbered by the prejudice of nomenclature. 

The printer is, once more, a maker of extraordinary objects. No one could argue with the visitor who describes what they saw in the Koch retrospective exhibition as ‘art’, but to describe it as the work of a printer is no less potent and, to my mind, a far higher accolade. With creative control back in the hands of the printer, the craft practices by which books are made are not just repeated but reinvented. For as long as this continues the distinction and influence of the printer is assured.