Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 13:05:14 -0500, Peter T. Daniels
> <grammatim@...> wrote:
>
> > Type-cutting works as follows.
>
> Peter, thank you, kindly, for explaining the process.
> I assume that the depth of the punch impression is carefully controlled,
> or is the other end of each type slug trimmed to exact type height?

A matrix is very small -- just big enough to mold one piece of type. You
can file the end of the piece of type with a stroke of a file, if
necessary. Imagine how tiny the individual letters of the smallest size
that was made are! (Agate, maybe?) And the punch for every character
hand-cut! And then you have to set the type by plucking each letter from
the case, and adding it in the proper orientation to the growing line!

My most treasured possession is "Johnson's Typologia" (1826), two tiny
(32mo, I think) volumes amounting to more than 1000 pages covering
everything a printer could possibly want to know -- including scores of
pages on exotic (nonroman) types. Libraries list copies of the work in
larger sizes, but I can't imagine that he set the text more than once;
the same formes must have been printed on various sizes of paper. Or my
copy was trimmed especially closely by the binder -- though the other
two copies I've seen at antiquarian shows were the same size. (I took it
to the AOS in Philadelphia this year -- in two jacket pockets -- and
handed out photocopies of the Syriac and Ethiopic sections; 8 pages fit
on one 8.5 x 11 sheet without reduction.)

When I visited the Plantin Museum in Antwerp last year (my visit there
was a lot, lot longer than my visit to the art museum, and I didn't even
bother with the jewelry museum), I picked up a guidebook/souvenir book
with excellent closeup photos of the 16th-century equipment [they paid
part of my honorarium in cash, and I saw no point in carrying euros home
only to convert them to dollars at a loss]. There must be other printing
museums with similar resources (though the reconstruction of Franklin's
workshop in Phila is strictly kid-oriented; the guy running off
Declarations of Independence seemed awfully relieved to have someone to
actually talk about his craft to).

Unfortunately the sheets sold in the gift shop printed on the antique
Plantin equipment don't include any of the exotics, for some of which
the punches are displayed, and some of which type is sitting out in
their cases behind the railings. He, after all, produced the first of
the famous Polyglot Bibles!

> I'm still puzzled by the recesses cut into a copper plate, and how they
> became flat-topped type slugs.

I don't know where a copper plate comes into it? Copperplate engraving
is something else -- literally the engraving of text and images in
copper. (Blake worked in etching, didn't he? a more subtle result,
perhaps, but less demanding than engraving.)

> Just scanning incoming messages; I might have missed other replies.

Weren't any.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...