Letterpress Printing Projects: A Tiny Almanac

 AAPA Member Dave Tribby tackles a fine project each year: a bound volume that he titles "Ink Cahoots", made up of diverse submissions by any club member who wants to take part. All he asks is that it be properly weighted - he will even handle the trimming.

He's been doing this since 1973 - this is the 40th year for it!  I've been planning to send something for the 6 years that I have been a member, but never did until this year.

As my submission for Ink Cahoots, I set an Almanac for 2014, with a calendar, and a list of meteor showers and other celestial events. It is something I have wanted to try for a while. After all, Almanacs were a staple for printers all through history. When Gutenberg invented moveable type, he printed an almanac first, in 1457. The Holy Bible was Gutenberg's first lasting publication, but he had to make a living whilst working on setting and printing the Bible. Thus he set an example for printers everywhere from then on - one quick, non-political way to make a profit was to publish an almanac!

 It was surprising how challenging it was to set. I have tiny calendar blocks for the months, so that section was easy enough. But I used 12 point type for the remainder, and the typeface I chose didn't have enough numbers to handle all those dates of full moons and such. This meant I had to borrow from similar sized "neighbors" (ie other typefaces).  I should have just used my Kennerly 10 point (Kennerly is also a Goudy face), because there is lots of it. But I didn't think that far ahead.  Lesson learned.

So now I have a goofy batch of numerals in my otherwise lovely and pristine Goudy "Californian" from M&H Typefoundry. Someday I am sure I will get around to moving the Kennerly threes and Caslon ones back into their proper places. 

I am happy with the way the finished page turned out. I'm glad not to have to set an entire almanac by hand but this kind of dense work is good for my typesetting skills. Most of the time I just set cards or labels or mottos - minimal ephemera with larger type. Using these small point sizes is like learning touch typing - it forces me to remember the lay of the case instead of noticing each letter.

This is especially helpful when I go to "distribute" the type after the work is done. To "distribute" is to take the forme apart and put the type all away, each letter in its proper little cubby again. That is one of those jobs, like cleaning the kitchen, that is best done immediately.

Because type in a forme, just like dirty dishes, will outwait you every time.



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Historic Jefferson, Texas

Pat at And So It Goes In Shreveport is having fun this summer blogging their day trips and outings. Her most recent is about the Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport - on my list if we ever get to actually stop while passing through the town! We passed through - going and coming - this past week on our way to South Carolina - I took a picture! I told Paul I am going to blog about the places we saw the signs for. Heh.

Anyway, last week Pat walked the reader up and down the picturesque streets of Jefferson Texas. We went to Jefferson a couple of years ago, rounding off a visit to Marshall to go to the Friends of the Library sale. That was the sale where I bought a copy of Alexander McCall's "Tears of the Giraffe" and was introduced to Precious Ramotswe and her neighbors in Botswanna. I enjoyed the book so much I immediately went and bought all the rest of the series. They are simply wonderful: inspiring books that can remind how one person just being her best self can make life a little easier. Funny that sometimes the nicest memories come from small events in out of the way places.

Jefferson is a lovely little town, and we had a good time wandering its streets, shopping its many antique stores, and enjoying good food. I think you will too. Go over and check out Pat's post, then see if you can't work a short trip into your summer schedule.

Working Women In Earlier America: Not So Uncommon After All

In collecting vintage books, paper and photos, it's especially interesting how frequently we find women in the workplace in earlier times. Traditional life always included working women, and they and their occupations and businesses were commonly profiled in magazines and textbooks long ago.


Of course mothers were needed at home in eras when most clothes were home-sewn and most food was home-grown and home-preserved, and when there was so much work around the homeplace that even lower-income people hired helpers. But there were also those who worked for pay, at whatever jobs they were interested in doing, despite what we may have heard. According to the USDA, a full quarter of all American women held jobs outside their homes in 1910! (A similar statistic was reported for 1900 by PBS, although manipulated to highlight only "married women", and including a data point that was not tracked until 1950.)


The first woman Postmaster in the USA was appointed in 1775, and she wasn't alone. Women weren't just telephone operators - before that they were telegraph operators, and paid as well as their male counterparts. Women didn't just collect eggs to sell, they bred poultry and turkeys to create commercially better birds, and operated the leading mail-order poultry businesses of the day.


Women in every town worked in retail businesses, manufacturing, newspapers, restaurants, groceries, department stores, banks, book stores, laundries, farms, milneries, print shops, beauty salons, accountants... I wonder if we looked at statistics from 1900, if we wouldn't find that most businesses in most towns employed women, and at a ratio of women workers to women in management very similar to what we see today.



I think the reality was that most working women then worked for the same reasons and made their choice of job in the same ways we do. Some women sought careers, and some of those sought advancement in their careers, while others were happier with the balance of a job they could leave behind at the end of the day and put their main energy into personal and family life.

Isn't that true of women today?

Come to think of it, isn't that true of men as well?

So: why are we taught in the media that women "weren't allowed" to work before WWII, or that they couldn't be anything other than nurses and teachers? Why do we continue to hear claims of "glass ceilings"? Looking at original source material - whether from earlier or from recent history shows a very different reality.




Photos, in order from top to bottom:

From a 1906 edition of Muncey's Magazine, the caption on this photo reads "Mrs Rebecca Lukens, of Coatesville Pennsylvania, the first American ironworker to roll boiler plates successfully." The article further reads "Mrs Lukens was far more than a mere owner. She weas an inventive, practical woman, who drove the business toward success in the face of tremendous difficulties. Her boiler-plates became so famous that George Stephenson used them in the building of his first locomotives." Rebecca Lukens was born in 1794.

Claudia Staggs, in the Coggin National Bank, Brownwood, TX.

Katherine Stinson Otero (born 1893 or 1891), got her pilot's license in 1912, the 4th woman to do so, and became the first woman to carry airmail. During WWI, she drove an ambulance for the Red Cross in France and trained Canadian fighter pilots, later working as a draftsman for the US Navy.

A group of women picking fruit, circa 1910.

Maria Edgeworth (born 1767), Irish Novelist first published in 1795 who wrote and published prolifically thereafter until her death in 1849. The book I have is part of an 18 volume set of her works published in London in 1833.


UPDATE Jan. 15, 2011: Here are two recent posts on this topic that may be of interest:

Part 1 - 18th Century Equal Opportunity & Success: Some Women Printers in Colonial America

Part 2: 18th Century Business Women: Limited Only By 20th Century Interpretation

Victorian Bible Verse Cards "You Are My Friends"

These lovely calling cards with bible verses were popular during the Victorian era up through the Edwardian. This one probably dates from the turn of the last century, 1900 or so. It pictures a little girl dressed in pink among pink roses. Roses meant "Beauty" in the language of flowers, and they still do today, don't you think?

The verse on the card is the words of our Lord from John 15: 14 (King James Version)

"12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

" 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

" 14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. "

What a beautiful day this Sunday is.