30.10.12

Ouch



The tympan bone isn't connected to the frisket bone. That's a problem. Was (finally getting around to) printing a broadside of one of the poems from Harold Budd's Angel, titled "Autumn Song 1990." It's one of the longer poems, and the intent was to print it on halves of Reg Lissel's folio sheets, so trimmed that would be about 6 by 18 inches. It's the same setting as printed in the book, but arranged in a single column.

 
Makeready didn't go well, in part because the initial (lazy-ass) plan was to arrange the forme within the existing skeleton, which meant the roller would pass parallel to the type, rather than perpendicular as it should. (For explanation, see Rummonds.) That clearly wasn't going to work, so a quick re-jig to insert new bearers for (proper) perpendicular inking was undertaken, and all of the accompanying re-jig of packing. Better, but still not great. Two pulls of that and there was a scraping upon the platen when the bed was rolled in, that shouldna' been there. Splits goes one of the hinges holding the frisket to the tympan.

Said hinge was dummied up about 12 years ago by someone doing their best, but with no concept of what a typman is or how things worked. Long story short, too much solder was used to attach the (newly fabricated) frisket to the (old) tympan; grinding ensued, and over the past dozen years, what solder remained has finally given up the ghost. All work has, therefore, come to a complete stop, and having, for once, an excuse for this state of affairs, we are inclined to see how long this can be played out. 

Meanwhiles, we have finished the jackets for Angel. Our plan to do paste papers didn't do justice to Harold's arabesques, so we instead used the same c.1960s hand-marbled papers used for the slipcases as jackets, and covered those in a kozo sheet upon which the book's title was printed.