|
When I was researching Oxford University Press's 'Fell types' and their revival
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries I made a small representative
collection of books printed in Fell during that period. One of my favourites is
a book printed at OUP in 1933 for the Limited Editions Club, entitled simply Aesop's
Fables, and containing 198 fables. Designed by Bruce Rogers, it was
printed in the Great Primer (~18pt) size of Fell's types on an F J Head handmade
laid paper from Barcham Green. Our new book is a tad more modest, running to a dozen of the fables,
but carefully chosen for their relevance in this time of increasing
authoritarianism and the rise of the despot and the would-be despot.
It gives
us a fine opportunity of bringing together our founts of the elegant Hunt Roman
and a stock of Barcham Green 'Finale' handmade paper. Following Rogers's
example, elements of the text will be printed in red, and we have dropped in the
occasional ornament that Bruce Rogers designed for Lanston Monotype. Our current plan is for
the binding to be quarter faux vellum with a dramatic paste paper on the boards.
A small edition of fifty copies will, we hope, be ready by the end of the year.
More anon.
Work in
progress:
I'm using these splendid braces which I acquired from somewhere way back. It
turns out that they are from Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry of
Chicago. You wonder how they came to be in the UK.
| 
