THE OLD SCHOOL PRESS

Moments in the making of The Colours of Rome.

Click on the image to move on to the next.

Spring is supposed to be here

But it's the coldest spring on record. I have to have several heaters running to make the temperature acceptable.

In this sequence of pages I'll concentrate on some of the detail of getting ready to print a book, in this case The Colours of Rome.

I had previously made a decision about the approximate size, proportion, and shape of the book – large, small, portrait, landscape, square – a decision that has to be made at about the same time as the choice of paper: one can have all sorts of fanciful ideas about the shape of the book and only end up wasting most of the sheet because the sheet size and/or grain don’t work. This would be especially expensive given that the plan from the outset has been use a hand-made paper for this book (though grain is less of an issue).