To differentiate between words, readers had to sound them out no one read silently. In the Middle Ages, the Bible was only reproduced in its original Latin scriptura continua, meaning there were no spaces between the words. Today, people associate reading with solitude and quiet, but this wasn’t always the case. It is never seen, but without it, everything printed would be nonsense. It just holds printable type together in a tight grid, creating spaces between words. The en space isn’t type-high-it doesn’t sit proud like an ordinary character-so it doesn’t catch ink when it’s run through the press. An en space is a rectangular piece of metal or wood whose primary purpose is to be smaller than the metal or wood type being printed. When typesetting, a printer has to think about negative space as something tangible. Every space between words, every space between lines-every bit of white space is an object.
Not only is every letter an object, but every space between every letter is also an object. To understand letterpress printing, imagine that every letter you see on your screen is an object, a tiny piece of metal. But in truth, the actual printing portion takes less than half the time. When people think of printmaking, most imagine the printing press itself-someone running paper through a large machine, turning out sheets of words or colorful posters. I sorted metal and wood type into words, composed pages, and ran them through countless presses. I silk-screened, marbled, and block-printed paper. I bound pages together and stitched intricate leather shells for them. I made paper by hand from recycled cotton tee shirts.
LETTERPRESS CALENDAR 2016 HOW TO
In the years after college, I learned how to make a book traveling from print shop to print shop across the country. I didn’t know it at the time, but these wood blocks are probably centuries old-they were once used to create spaces between words on a letterpress printer. Though they resemble antique children’s toys or minimalist Etsy crafts, they were stolen from a mostly defunct letterpress shop. Four small, wooden blocks hang from a yellow string around my neck.
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