Letter Craft
THESE two excellently produced and serviceable books are devoted to the craft and history of letter making—Mr. Stanley Morison's to printing types, Mr. Graily Hewitt's to formal calligrAphy.. The Fleuron, No. VII, is the Iasi of a series which is an invaluable contribution to the technique and scholarship of printing, of which the first four numbers were edited by Mr. Oliver Simon and produced at the Curwen Press, and the last three edited by Mr. Stanley Morison and produced at the Cambridge University Press. It is no discredit to the younger editor—who moreover has the credit of the initiative —that the three later volumes are more fully packed with sound scholarship and beautiful examples of fine printing. Ventures of this kind undertaken in a selfless, spirit of service to a craft and to an ideal hive a way of growing under the hand. In the present and final issue the editor, ruthlessly sifting wheat from chaff, sums up the doctrine taf the principles of sane and seemly typography distilled from the debated theories and the significant practice of these past thirty fruitful years.
M. Paul Beaujon sets forth with illuminating illustrations the credentials of Mr. Erie Gill to be past-maiter of letter making —as a carver, a wood engraver, and a designer of printing types. The beautiful Perpetua type recently cut by the Monotype Corporation is specially distinguished by the fact that while it is in harmony with the best tradition it is not, as are most acceptable fine types of the day, a mere transcript of an actual classic model of an earlier day. It is, we may say, a sculptor's letter intelligently -translated into terms of printing type. Another fine new-old type here illustrated and reviewed is the Bembo (also cut by the Monotype Corporation). The Fleuron keeps the international character which it has assumed under Mr. Morison's -direction and the distinguished Dutch type-designer Krimpen. The itetsatil6 craftsMaP Rudolf KoCh, -Vert Friedrich EWald WI-16/1g of Dr.
Mardersteig's work at- the Officina Bodoni, and Mr. D. B. Updike all contribute valuable papers.
Mr, Graily Hewitt,. pupil and friendly rival of Mr. Edward Johnston, makes his grave, well-argued plea for good hand- writing as a part of good manners, and protests against the cult of mere speed with its disastrous results. " We do not teach a child to read and then estimate the goodness of his reading by the pace at which he can gabble." May we not add that as we relieve ourselves of so much labour by the use of the (execrated)- typewriter we might spare a little time to make the comparatively rare examples of our handwriting a little more seemly, less ill-mannered ? Do not intelligent secre- taries take the precaution of typing the names of their chiefs under their quite illegible signatures ? Is this well ?
Mr. Hewitt sings with enthusiasm his praise of the edged pen with which the scriptors of the Dark, Middle and Renais- sance Ages did their magnificent work of saving the world's literature. Perhaps his enthusiasm carries him just a shade beyond the truth when he (while admitting) a little minimizes the share which the Roman chisel had in determining the forms of our majuscules or capital letters. Happily for us printing came to the world at a period of fine calligraphy, and as the first printers were, consciously or unconsciously, offering a colourable imitation of the written book at a " cut " price, slavish imitation of existing forms was an essential of their technique. But quite soon the tools of the engraver inevitably and very properly modified in slight but definite details the forms of the cast letter. What kept the forms substantially the same was, of course, not so much idolatrous worship of the pen but respect for the code—a letter changed in form is a letter illegible and distracting. But no one will wish to quarrel with so honourable an enthusiast or so distinguished a craftsman. Let the writer, an old pupil of this excellent master, testify that he acquired at least a tolerable hand, no longer needing to blush over his illegible base scrawls. Let him testify also to the fascination of play with the edged pen, to the almost miraculous way in which the pen, disciplined and controlled according to the master's formula, makes beautiful shapes, as it were, of itself. And let him commend this book to all who may have still some sense of shame
The publishers, with great courtesy, have sent us the de luxe edition of this treatise and manual printed on hand- made paper. Is it then discourteous to point out that the setting of the small type panel of the small paper edition in a larger page with too ample margins does not make an edition- de-lure in any significant sense ? There should be a definite relation between the size of the panel and the size of the margins. Too wide margins, especially of dead white paper, are optically distracting. Collectors will buy this signed edition for their own obscure ends ; craftsmen the other.
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