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More about craft, and me, and the weather

In Uncategorized on 15 July 2009 tagged craft with 1 comment

Here’s something I read the other night after I finally took my sorry, sad-sack self to bed: David Trubridge (interviewed in the most recent issue of Dumbo Feather): …..That’s where I think craft is so important, because imbedded in craft is the model of caring. It’s not producing stuff to sell, to make a profit, […]

Let me tell you all about quartz

In Uncategorized on 13 July 2009 with 2 comments

In my first year of secondary school Science, each student was randomly assigned a rock or mineral as a research project. Others had diamond or emerald or ruby; mine was quartz. Turns out, almost everything is a kind of quartz, and my assignment turned into an encyclopaedia of quartz, with a chapter on each kind […]

I’m dying to rifle through the filing cabinets at Sterling Cooper.

In Uncategorized on 28 June 2009 with 2 comments

They had problems, too

In Uncategorized on 7 May 2009 tagged typography with no comments

Tucked into my copy of The Undergraduate and the Graphic Arts by Ray Nash, graphic arts educator and historian, are two clippings advertising the talk Nash gave for the Heritage of the Graphic Arts series at Gallery 303, The Composing Room, 130 West 46th Street, NYC, on 23 April, 1969.  This series grew out of […]

Before MS Excel

In Uncategorized on 1 May 2009 tagged letterpress with 2 comments

The Universal  Mono-Tabular Broach (US Patent Numbers 2153890-2338940) was, according to promotional copy, “the most versatile an inexpensive rule form system ever devised.” It is “a machine with punches that may be spaced to broach horizontal metal rules so that vertical rules may be inserted to register most all kinds of forms within two minutes […]

I love type specimens

In Uncategorized on 27 April 2009 tagged typography with 4 comments

Words In Their Hands

In Uncategorized on 13 April 2009 tagged craft, letterpress with 3 comments

Every year we set out to produce a book; a supernumerary book, contrived to fill no long-felt need but simply to give pleasure – to ourselves in the making and to our many friends in the reading.  This sentence, so full of generosity, opens the preface to Words In Their Hands, a book privately printed […]

Note left on the notepad beside my studio door, before the notepad was stolen

In Uncategorized on 31 March 2009 tagged random with 5 comments

Another post about the weather

In Uncategorized on 2 February 2009 with 3 comments

I wrote this last Friday: My worms are dead. When I asked my neighbour if his lovely weeping alder is deciduous, he answered: it is now. I checked the newspaper online for a current temperature reading only to see that my friend’s bookshop is on fire (a suspected exploding air conditioner.) It’s the third day […]

Making photogravures in the bush

In Uncategorized on 28 January 2009 with 2 comments

Athletes talk about flow; about being in the zone, losing oneself in the moment, being perfectly in sync with one’s activity. I’m no athlete, that’s for sure, but I spend quite a good deal of time in yoga and meditation hoping for flow, trying to relax into it: sometimes I can, sometimes not. But I […]