Ace Jet 170

Mountain

I can’t tell you very much about Hans Thoni except that he died in 1980 aged 74 and was a Swiss graphic designer. There are a few of his posters online and some stamps he designed. There’s much more online about Finsteraarhorn, the highest and less popular mountain in the Bernese Alps.

It’s nothing personal, Finsteraarhorn is, I believe, a perfectly respectable Alp, It’s just that it’s hard to get to. And I don’t mean ‘no public transport’ hard to get to, I mean it’s in the middle of flipping nowhere. It’s, what we explorers call, “a very very long way away”.

Of course, I’m an armchair explorer really and would much rather scrutinise the results of a tectonic uplift from the comfort and relative warmth of my living room, with or without Kendal Mint Cake…

Thoni’s economic illustration of Finsteraarhorn is as sparse as a mountaineer’s emergency rations after three days of blizzard-bound isolation. I count three colours and really, not much drawing. But everything is just right. Just as it should be.

I’m a little obsessed by this tiny depiction of a very big thing. 

Floral Tribute

Between the years of 1876 and 1890 Justus Oehler's great-grandmother Agnes Leibbrand made 42 flower pressings which she kept in a decorative envelope box and which, after her death, remained hidden away, as if forgotten in a drawer, waiting to be unearthed by Oehler decades later. In the latest Pentagram Paper (No. 46) all surviving compositions are reproduced at actual size and Oehler tells of discovering the treasure in his grandparent's house.

Agnes carefully labelled each piece with a number, a date and a description of the fauna's origin. Oehler reflects on his great-grandmother's meticulous work and on the 19th century pastime, "…an art whose delicate beauty and emblematic floriography reflected the social and aesthetic sensibilities of the time".

It's a touching collection, made all the more interesting by how Agnes seems to have stopped pressing when she got married…as if, perhaps, the activity represented a time that had come to an end. I don't know, the Paper's text is very brief but Oehler wrote enough to trigger thoughts on the collection's significance.

Over 900 Years Tall

In the May 6 edition of Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s Meanwhile (you do subscribe to Meanwhile don’t you?) he featured Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book. Amongst the details Daniel drew out of that was what Jan said about “Deviant formats” – formats that don’t work. JT mentions formats that are too big, too wide and too heavy. He doesn’t, fortunately, mention too tall.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump back in time].

In the dim and distant and dim past – so long ago, in fact, that no one quite knows when it was – someone or other decided it would be a great idea to put a church on a thirty acre island in the Thames known for its thorny bushes.

By the 10th century (those in the know now know) there’d been a Christian church on Thorny for quite some time although there’s no trace of it today. When Edward the Confessor ascended to the throne in 1042, Thorney’s status as a sacred place was well established and he saw to it that the construction of a new, more fancy church was begun. This grander building – probably the largest Norman church of its time – was consecrated on Holy Innocents Day 1065. And not a moment too soon! Just a few days later Edward made his last confession and departed for that even grander church in the sky.

The Abbey continued to rise in national importance as Kings were crowned and later buried within its walls. Although Edward is credited for establishing Westminster, it was Henry III who imagined what we can see today – partly because by Henry’s day, those pesky French were knocking up some really fancy cathedrals and we all know that kings are covetous creatures. So in 1245, Edward’s church was respectfully (Henry was one of Edward’s biggest fans) pulled down and construction of Westminster Abbey began in ernest. Not surprisingly, the building work took much longer than the time Henry III had on the planet and a whole bagful of kings and queens came and went, each making all sorts of additions and modifications to the plans, before the job was done.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump forward in time].

In 1965, the 900 year anniversary of that original consecration was celebrated in a year of events and commemorated in a very tall book that I suspect even Tschichold would have approved of. It's mighty tall but just a few pages in and it makes so much sense. Very tall photos of very tall things give way to very tall text columns and then more very tall photos of more very tall things. When tallness doesn't cut it, the designers (Roger and Robert Nicholson, London) turned to a 90° turn for a wonderfully long and shallow vista instead.

The book should have a fancy and rather audacious dust jacket but my low cost copy had already lost it's coat of many colour. No matter – the modest hard cover with that beautifully positioned and thrifty sans type will do nicely for me.

There's a few copies on eBay I notice and they don't all cost that much. Watch out though, there's a low cost paperback version but the overall design is lovely so even one of those would be good.

Getting under your feet

The latest (and over-sized) Pentagram Paper is a celebration of the ignored; ever-present but invisible to many, the ubiquitous maintenance cover is a hatch to a world below our feet that our feet will never explore. The paper is a collection of reproduced rubbings taken from street covers found around London. It was designed by Marina Willer and printed in dayglo inks. You can read more about it here.

The Penrose Annual 1976 Volume 69

For most of my Penrose Annual collecting career, to date, I've concentrated on the 60s. But I've come to realise the following decade has lots to offer. As phototypesetting took hold, memories of letterpress-as-standard still prevailed and also the 70s witnessed some amazing designers at work in various graphic arts.

Paul Piech had began to publish from his private press in 1959, his wood and linocuts full of purpose and protest. Follow that link, from his name, and you'll see what I mean. For this edition of Penrose, he cut motifs to illustrate an article on Caxton as well as being the focus of a piece by Kenneth Hardacre.

Tom Eckersley was in his sixties by now but his poster work was still breaking ground. There's plenty of supporting evidence in this edition to prove that.

A superb piece on the Kelmscott Chaucer gives background on the original and goes on to describe the production of a facsimile copy of the Morris/Burne-Jones masterpiece. I'm going to do a separate post about that.

David Gentleman's here, thanks to Mel Calman who wrote the article which is illustrated with finished work alongside examples of Gentleman's design developments.

As is standard with Penrose, there's a ton of other stuff including an article on the reproduction of old maps and graphic design from Canada – and then the usual technical developments of the day.

I've uploaded more highlights to Flickr.

Houston, we have a problem…

They said it couldn’t be done. They said, it was impossible. They said that 'The Thing' could not ‘travel’ to 'The Place'; that it could not happen. It was impossible.

Even now, some claim that it did not happen. They claim that it could not have happened. But let me tell you, with complete certainty, that it did happen. I know. I was there. I saw it.

Yes…the postman really did post a commemorative 45” single from 1969 through our letterbox. A letterbox, notably, not big enough for this vintage News of the World give-away. A letterbox that measures less than the requisite 7” across, at its widest point.

So how did he do it? I here you ask. HTF? (As the younger generation might abbreviate). How was it possible to bend the laws of physics, to pervert known science – to make something so big, fit through something so not big? How?

By bending it. By fecking bending it.

 

But this was no flexidisc, oh no. This disc did not flex. Or bend. It did not bend and it did not flex. It did not fold and it did not contort. It did, what it had to do. All that it could do.

It fecking broke.

We can send a man to the moon. We can record the account of that journey and we can press that account into a disc of plastic to be played back using a turny thing and a needle. We can package that disc of plastic inside a printed account of the remarkable happenings of that time. We can slip both disc and leaflet into a printed space map depicting the journey made all those years ago. And we can stick all that stuff into a specially manufactured glossy card sleeve with a moon boot on the front.

But we can’t post all that shit through a hole smaller than it without something happening that is not supposed to happen. It's a scientific fact.

[Report Ends]

About a Buoy

For the last lots of months I’ve been immersed in the wild and wind-sweaped world of the Irish lighthouse. It’s been a challenging project, to say the least, and has involved many varied interesting things and not much time.

During the research period, I got my hands of a copy of Brown’s Signal Reminder – essential seafaring documentation. Now I can semaphore, code like a Morse, run alphabetical flags up my rigging whenever I feel like it and, crucially, harmonize my system of buoyage.

Cross

In Umbria €3, after a little accidental haggling, gets you a Nurse/Nun's vintage Red Cross ID card at the local flee-sized flee market that you accidentally pass on your way to buy your hungry family breakfast. Printed interestingness aside, the photo adds a whole other dimension to the ephemeric provocation: Who was this Nun/Nurse/Nurse-Nun? I don't know. But I do know my family is hungry so I'd better get a move on before they twig I'm taking too long.

Colosseo

This time last week it was the day after we'd caught the train from Trevi, in Umbria, to Rome. The 6:42 to be precise. It's no small thing, getting up so early when you're on holiday and generally haven't awoken from your vocational slumber until after eight but we did it and by that precise time we were settling into a poorly air-conditioned carriage. I'd packed books for everyone and breakfast that no one liked so we were sorted for the two hour, nine minute journey.

Upon our arrival we wisely decided to flout all advice and ignored the tourist buses, there to carry you around the ancient city in comfort whilst on the streets the extreme heat cruelly beat down on the over-heated pedestrians, in favour of being pedestrians.

The advantage of our strategy was that we got to see things you don't get to see from the bus; the back street stuff which in a city like Rome is not your run-of-the-mill back street stuff. We also got very sore feet.

For our first destination, after arriving at Roma Termini, we high-tailed it over to The Coliseum (or is it Colosseum?), Rome's most obvious and top old spot. I assume that most people that have been to Rome have been to The Coliseum. I've been in the city before but that time didn't get off my hire-scooter. The Coliseum is old. OLD. And big. There's lots of old stuff around nowadays, and there's older stuff than The Coliseum that you can go see, but maybe not that many things that are both as old and as big.

Before, during and after our visit I read up, which really helped. And I was struck, as we strolled through the ancient archways and that, by how this thing had survived nearly two thousand years. It's heyday was quite short-lived really. Conceived about half way through the first century AD and developed over a number of decade, by sometime around 523 AD, the great amphitheatre was no longer the stage for death and glory it was originally conceived for. Largely because Rome had become Christian and battling savage beasts was just not very…well…Christian.

After that the building was repurposed and pilfered – at times looking more like a building site or quarry. Materials were removed to be used for other constructions and artefacts were snatched.

But somehow The Coliseum prevailed so we can explore it's millennia-old corners and crevices today. 

We were quite fortunate in that we found ourselves at one point standing next to another tourist who had either done some serious homework or was an academic of such matters and we followed him, stalked him really, listening in to his insightful descriptions of the bloody and/or theatrical spectacles performed when The Coliseum was in its prime. Yes, there were all those gladiatorial shenanigans going on but the space was also used to present more narrative-based performances, with elaborate sets, such as mock hunts with exotic beasts shipped in as unfortunate and unwitting prey. Or so our unknowing teacher informed us, as we shadowed him.

I've thought about The Coliseum a lot since last week. We walked down corridors that were there nearly two thousand years ago – that's practically biblical. I've had similar feelings in the less developed corners of Greek islands, where time feels like it's stood still, but The Coliseum is different because it's an intricately and intelligently designed space in the heart of a sprawling metropolis.

I bought this book in the gift shop. It's really nice. Spaciously designed with just enough content for the novice to consume and enjoy. Just €10.

National Library of Ireland

We're just about to start work on a project for the NLI. In preparation for this I dived head first, into their digitised archive – their online catalogue – of print material. They have loads of stuff archived and much more still to do. It was hard not to get distracted. So I did…get distracted I mean.