Proofing

Late last year Mo let me know she had come across somebody with some lead type that they were trying to work out what to do with.  I got in touch and over the course of things, I managed to get my Sydney-based brother to drive over, collect it, and store it, and then my Maleny-based father to drive it home from Sydney to Maleny. Nice work Fiona 😉

It was VERY heavy, and it sat on the floor of the studio for quite a few weeks, whilst I worked out what to do with it; and found the time to sort through it all.

The type looked pristine. and on the way through, I decided that I would try to proof the work, so that at least it had been printed once.

A week or so ago I did just that - only onto some poor old Canson Mi-Teinte that I had in the drawers, but it was about the right size.

As it isn't my work, I won't show you the whole thing here; but I did pop a few of the proofs into the mail and sent them down to Sydney just in case the originator wanted to see how it printed.

It was a fascinating piece of work and I loved looking at it, exploring its meanings...

Because there was still ink on the type; I had to just keep printing on scraps of paper. Can't waste ink!  So here are a few more fragments of the work.

And because the work was large, the paper small and very light, and my hand-rubbing-with-a-baren skills still relatively poor; I got these lovely stutter prints.

One of the most intriguing discoveries as I then spent hours cleaning and dissing the type, was how some pieces of type had been altered to create the letters that were needed, and which must have been missing. Here you can see how 'h' became an 'n' and how 'b' became an 'o' on occasions.  I loved the ingenuity.

And then, hours later, I had put it all away in TWO full drawers.  I went through and checked my books, and it is Monotype's Bodoni Bold Italic 36pt.  And those drawers are full and heavy.

Phew.