Test your Knowledge of the History of Printing I
This is the second blog of the series of curated articles that were first published by Print Week as part of its Prints Past series, which ran for ten years from 2011. In this blog, we are going to take a look at some of the phrases, customs, practices, and tasks that are obscured today, but occupied important places in the printing industry. Do you know any of them?
Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos, Hesiquio Iriarte, Lithograph, Mexico City: M. Murguia y Cía., 1854 (credit information)
Printing Terms
Most industries have developed specialised vocabularies, which allow people from within a given trade to talk the same specific language, encouraging mutual understanding. For those on the outside, specialist vocabularies can be both exclusive and baffling.
The printing industry is no different to any other business. Over the centuries it has built up its own language to describe experiences, needs, techniques, people and equipment. However, language is continually evolving, and printers today would understand few words of the past.
How many twenty-first century text originators would recognise old compositor terms such as ‘coffin’ , ‘cock up’ or ‘hell box’? A ‘coffin’ was a word used to describe a little conical bag, made of paper, in which to store sorts; a ‘cock-up’ was a superior character that did not range at the bottom; and the ‘hell box’ was a receptacle for battered or broken type. The pressmen also had intriguing vocabulary. ‘Beating the fat’ described the process of giving ample ink to the rollers, and ‘winter’ wasn’t a season but the connecting part of the cheeks of the hand-press immediately below the carriage. A printed sheet that had a slurred appearance was known as a ‘mackle’ and was probably produced in a ‘cock-robin shop’ where most of the work was of a low standard and the printers were badly paid for their efforts. All this may have made them a ‘button on’ slang term for a workman with a fit of the blues – we all have our button on days!
Trade customs
As an ancient profession, the printing trade has some pretty archaic customs and habits: some serious, others bizarre.
Initiation Ceremony
In the eighteenth century, when a boy was to be bound as an apprentice, it was the practice of the journeymen to put the poor unfortunate through an initiation ceremony before he could be admitted to the ‘Chapellonian’ and call himself a ‘Cuz’. The ceremony involved the journeymen walking three times around the room with their right arms through the lappets of their coats and the boy walking in front carrying a wooden sword. The boy then kneeled and promised the Father of the Chapel that he would be attentive to his work and not divulge the secrets of the journeymen. The promise being exhorted, the Father of the Chapel squeezed a soaked sponge over the boy’s head and gave him a title such as Duke or Earl of some insalubrious place near his home, so the boy became know by a name such as Duke of Rag Fair, or Earl of Pissing Alley. The Father of the Chapel would then explain the advantages to be had as a ‘Cuz’ of the ‘Chapel’. Whilst the boy was still on his knees, all the journeymen, with their right arms still through their lappets, would walk round him singing the Cuz’s anthem which was done by adding all the vowels to the consonants: Ba-ba; Be-be; Bi-bi; Ba-be-bi; Bo-bo; ba-be-bi-bo-bu — and soon on through the rest of the consonants.
Sounds to me like they had all had a jar too many of the printer's ink!
Customs or Excuses for a Drink?
The ancient ceremonies and customs associated with the printing trade in England were primitive and good-humoured compared with those on the Continent. Whilst eighteenth-century European printers indulged in complicated and serious rituals and initiation ceremonies, their English counterpart preferred enjoyable pieces of tomfoolery that were thinly disguised excuses for a drink.
When eighteenth-century English printers first set up business in accommodation that had never been used for printing, the building had to be consecrated by the senior journeyman or Father of the Chapel. The chief focus of the ceremony was: drinking success to the owner; dowsing the walls with beer; singing the ‘Cuz’s’ anthem; and enjoying a supper provided by the owner.
All eighteenth-century journeymen printers were called ‘Chapellonians’ and they were obliged to obey certain laws that had been devised for the good of all printers and for business as a whole. If any printer broke the laws he was subject to a fine, and if he refused to pay, his fellow ‘Chapellonians’ could excommunicate him. An excommunicated Chapellonian was known as a ’Brimstone’, and he could be deprived of his share of the money that had been given to a communal fund by gentlemen, authors, booksellers and others for the purpose of buying drink and to pay for the great annual outing known as the ‘Way-goose Feast’. A Brimstone had no redress for mischief inflicted by his fellow printers, and would eventually pay his penalty plus a discretionary fine to reconcile himself with the workforce.
Printers’ Practices
Printers’ keepsakes
Printing, to the uninitiated, always appears to be a magical process and nearly everyone gets a thrill at seeing their name set in type and reproduced many times over. Printers of the past were well aware of the excitement they could engender in their customers.
In the seventeenth century it was customary in many English printing houses to honour visitors by printing their names and the date in ornamental style by way of a memento. An account of how these souvenirs were printed survives in some burlesque verse written in 1691. The guest was invited to witness the setting of the type. Their name and date were inserted in a framework of flowers and rules, which were kept standing ready for use. The visitor pulled the press, printed their name several times and bore the cost of beer for the workmen.
The practice became more general during the eighteenth century. The keepsake became standardised and profusely ornamented. It usually contained a motto that inaccurately commemorated the origin of printing. Some also gave their version of the introduction of the art to England.
By about 1770, so far as ordinary visitors were concerned, the keepsake was on the decline. In the nineteenth century it was reserved for distinguished persons, and for the most exhaled it was done on silk or satin.
Today few printers would let customers lose on their new KBA or Komori presses. However, clients still like seeing their names in print and pressmen still enjoy a beer.
A page from Fust-Schöffer Bible (credit information).
Early printers’ devices
Long before printers had logos, they had devices and the earliest known device was that of Fust and Schöffer in 1462.
Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printers, like other manufacturers, put a proprietary mark on their goods. The mark was cut on wood or metal and printed on the title page or at the end of a book. It usually comprised a pictorial device, sometimes an ornament and occasionally a motto. A hint of the printers’ identity was usually included such as his name, initials or a personal sign such as the mystifying ‘4’ symbol that was in popular use as a trademark. The devices might contain a pun on the printers’ name or a suggestion to his shop-sign, but the meaning of some of the marks is now lost to history. The use of marks was frequent and some printers had several.
There was variety in shape and size of the devices but many were rectangular and fitted neatly inside a title page border. The early printers' marks were the products of fertile minds and were vigorous, imaginative, ingenious and even bizarre. In Italy, combinations of the orb and cross were popular. In France, variations were rung on the theme of a shield with two supporters, who might be angels, human beings, real or imaginary animals.
From the sixteenth century the marks became more intricate in imitation of the fashion for copper-plate engraving. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the printers’ mark gradually gave way on the title page to engraved vignettes.
Printing Tasks
Typing up a Job
Tying up a page of metal type was no simple operation for the compositor. It required precision, care and lots of practice.
Firstly, the compositor would put a lead at the head and foot of the type-matter. He would then take a length of page cord [a special twine used by printers] and with one hand he would place the end of the cord at the furthest corner of the job, allowing about half an inch of the cord to protrude. With the other hand he would bring the cord around the job and over the protruding piece of cord, continuing to wind it around the job, and tightening the cord firmly at each corner to maintain an even tension. When the job had been tied to within two inches of the end of the cord, the loose end would be pushed in, then drawn up into a loop with the aid of a setting rule.
A good compositor would never tie a knot in the page cord when tying up a job. When the page cord was firmly secured, it would be pushed evenly down to the centre of the type-matter and the job would then be ready for proofing, or for moving on to the imposing surface for locking up.
Manual typesetting is very rare today (credit information).
Emptying a composing stick
Emptying a composing stick was a particularly difficult operation for the novice compositor and few succeeded in their first attempt without upsetting or ‘pieing’ at least a few lines. When compositors were learning their art they would set and distribute just a few lines of type at a time until they became more competent.
Standing at his case, the compositor first secured a galley and placed it on the left-hand side of the lower case. A setting rule was placed in front of the last line of composed matter, with a lead of the same measure behind the first line. The composing stick was then placed in a diagonal fashion on the lower case. With his thumbs at each end at the head of the type-matter, and his index fingers at each end of the last line, the compositor would press the second and third fingers of each hand against the right and left side of the type-matter and grip firmly, bringing the whole forward on to the setting rule, releasing the type matter without hesitation. The type-matter was placed on the galley as close to the head as possible and a piece of metal furniture was put at the foot of the type-matter to prevent the lines falling over.
With a little practice the operation of emptying a composing stick soon became easy.
Casting-off
Casting-off was the act of using figures to solve problems relating to copy, type and materials. It was laborious and the results obtained were only approximate. There were many methods of casting-off by which the printer could ascertain:
Number of lines or pages a given amount of copy would make
The amount of type contained in a given space
The most suitable size of type for use in a predetermined area
Number of pages the copy would make set in different type sizes
Number of words needed to fill a given space
The amount of type or lead needed to produce a piece of work.
There were many problems with casting-off: the biggest was language. Words are made up of different numbers of characters and authors blended mono- and polysyllables so variously that it was difficult to establish an average number of characters per word.
Difficulties also occurred when type departed from the standard width of 13 ems of its own body and when a large size of type was set to a narrow measure, making it hard to maintain the line word-average.
The printer was handicapped by the imponderable nature of the elements with which he had to deal. However, casting-off was used to approximate not define the space copy might make.
We’re grateful for authors of these articles and Dr Caroline Archer at Birmingham City University for the permission to use the articles in this blog.