1printing history news 17Printing History NewsThe Newsletter of the National Printing Heritage Trust,

Printing Historical Society and Friends of St Bride LibraryNumber 17 � Winter 2007

EVENTSPHS Conference and AGM

From hot metal to hot keys. The Print-ing Historical Society will hold its 2008two-day conference in the BridewellHall at St Bride Library, Bride Lane,Fleet Street, London ec4y 8ee on 22and 23 April 2008. Day one will coverthe social, technical and commercialrepercussions of the demise of letter-press and its resurrection as flexogra-phy; the maturing of lithography as amajor process; web offset versus photo-gravure; and ‘electronics’, the new wordthat changed Fleet Street for ever. Daytwo will be a heady mix of film andfact. Speakers will focus on the changefrom manual typesetting to photo-com-position and the problems of specifi-cation and design. Letraset, with a shortbut merry life, eased the work of graphicartists and played an important part in

room at St Bride. This exhibition, puttogether by Charles Mozley’s daughterElizabeth, will show work from theartist’s rich and varied career. Overfive decades, Mozley worked as anillustrator and graphic designer. In hisearly career he worked for Shell andLondon Transport and producedcamouflage posters during World WarII. After the war he worked for a timewith the performing arts, designingposters, programmes and brochures;from the late 1960s he worked exten-sively for the wine trade. Mozley alsodesigned over 300 book-jackets andillustrated some forty books for adultsand children. Admission is free.

Magazines are dead! Long live themagazine! A one-day conference on thethriving world of twenty-first-centurymagazine design, to be held on Friday25 January 2008. Price £60.00 (£35.00concessions) with a £5.00 discount formembers of the Friends. Further detailswill shortly be mounted on the St Bridewebsite (www.stbride.org).

A tribute to love: five centuries of heart-felt design. An illustrated talk by NancyRosin, to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Thurs-day 31 January 2008 at St Bride (drinksfrom 6:00 p.m. in the exhibition room).From the earliest tokens of affection –perhaps a feather, a flower, a shell or afern frond – evolved the paper gifts wecherish today. As demand increased,allied printing and manufacturingindustries developed, technical advancesinspired new forms of accessible

St Bride Library reopensOn Tuesday 20 November, St BrideLibrary opened its doors again. Aftersix months of intensive work planningthe project and finding temporaryhomes for thousands of books andartifacts, the space was cleared for con-tractors to move in and refurbish it inmid-October. They installed a partitionbetween the new reading room and themachinery room, replaced services andredecorated a room which had gonewithout improvement for over thirtyyears. Shelving, including a nine-bay setof rolling shelves giving 508 metres ofstorage, has now been installed, andfilled by a band of volunteers.

The new Reading Room is distinctlydifferent from its predecessor. For thefirst time, some ten thousand books arewithin easy reach, either on open shel-ving or in stacks which are near at hand.The shelving is open, so it will be easierfor visitors to use. Library openingtimes remain as they were before thetemporary closure, that is: Tuesdaysand Thursdays 12:00 to 5:30 p.m.,Wednesdays 12:00 to 9:00 p.m.

the period between manual setting andWYSIWYG. Talks will be interspersedwith related films. Tickets are £50.00per day or £90.00 for the full confer-ence. The price for PHS members,and ‘early bird’ tickets paid for by 14March, is £40.00 per day or £75.00for both days. Students (limited avail-ability) £35.00 per day or £65.00 forboth days.

The Donald Milham Award willalso be presented at the conference. TheAnnual General Meeting of the PHS willbe held on the first day of the event, at5:00 p.m. To book please contact RobClayton, at P.O. Box 4119, Wells, ba52uf. E-mail: frobson@mbzonline.net.

St Bride events

The 2008 Justin Howes MemorialLecture. Michelle P. Brown. PopulatingPaternoster Row: the Holkham BiblePicture Book and manuscript produc-tion in medieval London. MichelleBrown – Professor of Medieval Manu-script Studies and Course Tutor to theHistory of the Book MA at the Insti-tute of English Studies, University ofLondon – will focus on one of theBritish Library’s treasures, the ‘Holk-ham Bible Picture Book’, which wasmade in Paternoster Row, next to StPaul’s, in the 1330s on the eve of theBlack Death. The manuscript offersa fascinating insight into the way aLondon artisan viewed the world andhis place in it, and into the media thatinfluenced him (street theatre, popularpreaching, texts and images). Togetherthese inspired him to make the first‘poor man’s Bible’, conveyed throughcaptioned images. The city space ofPaternoster Square re-emerges as aradical publishing hub, peopled withcolourful contributors to the earlyLondon book trade. The lecture willbe held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday 26February 2008, in the Bridewell Hallat St Bride. Admission is free.

Charles Mozley: artist and illustrator1914–1991. Monday 7 to Thursday31 January 2008 in the exhibition

Drawing by Charles Mozley

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NPHT News and NotesDerek Nuttall

Alan Dodson. It is with sadness thatthe National Printing Heritage Trusthas to announce the death one of itsstalwarts, Alan Dodson, who had beena Friend since the Trust’s inception.Alan was just a few days short of hiseighty-third birthday when he died on10 January this year.

Originally a student of architectureat Kingston College of Art, just priorto the outbreak of World War II, Alanbecame enthralled by letterpress print-ing and took a job at the CoombePress, New Malden, before joining the

RAF. On being demobbed in 1947, hewent to work in Switzerland where hecame under the influence of Swiss designand typography. Returning to England,he joined Percy Lund Humphries Ltd,at their Bradford works.

An important part of Alan’s careerwas spent at the Stationery Officewhere, in 1954, he succeeded HarryCarter as Head of Layout. Later, hewent to South Africa where he taughtat Witwatersrand University andJohannesburg Technical College. Re-turning to England in 1985, he set upa small printing workshop at Malvernwhere his passion for William Caslon’stypes was reflected in the beautifulwork he printed there.

Friends of the N P H T who pay theirannual subscriptions by cheque, arereminded that the Trust’s financial yearends on 31 December. Please send yourrenewal to the Hon. Treasurer, Mr E.C. James, The Pinfold, Church Road,Dodleston, Chester ch4 9ng byJanuary 2008. This is also a suitabletime to join for anyone interested inbecoming a Friend. The minimumannual donation remains at £10.00.

News on historic printing equipment.Two disturbing pieces of informationhave recently been passed to me. Thefirst is that the long-running attempt topreserve the premises of Gwasg Gee,the old-established printing firm inDenbigh, North Wales, seems to havecome to nothing. It appears that thereis now an application to convert theprinting works to residential use. Thehope was that the old building, togetherwith its range of printing equipment,would become the Welsh NationalMuseum of Printing.

My second disturbing news is thatmany of the printing items, especiallycases of type, have been sold ordisposed of by the ManchesterMuseum of Science and Industry. Here,again, there had been high hopes thatthe extensive collection of printing andpaper-making equipment, togetherwith the unique Whittaker Collectionof line-casting machines, might havebeen developed as a National Museumof Printing. Having been a member ofthe body that originated the firstscience and industrial museum inManchester, along with Dr RichardHills, who became its original Director,I can state that a great deal of effortwas expended in finding, purchasingand transporting a range of earlyprinting presses and other items forthis museum. But it now looks highly

personal expression, and modernpostal systems enabled them to bewidely distributed. Each aspect of thishistory of personal communication isintegral to a fascinating chronology.

Nancy Rosin has been a passionatecollector of valentines and expressionsof love for nearly forty years. Hercollection of more than 10,000 itemsencompasses the full range of thistheme – from birth, friendship, loveand marriage, to mourning – and hasbecome a formidable research archive.She is a Director of the EphemeraSociety of America, and Vice-Presidentof the National Valentine Collectors’Association. Designers, printers andvalentine enthusiasts will find that thispassionate American collector sharestheir affection for the seductive charmsof ‘the ephemera of love’. Admission£5.00 (£3.00 concessions).

DESIGNER BOOKBINDERSEVENTS 2008

The following events will be held atthe Art Workers Guild, 6 QueenSquare, London wc1. The nearest tubestations are Holborn and RussellSquare. Admission is £5.00 for DBmembers, £7.00 for others, and£2.50 for students. Further detailsmay be had from Julia Dummett orRachel Ward-Sale on 01273 486718,lectures@designerbookbinders.org.uk,or at www.designerbookbinders.org.uk.

Lecture-day, Saturday 26 January.¶ 10:30 a.m. David Penton, MarkCockram and Midori Kunikata-Cockram. Beautiful British books: anaccount of the genesis, setting up andimpact of the Designer Bookbinders

A valentine from the Rosin collection

exhibition held in Japan in 2006.¶ 12:00 a.m. Elizabeth Sobczynski.Preserving the oldest monastic collec-tion: the Deir al Surian Library. Themost important Coptic Library inEgypt dates from the fifth century andhouses the earliest biblical texts andworks of Church Fathers. The collec-tion represents a resource of inestim-able scholarly value and an importantexample of a shared world heritage; theimmense task of preserving it for thefuture is underway with the support ofThe Levantine Foundation. ¶2:00 p.m.Faith Shannon. Stone bound: how onecommission became ten bindings andan exhibition. On binding GeorgeMackay Brown’s poems, printed at theOfficina Bodoni for Kulgin Duval andColin Hamilton. ¶ 3:30 p.m. Sally MaeJoseph and Susan Hufton. Making amighty manuscript book. Two of thescribes and artists who worked on theSt John’s Bible tell the story of itsmaking in the twenty-first century andof their experiences as members of theproduction team.

Lecture, Tuesday 5 February, 6:30p.m. Bernard Middleton. The Middle-ton Lecture. How not to create abindery. A light-hearted account ofMiddleton’s establishment, which is inmarked contrast to the smart, clinical,efficiently-arranged binderies of manyothers.

Lecture, Tuesday 4 March, 6:30 p.m.Philip Smith. Constructing Tom Phil-lips’ Dante’s Inferno ‘tower’: illustra-ting the process of designing andbinding a three-volume book tower.The lecture celebrates Philip’s eightiethyear; fifty-nine of those years werespent working as a book artist.

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Bath Press ColumbianA Victorian handpress, used in Bathfor letterpress printing for more thana century, has been presented to theUniversity of Bath Library and Learn-ing Centre. The 1839 Columbian presswas used for fine letterpress printing atBath’s Pitman Press (later Bath Press)until the 1970s, and now stands onpublic display in the Library entrance.Bath Press have preserved the machineand donated it to accompany the Pit-man archives held within the Library’scollection. James Thomas, OperationsManager of Bath Press, presented thepress to Howard Nicholson, UniversityLibrarian, in an official ceremony at theLibrary.

‘It is wonderful to receive thishistoric press, with its direct proven-ance back to Sir Isaac Pitman, one ofBath’s most famous entrepreneurs,’said Mr Nicholson. ‘The Library holdsSir Isaac’s archive and indeed, some ofhis books in our Library were possiblyprinted on this very press. The press isin good condition and I have no doubtit could be used to demonstrate letter-press printing. We are grateful to BathPress for donating this importantobject to the University’.

The cast iron press weighs threequarters of a ton and was expertlydismantled and re-assembled by PaulStephens of Bath Press for its journey

Reviewers soughtThe Journal of the Printing HistoricalSociety is seeking new book reviewers.The reviews editor, Catherine Arm-strong, would especially welcomecontributors interested in the fields oftype design, typography, histories ofparticular presses or publishers, andnineteenth and twentieth centuryprinting innovations, although thosewith expertise in other fields are alsoencouraged to get in touch. The dead-lines and word limits for reviews aregenerous and flexible. If you wouldlike to become a reviewer for JPHSplease contact Catherine via e-mail onC.M.Armstrong@mmu.ac.uk or writeto her c/o St Bride Library, Bride Lane,Fleet Street, London ec4y 8ee.

improbable that either England orWales will have a national museumdevoted to printing and its relatedcrafts in the foreseeable future. Whatlost opportunities.

to the Claverton campus. The Univer-sity of Bath Library includes the PitmanCollection of 7300 books on the his-tory of shorthand, writing systemsand spelling reform, and the Pitmanarchives, which were donated to theUniversity by its founding Pro-Chan-cellor, Sir James Pitman, in 1970.

TOP SECRET PRINTERRussell Spencer

Having read the article on map print-ing in PHN 15, Russell Spencer wasinspired to submit the followingaccount of secret map printing inWorld War II, based on conversationswith Norman Gray (1919–1997). Thewriter records that he was an ‘LSTcrew member on 6 June 1944 andtherefore has every reason to be thank-ful for the accuracy of the informationobtained by Allied intelligence, and thecharts subsequently produced fromthat source’.

Countless stories have been written ofenterprise and heroism during WorldWar II, most of which, packed withaction, make exciting reading. Less hasbeen written of the achievements ofunits common to all branches of thearmed forces without which a com-manding officer could not contemplatemoving in any direction. One such wasthe unit responsible for the printing ofmaps and charts, of which the lateNorman Gray, F IOP, was second-in-command.

The Allies believed they would even-tually have to fight their way back intoEurope, so air cartographs and hydro-graphic surveys were stepped up, andmaps were reproduced in unprecedent-ed numbers. During 1942 the Directorof Survey Royal Engineers was requiredto create four special companies, knownas Map Reproduction Sections (MRSs).

With his printing background,Norman almost selected himself for asenior position in one such unit. InFebruary 1943, at the Survey TrainingCentre in North Wales, he was to meethis commanding officer Captain (laterMajor) Harry Pickles, and two dayslater they were in London setting uptheir MRS in Lupus Street, Pimlico.The requirement was for these sectionsto be semi-mobile, so that when theoccasion arose they could be quicklydismantled and transported nearer tothe front line, together with technicalstores and arms. Each would consistof three officers, a Company Sergeant

Major, seven Sergeants, several Corpor-als plus Sappers (Privates), draughts-men, cameramen, plate-makers,machine-minders, machine assistants,two cooks and six drivers, over eightypeople in all. Within two months all thespecialist personnel had been assembled,equipment acquired and a formergarage had been converted into a verypresentable printing works.

MRS No. 9 was now operationaland with D-Day a bare fourteen monthsaway a base map, known as the ‘EnemyOrders of Battle’, printed in pale blueand grey, was produced two or threetimes a week. This showed north-westFrance and the Normandy coastline ata scale of 1:500,000. It was then over-printed, as intelligence came to hand,with German defensive positions, armygroups and Panzer Divisions (the latteralways being on the move). The over-printing was in bold black, blue andred. To avoid any reference to the plan-ning for Operation Overlord (D-Day)the code name ‘Benson’ was used,named after RAF Benson in Oxford-shire, whence the reconnaissancephotographs were obtained. The co-operation with this unit was such thatshould an imperfect photograph bereceived, a telephone call to Bensonwould produce a replacement almostby return. The same could also be saidof relationships with the Royal Navy,which had become adept at ascertainingthe contours and composition of theenemy coastline and the positions ofobstacles, observed from submarinesand dinghies. The practical planningrequired that a 1:12,500 scale map beproduced and each sheet printed onMedium paper, 17½ × 22½ inches(450 × 570 mm), or at the maximumon Royal (called ‘Army Demy’ at theMRS), 19½ × 24½ inches (5o4 × 620mm). There were two Crabtree offsetmachines, one a single-colour, theother a two-colour press; both accom-modated the Army Demy paper, platesand paper being interchangable betweenthe two presses, with perfect register.Each sheet incorporated the kilometersquare grid, with a comparative scaleof kilometers/miles. This was necessaryfor the American forces who did notuse the metric system. One mile wasthus represented on the map by fiveinches, and each inch was approxi-mately 347 yards. In addition to theusual features and legends, it waspossible to show small buildings,command posts and woods in greatdetail. The sheets were designed so thatsecret information could be added last,

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USEFUL CONTACTS

National Printing Heritage Trustwww.npht.org.ukChair: Michael Twymanlithomn@totalise.co.uk

Printing Historical Societywww.printinghistoricalsociety.org.ukChair: Peggy Smithm.m.smith@reading.ac.uk

Friends of St Bride Librarywww.stbride.orgChair: Rob Banhamrob@stbride.org

St Bride Library, Bride Lane,Fleet Street, London ec4y 8eewww.stbride.orgLibrarian: Nigel Rochenigel@stbrideinstitute.org

Printing History NewsEditor: Paul W. Nash8 Fairfield Drive, Witney,Oxfordshire ox28 5lbpaul.w.nash@virgin.net

Published by the NPHT, PHS and theFriends of St Bride Library, December2007. Printed by W. H. Evans andSons Ltd, Chester.

Please pass spare copies of Printing History News on to an interested friend

PHS JournalMembers of the PHS will soon receivevolume 11 of the new series of itsJournal. It will contain Nigel Palmer’sarticle ‘Blockbooks: texts and illus-trations printed from wood blocks’,with seven illustrations, Rob Banham’s‘Nineteenth-century jobbing: the print-ing methods of Gye and Balne’, withtwenty-one illustrations, and numerousbook reviews. This will be the firstissue published under the Journal’snew editor, John Trevitt.

The new series is now three issuesbehind-hand, but it is hoped to makeup lost ground in 2008 and 2009 bypublishing two or more monographsin lieu of volumes and continuing theregular publication of the Journalunder the editorship of John Trevitt(Editor) and Catherine Armstrong(Reviews Editor). John can be contac-ted at jj@trevitt.freeserve.co.uk, andwould be grateful to hear from thosewith ideas for future Journal articles.

SMALL ADSArab Press free to a good home. Thepress is believed to be in good con-dition. It has been disassembled, andis currently in Coggeshall, Essex. Formore details please contact Mrs Firthon 07764 682269.

FOR SALE: a Cropper-type treadlepress, made by F. M. Weiler around1870 (in good condition, but needsnew rollers), plus a large fount of 14-point Pastonchi, some 10-point Paston-chi, Perpetua titling and other faces, incabinets. Offers around £500.00 forthe lot, please. Transport to be negoti-ated. Please contact Angela Sutton, 30Grundys Lane, Malvern Wells, Worces-tershire wr14 4hs. Tel: 01684 575731.E-mail: acpsutton@rva-online.net.

and the composite map displayed onan operations-room wall with the imageon each sheet abutting perfectly. Thesize made up for briefing sessions wasabout 24 × 10 feet (roughly 7.3 × 3metres).

A system of lettering was also de-vised using permutations of all thefaces and weights of type available,to distinguish between place names,cartographic and hydrographic featuresand other military information. For thesecret planning information, fourfurther passes through the machineswere required. To identify its source,every sheet carried the imprint of itsoriginating MRS. Rather surprisingly,MRS personnel were allowed to wearthe SHAEF (Supreme HeadquartersAllied Expeditionary Force) badge ontheir sleeves, and were proud of beingthe only complete British unit atSupreme Headquarters.

The orginal charts and maps forD-Day (6 June 1944) showed the pro-posed disposition of the Allied invasionforce at set times before and after H-hour, each subsequent reprint being asnapshot in time, the intervals betweeneach set recorded. Complete sets, com-prising sixteen sheets, were demandedby the Supreme Allied Commander,General Eisenhower, with complete up-to-date amendments by 31 December1943 at 24:00 hours. The diaryrecords, with a display of brinkman-ship characteristic of many printers,that these were handed over at 23:57.This was achieved by working up toeight-hour shifts during the summermonths, increasing in the autumn upto twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week.This left little time for sleeping and rec-reation, and this pattern of work wascarried on until well beyond D-Day.

The most impressive part of thisentire operation was the high securitymaintained. There appear to have beenno security leaks at all – no mean featwhen one considers that the outlineplans for the Normandy landings wereknown to so many people some four-teen months in advance.

In early July 1944 the combinedattack from German V1s and V2s onLondon put the Lupus Street MRS outof action, and the operation was thentransferred to Kingswood in Surrey. On28 September 1944 Norman Gray wasflown to Paris, newly-liberated, but stilla war-zone. A place was soon foundand commandeered for the printingplant and billets. The trucks carryingthe presses and other equipment cameby landing craft. Because there was

a shortage of electricity in Paris, ACgenerators were included in the exten-sive ‘extras’. Once established, a mes-sage was sent to SHAEF and the unittook on the printing of the EnemyOrders of Battle on a daily basis. Thedemand for these rose as the Alliesadvanced, and set-backs like the hold-up at Caen and the German offensivein the Ardennes called for strategic re-planning. Another crisis arose whenGeneral Patton and the American ThirdArmy made such rapid advances thatthey were continually running out ofmaps.

The war in Europe came to an endon 8 May 1945 and the MRS wasreturned to England for disbandment.Norman Gray was then sent to theMapping and Survey SHAEF atFrankfurt as Staff Captain. Followingdemobilisation he joined the FieldSurvey Association, and became theirSecretary for forty-seven years, a recordunlikely to be surpassed.

ULTRABOLDThe third number of the St Bride mag-azine Ultrabold has just been printed,and will be distributed to Friendsshortly. It contains articles by NickRobertson of Wordsalad on thecreative possibilities of client-rejecteddesign ideas, and working with BrianEno; Rob Banham on Whiting and

Branston’s compound-plate two-colourprocess of the 1820s; Tara Publishing’shand-printed books; Max Gadney onthe design of BBC news online; PeggySmith on the ‘St Bride frisket’; a typo-graphical love story set against thebackdrop of London Fields; the impactof Alan Aldridge’s 1960s Beatlesillustrations on an impressionableGeordie lad; plus the usual type bitsand reviews.