4. Wood Type Manufacture, Part 2

   A view of one of three operational pantographic routers I saw. A skilled wood carver known as a pattern maker carved the master letterforms in wood, and after these were checked and finished, they are mounted on the source side of the device and clamped in place.  On the other side is mounted a new piece of type-high wood (0.981 inch exactly). The pantograph copies the contours of the pattern, magnifying each curve by usually a factor of three, and on the router end, the new wood block is carved.  One at a time! See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph It should be noted that Hamilton manufactured wood type in many different languages and therefore the pattern makers had to be skilled in many languages using a number of alphabets.  Patterns were carved on wood that did not need to be type-high and since this wood never was clamped into a printing press, was probably not hard end-grain maple. Here is a view of the tools of the trade for pattern-makers:

A word about measurements in the letterpress trade: The basic unit of measurement for printers is the point, about 1/72 of one inch.   Twelve points equals a pica, and wood type was generally vertically measured in lines, where one line equals one pica.  Therefore a ten line font was approximately 120 points high.   Metal type was rarely cast higher than 72 points, though some casters could handle up to 144 points by jury-rigging the matrices (molds) used to cast metal type. Here is a view of a very large pantographic router used to make particularly large letterforms on the order of feet rather than lines!

Below i have a photo showing the wood type WALL that visitors can see on entry to the museum.  Really remarkable!  Look at thre size of that numeral 2! This is the kind of art that usually makes me sad, because it fuels the idea that wood type is no longer useful as a collection of letters and is only useful as an art piece.   So crafters will buy fonts from unsuspecting and uneducated estate managers, and split them up  to make wall art or other displays.  In this case, I will give the Museum a pass, though, because they can make their own wood type for this kind of art, and are dedicated and smart enough to not destroy a useful font for this purpose. There is nothing wrong with wood type hanging on a wall if it's no longer useful because it's broken or warped, but I have seen perfectly good wood type sold as scrap and made into these wall hangings and coffee tables.   Though this occurs usually out of ignorance that anyone could ever actually, you know, print with wood type.  But sometimes, flea market pickers are fully aware of the value of type, and sell it to artsy types anyway out of expediency.   If an artist needs to show wood type as art, it's better to get someone to carve letterforms into cheaper wood.  Not to be too dramatic, but using the real thing is disrespecting the history of printing, in my opinion.   Real wood type is a real part of history.

Below I've included a photo showing one example of a wall hanging available on e-bay that appears to be made of priceless wood type ligatures.  I dont want to get off on a rant about this, but if this item was made with real wood type, a number of priceless historical fonts were ruined in the production of one object!  A friend of mine, Peter Spooner in Maine feels so strongly about this topic, he actually makes "fake" wood type out of cheap pine so that it can be offered to the trade as an alternative to wasting the good stuff!  It takes careful, patient education to dissuade crafters from doing this, but the hard fact is that people love this stuff, so they buy it.  We need to start thinking about wood type like we think about other rare materials from an endangered source, such as ivory from elephant tusks.

A retro-chic arrangement of priceless ligatures.