There’s been a lot of action in and around my letterpress print shop the past few weeks, and all of it has reminded me of why I like the publishing and graphic arts industries so much. Despite complete lack of organization, inconsistent training programs, and confusion over job definitions, the creative professional market is larger than anyone imagines. The work we do touches nearly everyone in some way, and there is a certain “romance” about the process that elevates the field above so many others.
This point was driven home firmly this past weekend when we hosted a small neighborhood gathering to welcome our 14-year-old nephew to Petaluma, California, from his native Switzerland. Marc will be attending Petaluma High School and living with us, though I don’t expect much help from him in my print shop (see Figure 1). Aside from the usual impatience of a teenager, he’s obsessed with French rap music. I’m not an expert in rap by any stretch, but as far as I can tell, French rap is identical to American rap only there’s the plus of not being able to understand the lyrics. Marc is convinced he’s going to single handedly transform Petaluma teen culture into an oasis of Swiss/French style, which apparently does include a baseball cap, only with no visible logos, and never worn backwards. We thought it best to warn the neighborhood that a new teenager was on the loose.
Figure 1: Marc is more interested in fashion and looking like a Swiss/French punk, than in printing or typesetting.
Meet the Neighbors
Since we live on a fairly busy corner, there hasn’t been the opportunity to get to know our neighbors all that well, which is also our preference. But nearly everyone we invited politely came over to welcome Marc to the United States and rummage through our medicine cabinets looking for drugs. I’m kidding, of course, but I did detect a bit of curiosity that is natural among neighbors who often make up stories about what goes on behind the closed doors and drawn drapes. I can’t imagine what most of them have dreamed up to explain the low mechanical rumble and high-volume cursing coming out from my innocent-looking suburban garage.
My letterpress print shop was naturally on the tour, and I had spent the last two weeks sprucing things up to make it look like I was further along than I really am. I also tried to take down all embarrassing graphics, rude political statements, or references to illegal substances so as to avoid any controversy in the ‘hood. I pulled together a few lame educational displays so I could grab them and explain to people how the letterpress process worked. Little did I know, that starting with the very first guest, I would learn more from them than they could ever learn from me.
Bill from directly across the street grew up visiting the “Wall Street Journal” production department where his father was shop foreman throughout the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. He knew all about Linotype machines and rewarded his school chums by giving them their names set in hot metal. His wife also makes a mean apple bread, which I am enjoying as I write this installment. And their 17-year-old grandson is both a Adobe Photoshop power user and new pal to our nephew, though he’s suspiciously a little too good for a 17-year-old-an Eddie Haskell in Nike-wear.
Jim, who lives in the yellow house kitty-corner to us and often picks up his mail in his undershirt, was a stereotyper for the “Santa Rosa Press Democrat” his entire career. Sadly, that all ended unceremoniously with a firing and the discovery that he had little-to-no pension. I admit I did not know what a stereotyper was, so he had to explain that he made the curved rotary plates that were used on large letterpress newspaper presses (see Figure 2). Of course he knew all about my machines, but couldn’t really understand why I found them so novel — he remembers when the equipment he worked on was scrapped, much like the employees. He was left very bitter for being phased out in favor of computer technology. His wife Madonna (no, not THE Madonna) was sick and couldn’t come, but she ironically sent a lovely computer-printed note to welcome Marc to the neighborhood. I was impressed that she had picked Palatino instead of the default Times Roman.
Figure 2: A Wood Supermatic stereotyping machine which turns flat metal pages into cylindrical plates for printing newspapers.
Don’t I Know You from Somewhere?
The guy across the other street from us, it turns out, works at K/P Graphics, one of the big printing firms in the state, and has attended Seybold shows in the past. He only made the connection with me when he saw one of my Seybold bags hanging in our guesthouse, a convenient receptacle for spare wash cloths. For the life of me I can’t remember his name, so now I’ll have to call him “buddy” or “neighbor” when we run into each other taking out the recyclables. Any effort to impress him with my knowledge of printing was futile, and I could tell he considered me completely full of hot air. In a polite way, of course.
Dan, from two houses down on the same side of the street, saw a copy of Adobe Illustrator on the shelf next to my collection of “Highlights” magazines, and asked if I was “into” graphics. It turns out he is a Web developer and had taken a tour of the “Publish” magazine offices when I worked there back in 1997. He just managed to avoid the Bay-area Web massacre from a few years ago, and his two small children are really cute. They played with our good-dog Biscuit whenever they weren’t sorting through the M&Ms looking for the special “groovy-colored” ones. Stella and Joey, the other two more neurotic dogs, were banished to our bedroom, so we conveniently skipped that room on the home tour, thus avoiding the embarrassing explanation for all those strange clothes hanging next to the bed.
Cleeve, who I have always called Clive, is the friendly guy on the other corner who is trying to get a neighborhood-watch program together. It turns out he was a heating and ventilation man in San Francisco and worked regularly at the “San Francisco Chronicle,” the “Examiner,” and other newspapers. He set up high-powered ventilation systems to rid the fumes from the metal composing rooms. But he kept referring to them as “Leen-o-types,” so at least I know a little more than he does. He borrowed my copy of “Apocalypse Now Redux,” so I know he’ll be back to check on my progress. The horror. The horror.
And finally there is our newest neighbor, Brian, who is a middle-school teacher and yearbook advisor for the local school system. He and his wife have been refurbishing a great old house down the street and I should have known he was connected to the industry when we got that slick invitation to their Christmas party last year. “Definitely not Microsoft Word,” I remember thinking. Brian, it turns out, supervises a network of Macs running PageMaker 7 on which the kids compose their yearbook pages and ship PDF files off to Jostens for printing. I agreed to come and talk to his class and show them some of the history of printing. It won’t surprise me, though, if they know more than I do.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
So of seven neighbors who showed up, six had some sort of relationship to graphic arts and publishing, and all were extremely vocal about of the connection (see Figure 3). It could be my neighborhood is some sort of rarity, like when medical researchers discover a cancer cluster, or everyone goes out and buys the same color Volkswagen Beetle on the same day. But I actually think you’d find my experience pretty common. When you add up all the people in the process, the page-creation industry is enormous. But since we’re spread out in many types of businesses and with all kinds of job titles, most people never see the big picture.
Figure 3: Is it a strange coincidence, or a normal pattern that has lead to so many neighbors being connected to the graphics industry?
I’m sure if you got a swarm of plumbers, a gang of accountants, or a gaggle of salesmen together they’d have a lot in common, too. But I’m not sure they’d be as friendly and nice as I’ve found most creative and production professionals, and the enthusiasm with which each of my neighbors proclaimed their connection to hot metal was inspiring. Everyone who contributes to the timeliness of a newspaper, the beauty of a book, or the depth of a magazine, usually shows great pride in their work. That doesn’t mean that I’m putting down a great pipe joint or a P&L statement, but they aren’t quite the same.
Of course I’m in big trouble now, because the whole neighborhood has taken an interest in my printing progress, and the anonymity we cherished has been shattered. I made the promise that I would have hand-printed Christmas cards in time for the holidays, so I bought a few months. But with a new teenager in the house, I suspect I’m going to have even less free time. Unless, of course, I need to escape the booming French rap and retreat even more to the sanctity and solitude of my shop.
Read more by Gene Gable.
This article was last modified on January 11, 2022
This article was first published on August 7, 2003
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