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Sentence to think about : Toujours se taper un coup de rouge avant de mettre le couvert. Soulignac

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CLS typo

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Des barbares...
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- • André Laurie: A novel in the planet Mars
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- • 07. Chez les éditeurs [3]
- • 08. Chez les éditeurs [4]
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Stanhope press [3] - by cls

My First Impressions of the Stanhope Press

Well… now that my back is giving me a bit of a break and a few pills are beginning to ease my stiff neck (these old fogeys on the verge of senility are such a nuisance: they’re always moaning, even when they’re feeling fine), I find myself thinking: “Come on, old boy! Time to have a play with your new toy, your beloved Stanhope press, which you haven’t laid a finger on since you gave it a thorough clean!”

A bit of rummaging here, there, up and down (my workshop occupies two floors), and I gather together everything I need. Wood type only. Some of it came from Paris, back when I still had a workshop there; the rest I recently bought from the printer in Sézanne, whose print shop has, sadly, closed its doors for good.

And so I gather it all together, and gather some more… piling everything up and arranging it on the bed of the Stanhope. Now comes the job of setting the type and laying out the poster. I’ll give you a little taste of the process in pictures, so you can see for yourselves that hand-setting type, even with large, lightweight letters that are easy to handle, takes longer than you might think.

As you’ve seen, the typefaces are quite varied in style, and the letters come in a range of sizes. I decided on a centred layout, a very traditional choice for this sort of job, and tackled it in two stages. First, I worked out the centre of the top line, then aligned the centre of every other line with it. I filled out the other side of each line with spacing material, surrounded the composition with furniture, fitted the quoins, and tightened everything up in the chase.

With the forme finished and locked up, I placed a blank sheet of paper over the type — rather casually, to put it mildly (no problem there: the sheet was larger than the forme) — and stuck it to the tympan with some bargain-basement tape, in a thoroughly ham-fisted fashion. Not exactly textbook practice, but then again, this was a first attempt…

After that, it’s all very straightforward: rolling on the ink with a hand roller (a medium-sized one with a single handle), then pulling a print. Let’s carry on with the pictures…

You can see my rather rough-and-ready taping job

Right, time to ink up.

You’ve just had a quick look — and you’re welcome to watch it again if it went by too fast — at the process of inking the type with a medium-sized hand roller. Naturally, I used the lovely inking table I made a few weeks ago. But I didn’t feel up to using the two-handled roller; it’s a bit too heavy for me at the moment. I’ll have to start taking vitamins, since you can no longer buy Vin Tonique Mariani, the coca-infused tonic wine made with Peruvian coca leaves (what a shame!), which used to put a bit of strength into our grandparents back in the early twentieth century.

Once the type was inked, the next step was, quite logically, to pull a proof on a sacrificial sheet of paper. That would tell me two things: whether I’d attached the sheet to the tympan reasonably well, and whether the impression itself was satisfactory.

I fold the tympan down over the type and slide it underneath the platen.

I grab the bar to bring the platen down.

With the press stroke complete, I pull the forme back out from under the platen. What’s going to happen?…

A rather faint impression (not enough pressure on the middle lines), and a lovely little typo caused by transposing two letters: “AL” instead of “LA”. Well done, Mr Typesetter!

Let’s show that picture twice, just to make sure I feel properly guilty about the typo. I’ll also have to try to fix the lack of pressure.

The letters have been put back in the right order. I’ve quickly knocked together three makeshift packing stops using scraps of brass rule and two-point leads. I’ve also stuck a small piece of card onto the sacrificial sheet to provide extra pressure on the middle lines. After inking the type again (you do ink it for every single sheet, don’t you?), I position a fresh sheet of paper for printing.

Positioning the sheet. Those hastily improvised stops don’t exactly make the job any easier

Almost there. Let’s hope it doesn’t slip off while I lower the tympan.

I hold the loose corner, opposite the gripper edge…

Both hands on the bar…

…and put my whole heart into it…

Out it comes from under the platen for the second time… Better? Worse?

The type was thoroughly loaded with ink, and the packing stops weren’t exactly up to much. The result? The sheet stuck to the forme.

Peeling it off.

Hmm, yes, that’s better…

(poster text: "Rebellion is the privilege of the young. So, young people, stop growing old!")
Not perfect, but readable…

Right, time for an aperitif, now…

P.S. This post should have gone up on fornax.fr yesterday, 26 October 2026, when I finished writing it. But my website is down. No idea why. I contacted my hosting provider and spoke on the phone to a very pleasant chap in technical support. They’re trying to work out what’s wrong, but so far they haven’t found the problem. So, watch this space — assuming they manage to fix it… (P.S. added on 27 October 2026, hence the date!)

Published on 29/10/2026 @ 15:59

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