Print culture

“ If we engage our minds in some attempt to realize the quality and extent of pleasure and profit derivable from the constant influence of printing that conforms to artistic principles, we may perceive that it may be a most powerful and effectual agency for culture. ”

“ Is not the first printed book still the finest ever printed? But in one point I am certain that the moderns have fallen away, at least in the production of cheap books, and that is in the quality and finish of the paper. Not to speak of injurious devices to make the book heavy, the custom of calendering the paper, or making it smooth and shiny, practised by some important publishers, is bad for the eyes, and the result is not pleasant to look at. It is like the glare of the glass over the framed print. It is said to be necessary to the production of the modern “process” pictures. ”

“ Printing is peculiarly the victim of this cold formality of sentiment, and must be considered as upon that plane. But this fact makes the obligation to be alive to every18 opportunity to mitigate its severity the more pressing upon every printer who dreams of his work as of an art, and the closer the sympathy between the printer and the culture of art the more warmth and humanity he will be able to infuse into his work. ”

“ I am, like others, just equal in invention and in execution, as my works show. I, in my own defence, challenge a competition with the finest engravings, and defy the most critical judge to make the comparison honestly: asserting, in my own defence, that this print is the finest that has been done, or is likely to be done, in England, where drawing, the foundation, is condemned, and absurd nonsense about dots and lozenges and clean strokes made to occupy the attention to the neglect of all real art. ”

“ The public prefers readable print, demands it, and is ready to pay for it. The magazines have long recognized this phase of public taste. When the newspapers have done the same, the eyes of coming generations will be relieved of a strain that can only be realized by those who in that day shall turn as a matter of antiquarian curiosity to the torturing fine print that so thickly beset the pathway of knowledge from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and, in the twentieth, overthrown in the field of books and magazines, made its last, wavering stand in the newspapers. ”

“ It is the experience of most print-lovers that, starting with perhaps a mere casual liking for a certain landscape design, they progress gradually, in the course of years, to an unmeasured delight in the whole body of prints, and eventually find in them a unique source of repose and exaltation. ”

“ When, as is most often the case, there is actual beauty in the cuts, the books so ornamented are amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever been produced. Therefore, granted well-designed type, due spacing of the lines and words, and proper position of the page on the paper, all books might be at least comely and well-looking: and if to these good qualities were added really beautiful ornament and pictures, printed books might once again illustrate to the full the position of our Society that a work of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so. ”

“ It is, in fact, only by watching the progress of a print through all its stages that any clear idea can be obtained of the beauty and accuracy of the whole process, of the prevision that must be exercised, and of the skill, care, and taste required at every step to carry it to a successful termination. ”

“ Printing touches life upon so many of its facets, and is such a constant constituent of it, that it requires no special plea to raise it to the plane of one of the absolute forces of culture and one of the most important elements of progress. This postulate admitted, and the plea for the fuller recognition of the control of art principles in printing needs to be pressed only to the point of full recognition, and it requires no stretch of indulgent imagination to find printing successfully asserting a claim to be recognized as an art. ”

“ The three essentials of printing style may be generalized as knowledge, harmony, and expressiveness. In literature they are thought, expressiveness, and harmony, or melody, as some have it. The greatest of these is, of course, knowledge—knowledge of the fundamentals which go to the making of the best printing.
It is not possible to teach style. It is almost as impossible to acquire style. This seems like a paradox, but a paradox is not always a symbol of hopelessness. Style must be born in a man—style in any art or profession. ”

“ These recruits reflected, read up the leading newspapers and magazines, felt nervous, took the plunge, and finally produced their little articles.
To see oneself in print is one of the strongest artificial passions of an age corrupted by books. ”

“ Now, in literal truth, the print-designer was the artisan; and amid the vast flood of commonplace productions of the time it is difficult to search out those few works that have a claim to beauty.
It is probable that a general loss in refinement of taste marked the epoch and was reflected in the prints. The uncouth flaring designs of the textiles, the gross overladen coiffures, the excess of decoration that lay like a blight over all the instruments of life at this time, naturally had their influence upon the standards of the artist. ”

“ In art its discovery was the parallel of the invention of printing in literature; it was a means of multiplying and spreading the ideas which are expressed by art, of creating a popular appreciation and knowledge of art, and of bringing beautiful design within the reach of a larger body of men. It is difficult for a modern mind to realize the place which pictures filled in mediæval life, before the invention of printing had brought about that great change which has resulted in making books almost the sole means of education. ”

“ Even in these days, however, books have been entirely produced by hand, and, for that matter, if beauty were the sole object, we could not do better than follow the methods of the scribe, illuminator, and miniaturist of the Middle Ages. But the world clamours for many copies (at least in some cases) , and the artist must make terms with the printing press if he desires to live. It would be a delightful thing if every book were different—a millennium for collectors! ”

“ But they may be as highly favored, if they avail themselves of the opportunities for culture that are open to them, as they are open to other artists, and not otherwise. While it is not to be expected that the printing art will produce Morrises or Bradleys with great profuseness, it is to be frankly admitted that in the grade next below—the grade of talent, that is, as distinguished from the grade of genius—there is not found the high average of attainment among printers that rules in other graphic arts. ”

“ But an impression originally rich or brilliant, or brilliant and rich at once, may, by ill-usage, or even by the absence of a delicate care, have lost the qualities that commended it to its first possessor. The beginner in print collecting must assure himself not only that the work is still good, but that the surface is clean and fair. ”

“ Just as emphasis in style is difficult when one habitually uses the strongest words and emphasis in voice is difficult when one habitually shouts, so emphasis in print is difficult when one habitually uses large capitals, display type, and italics. Loud printing is as objectionable as loud talking. ”

“ The fallacy of the proverb, that "those who run may read," being established, modern science set about the adoption of a medium, available to those sons of the century who are always on the run. Hence, the grand secret of ILLUSTRATION.—Hence the new art of printing!
The pictorial printing-press is now your only wear! Every thing is communicated by delineation. We are not told, but shown how the world is wagging. The magazines sketch us a lively article, the newspapers vignette us, step by step, a royal tour. ”

“ We can eliminate the last clause, and call style in printing the gesture of the mind, the evidence of the amount and degree of knowledge possessed by the mind, tempered, arranged, given distinction, by the born talent, aptitude, or whatever it may be termed, which is the seed germ of style. We do not hesitate to accept the obvious100 theory that artists are born, not made. Some claim for printing that it is an art. Why then should we hesitate to admit that a printer capable of cultivating and expressing a genuine style must depend upon something other than mere knowledge ”

“ The art of printing, among other inestimable blessings, has fused together the most productive elements of society; it has established a vital relation between intellect and mechanics, between labor and thought. I see before me in this assembly those who have achieved enduring literary fame, and those who are the present guides of public opinion. I see them side by side with the men who have just put their thoughts and sentiments into a bodily form and disseminated them on the wings of the press. ”

“ One of the striking characteristics of our civilization, a trait of our material culture that is nevertheless an invaluable, nay indispensable, means for the propagation of knowledge under modern conditions, is the existence of paper, that is, of a cheap, readily manufactured material for writing and printing. ”

“ The Print which it proposes to lead the Way into is that print where the elect, who were once few and are now many, are making the corridors of time resound to their footsteps, as poets, essayists, humorists, or other literary forms of immortality. ”

“ Such work would provide, in these days of lack of patronage, other artists also with a means of augmenting their too often, it is to be feared, but slender incomes, since there would be an additional incentive to purchase a print that might be applied to a definite purpose, or made the occasion of some graceful offering. ”

“ A brilliant band of illustrators and ornamentists have appeared, too, and nearly every month or so we hear of a new genius in black and white, who is to eclipse all others. For all that, even in the dark ages, between the mid-nineteenth century and the early eighties, one or two printers or publishers of taste have from time to time attempted to restrain the wild excesses of the trade-printer, with his terribly monotonous novelties in founts of type, alternately shouting or whispering, anon in the crushing and aggressive heaviness of block capitals, and now in the attenuated droop of italics. ”

“ The great change in painting, which came about with the neglect of the old church and the rise of a new class in society, was reflected in all other forms of art. The invention of printing had made it possible for authors to win fame and reputation by writing books for the multitudes. ”

“ If a publisher wished to make a book beautiful he put in plates. If he wanted to make it more beautiful he put in more or larger plates. If he wanted to make it a real triumph of beauty he engraved the whole book, letterpress and all, as in the case of Sturt’s Prayer Books and Pine’s Horace. That a printer by the selection and arrangement of type, by good presswork and the use of pretty capitals and tailpieces, could make a book charming to eye and hand, without any help from an illustrator—such an idea as this had nearly perished. ”

“ For those who have learned the elements of their language the charm of the prints is very great. I should perhaps say the charm of some of the prints is very great; for, as we learn what we ought to admire, we learn to discriminate, at first between the works of the different artists, then between different works by the same artist, and finally between different copies of the same work. The truth is that the prints are only in a remote sense to be spoken of as reproductions. Each impression is more or less an individual work of art ”

“ If a bad picture does not offend the taste, a good one cannot gratify it. There lies on our table a magazine printed in colored inks, an effort, the publisher tells us, to supplant the old monotony of black and white, and to minister to our love of color. ”

“ Art demands that the print be a part of the paper upon which it is impressed, much as the plant is a part of the earth in which its roots are buried, and utility demands that the print shall be strong and clear that reading may be made easy. The artist-printer lessens the contrast between print and paper by printing with gray ink on gray stock, brown ink on light brown stock, and so forth. The utility printer gets the maximum of contrast by printing with black ink on white stock. ”

“ Finally, choose a printer and publisher who is a book-making genius. The author is dependent upon the printer for the best suggestions for style of book within the limits of cost decided upon. There are masters of the art of making books who, having learned the author's mind as to price, have an ability almost amounting to genius for suggesting the perfect thing within the limit named. They have the character of the work in mind, and they suggest an ideal combination of type, size of page, illustrations, paper, margins and style of cover. ”

“ We cannot take one pronounced step toward acquiring style until we realize the need, the vital need, of a good foundation knowledge of art—not in a historical sense, but in a technical sense—for the technique of printing that is better than good. ”