MS PERPETUA AND MR CHELTENHAM

The idea for a book

It was over thirty years to since I had a composing stick* in my hand. I spent days in the printing shop department building, next Colchester School of Art. As part of the Graphics course we were taught to set type and proof the output – the real way to learn typography.

Fast forward to last month at the Letterpress Collective in Bristol. http://theletterpresscollective.org

It was a play date; in wonderful workshop teaching type composition and printing skills. Nick and colleagues have brought slumbering presses back for artists, writers and community projects in Bristol.

On a Friday six of us had the chance to explore font, compose words, signs, poems and prose.

During the day I worked on the front cover of a book that might come to pass. My headline type face was Cheltenham and sub-head face Perpetua.

PERPETUA

English sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill for Monotype designed Perpetua. It is classified as a transitional serif font. It bears the distinctive personality of Eric Gill's letterforms.

CHELTENHAM

Architect Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball, director of the Cheltenham Press, it shows influences of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Originally intended as a text face, "Chelt" became hugely successful as the "king of the display faces."

* A composing stick is a tool used to assemble pieces of metal type into words and lines, which are then transferred to a galley before being locked into a forme and printed.