A Series of Headaches: Shakespeare's First Folio meets the London Review of Books

Рет қаралды 3,861

Ай бұрын

When Michael Dobson wrote about the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio for the London Review of Books, he described it as a ‘series of headaches’. When we tried to replicate those 17th century methods to celebrate the anniversary of the First Folio with our own Shakespearean print, we discovered how true that was.
In this film, letterpress printer Nick Hand pulls apart the whole process, from making ink from crushed oak galls to heaving the levers of a replica Jacobean press, and shows how we produced our own (almost) authentic version of the LRB circa 1623.
Produced in partnership with Folio400 (folio400.com)
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail - from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
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Пікірлер: 7

@nickgray100 Ай бұрын

What a wonderful, tactile process. Such a joy watching Nick at work.

@richardwitalec567 Ай бұрын

❤ Top quality history documentary please more

@richardstockham4320 29 күн бұрын

Thank you for taking me back down to where all ladders start. In the foul rag and bone shop.

@MacMacPherson Ай бұрын

enchanting

@raymondnelsonjr.9902 26 күн бұрын

Beautifully photographed but a bit off the mark. Love Alan May’s press. Too bad not much of Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing” 1683/84 represented here. We know exactly how the Folios were printed and this is not shown here, with the exception the common press and the use of ink balls (definitely not dabs - see Moxon). Printers ink is formulated with boiled linseed and carbon black (soot) NOT oak galls (used for writing ink). Paper is formed one sheet at a time on a paper mould using linen fiber. The type was hand set in a composing stick, and while the Monotype is useful it had no place here- or at least a stick could have been used to begin with. The illustrations were copper plate prints. Tail pieces were often carved in fruitwoods having very tight grain and could be very delicately cut. Nicely filmed but not historically accurate. Stan Nelson, printing historian PS: I am able to replicate all of these skills except for paper making. It’s very doable.

@NickHand-bv3ib 20 күн бұрын

Hello Stan, just to respond to your email, the piece that we printed was never intended to be a facsimile of the first folio or it's processes. Using Oak galls to make the ink was interesting, Shakespeare would have used ink made from galls to write, we wondered if it was possible to make printing ink from them, and with the help of Michael at Hawthorn we found a way, which was brilliant. Of course, the paper was made for the folio in sheet form but the paper made in Somerset was, like using a Monotype caster a nod to modernity and it's relationship to Elizabethan process. We did set some of the type by hand using a composing stick, but it wasn't filmed sadly. One thing I understand about letterpress is that what ever you do or say there is always a printer somewhere who who do things differently, it's an (almost) 600 year old craft and there is always something new to learn.

@Jeffhowardmeade 28 күн бұрын

What Isaac Jaggard wouldn't have given for a Monotype caster with a Welliver pneumatic interface! He'd have had the First Folio printed in a month rather than the two years it took him.