Notes of an Alphabetical fetishist

Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese

2012-02-06T03:45:00.001-08:00

In a couple of weeks I will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to have Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry cut and cast my typefaces Gremolata and Cancellaresca Milanese as a new proprietary metal type family. Here are a couple of pictures of the digital predecessors of the typefaces in action.

Thoughts on Making New Metal Type

2012-02-03T08:59:00.001-08:00

Annie shot this video during my conversation with Gaylord Schanliec and Jane Siegel at the Center for Book Arts, New York. It gives a good sense of my motivations in turning my digital typefaces into new metal type.

Specimens of Diverse Characters Arrives!

2011-10-25T16:44:00.001-07:00

Copies of the deluxe and standard editions of Specimens of Diverse Characters arrived from Book Lab II this week. I realize that I designed the books but I am still surprised by their heft—they are BOOKS. The transformation from loose sheets to bound book always takes me off guard, the final metamorphosis in the chain from concept to sketch to drawing to print to book. It is easy to understand why so many printers and book makers have also been drawn to alchemy.

The books are bound using a modified Bradel binding that opens beautifully flat at every spread. The standard edition has a red leather spine with paper covered boards printed from my foundry Lisbon Ornaments. It is housed in a cloth covered clamshell box with an inset red leather label stamped in silver foil. The deluxe edition uses the same structure but the boards are covered in gray leather with a specimen of Iohann Titling stamped in silver foil on the front cover. In addition to the book, the deluxe comes with a portfolio of progressive state proofs of three complex prints and a selection of five unbound prints from the book. The book and portfolio are housed in a clamshell box with a leather spine and foredges. At the back of the box is an inset window behind which is a setting of Harry Carter's passage Type is something that you can pick up and hold in your hand in a special issue of Iohann Titling foundry type cast on a 30pt body.

The standard and deluxe editions of Specimens.

The deluxe edition with its box.

The deluxe box showing the inset form of type. In the foreground the book sits on

the portfolio of state proofs and prints that accompanies the edition.

A close up of the type form.

The standard edition with its box.

A close up of the patterned paper printed from foundry Lisbon Ornaments.

While waiting

2011-10-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

While waiting for the first copies of Specimens of Diverse Characters and Nocturnes to arrive from Book Lab II next week, I decided to make a little booklet of the new foundry types I made this year with Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry. Copies will be sent to subscribers on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are some angled photos of the pages.

Nicolas

Iohann Titling

Above and below: Lisbon Ornaments

Finishing Specimens

2011-09-28T08:56:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I finished printing the interior of Specimens, which, incidentally, is now called Specimens of Diverse Characters. Afterward, Nancy Loeber, Micah Currier and Annie Schlechter all gathered at the studio to view the book and head to Peter Luger's Steakhouse for a celebratory lunch. Here are some pictures of the final weeks of printing.

The title page in process. Set in Iohann Titling.

The William Morris page. Set in Nicolas with drawn titling.

Aeschylus page masked for smoking.

Aeschylus page masked after smoking.

Final Aeschylus page with unique smoke drawing. Set in Van Krimpen Titling.

Nancy Loeber curating sheets.

The special casting of Iohann Titling cast on a 30pt body to be used for the deluxe copies.

Transferring 50 lbs of Lisbon Ornaments to the bed of my Vandercook for the standard copy pattern paper.

One of the five title pages from the text settings section. Printed intaglio in Evora Ornaments and a variety of faces form my Ventura Family.

Another title page form the text settings. Set in Saturn and Saturn Shadow.

Iohann Titling spread from Notes section.

Agnese 238 and Nicolas spread form notes section.

Russell with the bounty.

Micah Currier with the bread.

Nancy Loeber with the sauce.

Annie Schlechter with the fries.

Specimens and Nocturnes

2011-08-13T10:22:00.001-07:00

It has been a busy month in the shop. After our brief summer break, I had Nancy re-soak the Gustave Flaubert page to flatten it out after air drying at the Center for Book Arts. This second soaking of the paper transformed its surface to such an extent that the original, undampened paper feels like a clay coated sheet by comparison. The twice dampened sheet has the texture and softness of Belgian linen while still retaining the "snap" of a fine handmade paper. The moment I touched it I realized that we would have to put every sheet through the dampening process twice—3,000 sheets of paper each hand dipped in filtered water, blotted, and hung to dry. Twice. We now have two people working full time on this process.

Shortly after the Flaubert re-dampening, Micah Currier brought by the first castings of my Lisbon ornaments. Inspired by, but not based on, the calligraphy of Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva, the Lisbon ornaments are meant to work in combination to form diaper patterns. Although Ventura da Silva did work in Lisbon, I chose the name for the ornaments because of the patterned paving stones throughout Lisbon, pavings that work similarly to the ornaments. One set of the ornaments will be used to print the patterned papers for the covers of the standard edition of Specimens. The other set were used on the J L Carr page of the display settings. After publication, the Dale Guild will release a limited casting of the ornaments for sale.

While I began preparing the final files for the text settings of Specimens, we took two weeks to print a small book of 23 short prose pieces by Mark Strand in my new Strand Serif typeface. Nocturnes will ship to Book Lab II in a week or so for binding & a prospectus will be available soon. Five pieces from the same series will appear as one of the text settings in Specimens.

Back on Specimens, I've now printed three of the five text settings: The Planning of Temples by Vitruvius; On the Profligacy of Marcus Antonius by Cicero; and On the Usefulness and Invention of Writing by Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva. I will finish up the remaining two this coming week.

Finally, thinking that one new foundry type might not be enough, I decided to make a second one. My typeface Nicolas, which was drawn while thinking of the enamel-work lettering of Nicolas of Verdun, has now been cut, fit, and trial cast by Micah Currier. The type will be used for the William Morris page in the display settings as well as most of the titling in the book. Like the Lisbon ornaments, the Dale Guild will be releasing a limited casting of Nicolas for sale at the Oxford Book Fair.

Nancy and Sarah McDerrmott hanging twice dampened paper.

Two of the Lisbon ornaments cut and cast by Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry set up to print the cover paper of the standard copies of Specimens.

Foundry Iohann Titling used for the Harry Carter page.

Baker used for the Jung page.

Baskerville Great Primer with custom titling used for the Baskerville Page.

Two more of the Lisbon ornaments used with Texto Portuguez for the J L Carr page.

Strand Serif.

Doctoring a plate from the text setting of Cancellaresca Milanese Formata.

The first setting of foundry Nicolas cut and cast by Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry.

Specimens: Week Four

2011-06-29T05:14:00.001-07:00

On Monday and Tuesday, Nancy and I removed ourselves to the Center for Book Arts to print the Gustave Flaubert page from Specimens on the Center's Charles Brand etching press. The Flaubert text, which comes from his Sentimental Education, is set in a flourished variation on my Ventura Italic and surrounded by a border of calligraphic flourishes. The type has extremely fine ascenders and descenders, attributes that find their most faithful form in intaglio rather than relief (ie. letterpress) printing. Specimens features six typefaces and a suite of ornaments that were inspired by the lettering in Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva's ca. 1819 writing manual, Regras Methodicas. The Regras is an oblong folio of copper plate engravings and my challenge has been to make typefaces that work as well in letterpress as Ventura da Silva's calligraphy works when engraved. The flourished italic, though, like the Flaubert quote, cries out to be printed intaglio, it simply doesn't work when printed letterpress.

Although I have often used the Center's Brand press, I had never printed an intaglio polymer plate before this week and was a little nervous about how it would turn out. After I made a properly exposed plate (which took a few tries), Nancy and I made a wet pack of 50 sheets of paper on Sunday afternoon and left it to marinate over night. On Monday morning we met at the shop, loaded all our packages into a car, and headed to 27th street. The first couple of tries were not encouraging. The ink looked like it had been smeared on, leaving the lines blurred and spotty. With each print I increased the pressure on the press and, after the fourth bad print, began loading the Charbonnel Natural Sepia ink with magnesium carbonate to bulk it up. Once I changed the consistency of the ink from that of chocolate sauce to something closer to hot fudge, the plate began printing beautifully. The tiny hairlines, the plate tone, the occasional ink swell on the plate edge, all work together to make a page whose process and form are on an equal footing with the text.

Hand wiping the plate prior to printing.

Lifting the sheet after printing.

The finished print. Text: Gustave Flaubert; Type: Ventura Flourish Italic

*There will be no fifth week blog post as Nancy will be off roaming in the great Northwest while Annie & I swim with the dolphins in the Bay of Naples.

Specimens: Week Three

2011-06-26T13:37:00.001-07:00

This week I tackled some of the more complicated prints from Specimens. I started the week with the five color passage from Alice in Wonderland, moved on to the six color trompe l'oeil inspired by Arthur Rimbaud, and finished with the comparatively simple four color Les Jeux Sont Faits. The Arthur Rimbaud page is also printed in a series of state proofs that accompany the deluxe copies. As I learned in Æthelwold Etc., the key to layered printing like that in the Rimbaud quote is beginning with a bright yellow base and then layering successive pencil scumbles on top of it. The yellow under-painting, as it were, prevents the image form getting muddy and helps retain luminosity in the print. For both the Alice and Rimbaud pages the drawings are based on three dimensional models that I fabricated, photographed, and then drew. Whereas the Alice image was developed from intensive original sketching, the Rimbaud image is inspired by the trompe l'oeil painting on the back of Jan Gossart's Norfolk Triptych (ca. 1525-1530).

Also this week, Micah Currier at the Dale Guild Type Foundry completed the first four of six matrices for an ornament font I have designed that is loosely based on the calligraphic flourishes of Joaquim Jozé Ventura da Silva. The patterned paper used on the standard copy of Specimens will be printed from the ornaments which will also appear elsewhere in the book. After Specimens is published, the Dale Guild will release the ornament pack for sale.

Next week, Nancy and I will printing only one page of Specimens, a passage from Flaubert's Sentimental Education that we will be printing inaglio from a solar etching plate. A relief proof is pictured below.

Text: Jean-Paul Sartre; Type: a modified version of Saturn

Text: Arthur Rimbaud; Type: Gotica Italica

Text: Lewis Carroll; Type: Ventura Shaded and Ventura Italic

Four matrices for Lisbon Ornaments

Preparing the wet-pack for printing the Flaubert etching

Text: Gustav Flaubert; Type: Ventura flourished

This is a relief proof of a plate that will be printed intaglio, ie. the type will be positive rather than negative in the final version.

Specimens: Week Two

2011-06-19T10:37:00.001-07:00

What a difference a week makes. After Nancy & I figured out our paper dampening procedure, the printing has been moving along at a good pace. The paper is a delight to print on and it is accepting the ink beautifully. After last week's tenuous six press runs, this week we got fifteen printed, including the seven state proofs of the Alexander the Great page for the deluxe copies. Six of the inks I used this week were my own hand-ground inks, made using earth pigments and Daniel Smith tint base.

Text: Marcus Aurelius; Type: Agnese 238

Printed in one color

Drawing with smoke on the Æschylus page

Text: Æschylus translated by H. D. Thoreau; Type: Harlem

Printed in two colors with unique additions in candle smoke

Text: Tom-A-Bedlam's Poem; Type: Hybrid Two

Printed in six colors from four plates

Hand grinding Bohemian Green Earth ink with a glass muller

Text: Alexander the Great; Types: Agnese 238 and Cancellaresca Milanese Formata

Printed in nine impressions taken from seven plates using six ink colors. Five of the inks are hand-ground:

Bohemian Green Earth, Raw Umber Light, Raw Umber Regular, Venetian Red, Ultramarine Blue Very Deep

Text: Democritus; Type: Saturn Shadow

Inspired by relief travertine inscriptions in Rome.

The background color is a hand-ground ink made using pulverized stone

Text: W H Auden; Types: Cancellaresca Milanese Corsiva and Roma Abstract

Printed in two colors

Text: Nicolete Gray; Types: Texto Portuguez and a modified version of Ventura Shaded

Printed in three colors

Specimens: Week One

2011-06-11T14:26:00.001-07:00

This past week I began printing Specimens. I am printing on a custom making of Velke Losiny paper, a beautiful handmade sheet made in the Czech Republic. In my experiments with the paper I have found that the print quality differs greatly between solid areas of ink and fine-lined type: small sizes of type print much better when the paper has been dampened whereas large areas of ink print equally well whether the paper has been dampened or not. Dampening the paper dramatically alters its surface quality, though, so even if only some of the paper needs to be dampened for printing, all of it needs to be dampened so that there will be a consistent page texture throughout the book. In making the prototype of the binding, Craig Jensen had expressed serious concerns about the way the paper reacted to dampness and this week all of his concerns have been justified.

On Sunday afternoon, I went into the shop to dampen the first two posts of paper, fully believing that I would be printing on both sheets on Monday. Whenever I dampen paper I first try Lewis and Dorothy Allen's method of dampening every fifth sheet of paper in a stack and leaving them under weight in plastic over night. From the outset there were signs that this would not work with the Velke Losiny. The sheets that I pulled through the water bath began to stretch and contort in bizarre and unpredictable ways—ways that made me doubt that they would flatten out over night—but I proceeded despite my concerns.

At five the next morning I sat bolt upright in bed with worry and by six-thirty I was on my bike riding to the shop. When I arrived, I opened the packs of paper and found something closer to corrugated tin than fine European handmade paper. Over the course of the night the sheets had gotten just damp enough to distort them with neither enough moisture nor enough weight to make them relax. We salvaged the paper by submerging the sheets in a water bath for 20 minutes and interleaving them with blotters under more weight. By the afternoon I had judged a stack of sheets dry enough to print my two first press runs of the book while my assistant Nancy Loeber re-soaked and blotted the remaining sheets. Although the two press runs came out beautifully, over the course of printing the sheets stretched and contracted over 1/2" widthwise and 3/16" lengthwise. The only way that the multi-chromatic pages of Specimens will be able to be printed is if the paper is dampened and then thoroughly dried before printing.

On Tuesday our next step was to construct a wind tunnel similar to one I used at Dieu Donné Papermill in 1996 after I disastrously dampened some of their abaca paper. Each sheet is soaked in a water bath, toweled off, and interleaved with blotter. Each 15 sheets is further interleaved with a sheet of corrugated plastic to increase air flow, every 30 sheets is topped with a melamine board, and the whole post is wrapped in plastic that is taped around a box fan. The fan is left blowing over night and the post is topped with about 60 pounds of aluminum. When we opened the contraption up on Wednesday morning the paper was much more promising but it was still way too damp, and 1/2" wider than the dry dimension. After leaving the paper to air dry all day, I stacked the sheets before leaving and on Thursday morning they were beautiful, flat, and somehow still damp.

Realizing that we would need to dry the sheets further on a drying rack of some kind and that there is no room in my shop for a commercial drying rack of any kind, Nancy and I began further experiments on how to best hang the sheets for drying. After a few tests we set out to the lumber store and began work making some light weight drying racks that could be easily moved around the shop and hold enough paper for two press runs. After a further hour hanging on the drying racks the paper was dry enough for printing.

The Allen Method stacks

The sheets after the Allen Method dampening

Nancy Loeber soaking and blotting the sheets after the Allen incident

Nancy soaking the sheets for the wind tunnel

Toweling off the sheet for the wind tunnel

The wind tunnel

Building the drying racks

Nancy stringing twine on the drying rack

Hanging sheets on the rack

The racks in the shop

Iohann Titling Continued

2011-03-10T07:43:00.001-08:00

The Iohann Titling H and leaf matrices with castings

Yesterday, Micah Currier pulled a couple of proofs of the H and leaf ornament from the first casting of Iohann Titling. Now that he has established the correct height parallel, we have to make sure there is no stem distortion before he cuts the remaining matrices. According to Theo Rehak, there is a possible width distortion of up to 10% in either direction when the image is translated from pattern to matrix on the Benton Engraver. After scanning Micah's proof in to my computer I overlaid the original drawing for the H to find that there was considerable condensation of the letter form. This weekend, Micah will correct the distortion and re-cut the matrix.

The proof of the H with my original drawing overlaid on top of it

Specimens: Making Iohann Titling

2011-02-22T14:14:00.001-08:00

Last Friday, Micah Currier of the Dale Guild Type Foundry picked me up for our first day of work on Iohann Titling, the type that Micah will be cutting and casting for Specimens. The day started with a stop by Globe Engraving to pick up a sample pattern for cutting the matrices on the Guild's Benton Pantograph Engraver. After a couple hours at Globe we came away with a well made pattern and headed down to Howell to begin work setting up the pantograph. After a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon that included some complex mathematics and Theo Rehak playing the trumpet in the background, Micah got the Benton set up to cut the first sample matrices. He will cast the first sample characters this coming weekend.

Micah Currier locking a brass planchet into position for cutting.

Micah operating the Benton Engraver.

A tracing of the Iohann H made with the engraver.

The Thomas Edison vintage microscope used for measuring the height parallel of the engraving.

Announcing a forthcoming publication: Specimens

2011-01-21T09:45:00.001-08:00

The type specimen is a curious hybrid in the history of the book. Born of a base necessity—the need to sell type—the specimen quickly took on a life of its own and fulﬁlled a parallel need to delight and entertain. Part portfolio, part brag sheet, the type specimen allows the designer to present the best-case scenario for a speciﬁc typeface, to show off its ﬁner aspects while presenting an ideal method of use. In this way, the type specimen is flight of fancy and style manual combined, an exercise in utility heightened and illuminated by extravagance. Some of the more elaborate type specimens, like those of William H. Page and Co., are suffused with a playful futility, a special knowledge that, once sold, the types displayed will never be treated with the same reverence or care. But all type specimens, to some degree, are conceived in that rare instance in which commerce plays second ﬁddle to imagination, when the demands of industry and utility enhance, rather than diminish, the expression of a creative impulse.

When cast in this light, SPECIMENS is more accurately an exhibition than a type specimen. The alphabets displayed in it are not for sale. Instead, they were designed for proprietary use, often with speciﬁc texts or authors in mind; they were designed, in other words, to only be used in their ideal settings. While borrowing the form and the guise of the type specimen, the motivation, the book’s raison d’être, is to be an object in its own right, rather than a catalogue of typographic widgets.

The alphabets in SPECIMENS, the texts in which they are displayed, the method by which they are printed are all integral parts of a kaleidoscopic portrait. Composed of three sections, SPECIMENS opens with a multi-chromatic display of short texts set in a variety of styles. Following this, a selection of alphabets are displayed in lengthier texts appropriate to their forms: Baskerville’s Great Primer is displayed in a chapter from Candide; a new translation from Cicero’s Second Philippic is set in Cancellaresca Milanese Terzo; Saturn, which was inspired by the inscription on the Temple of Saturn, is displayed in a chapter from Vitruvius on the design of temples; Strand Serif in a selection of new prose pieces by Mark Strand; etc. Finally, the book concludes with a section of notes detailing the alphabetic and textual sources for each specimen.

SPECIMENS will be printed from photo polymer plates and metal type in a wide array of colors, with hand embellishments in ink and smoke. In all, sixteen complete alphabets will be displayed; one of which, Iohann Titling, is being cut, ﬁt, and cast in foundry metal specially for the edition at the Dale Guild Type Foundry. The paper is being handmade with a custom laurel leaf watermark at Velke Losiny in the Czech Republic. The binding will be executed by Book Lab II. A total of sixty-ﬁve copies will be printed. Fifty copies, numbered 1-50, will be bound in quarter leather with pattern paper boards and housed in a cloth covered clamshell box. Fifteen copies, lettered A-O, will be bound in full leather using two different skins, housed in a quarter leather clamshell box, and accompanied by a suite of state proofs selected from the display settings as well as a form of new metal type locked into a chase in the box. 11 x 16 inches; approximately 120 pages. Publication is expected by November 2011.

Ink Diary, 18 October

2010-10-18T13:50:00.001-07:00

After a month of anticipation, I finally boiled my first batch of linseed oil this past Saturday. On the way upstate I was particularly alert to morbid possibilities. Tales of disaster abound in the manuals I have been reading and they have steadily gained influence over my thoughts. Whole sections of London decimated by flames due to a careless ink maker. Certain pots which, when agitated, produce cascading streams of burning oil. Pre-Industrial towns mandating ink works to operate beyond the city walls because of their incumbent danger and stench. The recipes I have read that involve burning the oil put the process in an ominous context: If the oil has not already ignited on its own. Similarly, recipes that do not encourage burning the oil caution against allowing it to auto ignite, which will surely happen unless the ink maker remains vigilant. The basic recipe that I have decided to follow is a three stage process—boiling, igniting while boiling, and boiling some more—and I approached my first attempt with more than a little angst. During the weeks prior to our trip upstate I had regular visions of molten jets of burning oil erupting from my Dutch oven; decimating, at best, a couple of vegetable beds or, at worst, part of my face. To try to contain the imminent disaster I decided to cheat a little. Rather than starting with regular linseed oil I would try boiling a few cups of already thickened stand oil just to see what would happen. I bought myself a handy Mr Max butane burner figuring I could control it better than I could an open fire; and set up a workstation on a metal covered table that Annie had outfitted in the gravel drive. After a fitful night, I set to work. The process was more like running a deep fryer at a county fair than scrambling to contain Vesuvius. In barely 37 minutes the varnish appeared to be ready—a wooden stick charred immediately when inserted into the oil; and, when cooled, the varnish produced strands over an inch long when stretched between my forefinger and thumb—and I was left with a cast iron pot of thick, sticky goop full of discolored bits of burnt oil. I took the pot off the stove and placed it on the gravel driveway where, to my great frustration, it refused to catch fire. Within an hour a hardened skin similar to thick Saran wrap formed over my thickened batch of oil.

A couple of weeks ago, the printer Arthur Larson turned me onto C H Bloy's A History of Printing Ink, Balls, and Rollers 1440-1850. In it, Bloy has assembled sixty-nine ink recipes ranging from a Chinese block-printing ink from AD 251 to an account of William Morris's ink made by Jänecke of Hannover. The recipes are a fascinating distillation of the literature of a craft in that they show the near infinite distinctions possible with so few ingredients. Oil (linseed or nut), lampblack, turpentine, amber, onions, and crusts of bread. Add to these diligence, time, and fire, and you end up with sixty-nine competing arguments for how to proceed. There are few consistent instructions but there are some general trends: the British say Burn the Oil! and the French say Don't Burn the Oil! Onions or crusts of bread are helpful to either 1) absorb the oil's greasiness or 2) allow the ink to dry well, though some Encyclopædists question their effectiveness toward either end. One recipe quoted in de Champour and Malpeyre's Nouveau Manuel Complet de la Fabrication des Encres [Paris: 1856] is very specific: add 2 kilos bread to each 8 litres of oil in small slices, 3 or 4 at a time. One ingredient that most recipes agree upon, and that is pointedly absent from Baskerville's recipe, is turpentine [see below]. I am a little suspicious of Bloy, though. He has dramatically cut and re-written the Baskerville recipe that appears in Hansard's Typographia. This would be fine except that he does not admit to altering the recipe. What else has he left out of other recipes?

The three most common methods for determining that your varnish is ready are 1) it produces long threads when stretched between forefinger and thumb; 2) the crusts of bread you have inserted into the oil have charred; or 3) a wooden stick chars when inserted into the oil. The time stipulated to produce a good varnish for summer printing is consistently 5 hours. In recipes that call for burning, you boil for 2 hours, burn, and then boil for 3 more. Some recipes call for burning 5 minutes, others for 30. Some for burning while boiling, others for burning off the heat. They all emphasize that the process takes time and attention. After preparing Annie for what would be a long day boiling oil, imagine her surprise when after 45 minutes I came in and said, "I think it's done." For myself, I was deeply suspicious. I had assumed that using the thickened stand oil would reduce the time, but 37 minutes? Further, what was now in my pot didn't look like the beginnings of a fine ink. For one, the clinging, darkened skin seemed an inauspicious omen. Perhaps I could lift it off like fat from a chilled broth and beneath find a smooth, thick varnish? Repeatedly throughout the day I rubbed my fingers along the surface, trying to convince myself that this would work.

Most ink recipes of any length make special note of how important it is to not overheat the oil and to stir it consistently with an iron ladle. I threw mine on a burner turned to high and stood back, awaiting disaster. There is simply no way that I have produced a superior varnish. Next time, I will work at lower heat and stir with the same attention I would give a risotto. In the meantime, I spent an hour in my shop seeing what I could make with my first batch of mealy varnish. It is very sticky, so much so that it resists mixing or handling of any kind. After adding some amber varnish, which is 50% turpentine, it loosened up considerably and I was able to get it to accept the lampblack, though it is not fully integrated. The ink is still too tacky to make a proper draw down but I am hopeful that adding turpentine will bring it to a better working viscosity. I will try this later in the week.

Ink Diary, 29 September

2010-09-29T09:35:00.001-07:00

Palette knife and brayer draw downs of Ink 002 on the shop wall

Ink 002

Mixed 29 September 2010

First test 29 September 2010

Recipe:

30ml Ink 001 + 1ml Grove's 16th century amber varnish*

Preliminaries:

I received my 80ml bottle of "16th century amber varnish" from Grove's last week. Although I know the ink I mix with it today will be unusable, I am curious to see the effect of the amber on the ink by doing side by side draw downs with Ink 001 and Ink 002. Grove recommends one drop for a spatula knife full of oil paint. I have know idea what that would translate to in ink. I am starting with 1:30 amber to ink because a 1/4 teaspoon is 1ml and two tablespoons is 30ml (two tablespoons will yield enough ink for my experiments).

Working characteristics:

On working the ink with the brayer it had the same sloppy, splattering consistency of Ink 001. However, on clean up there was noticeably more resistance to the California Special Wash I use. I imagine I'll need to switch to Kerosene for wash up.

Drying:

The draw downs are dry after only a few hours (with the exception of thicker swells).

Odor:

The amber varnish has a good deal of turpentine in it. I guess you come to love what you know: although I can practically bathe in denatured alcohol I have always found the smell of turpentine revolting. I suppose I'll have to come to know turpentine, and love it.

_______________

* I had considered naming this ink "Ink 001a" because it is simply Ink 001 with an additive. I opted for the name "Ink 002" because all of my ink experiments will be variations on only two or three additives. I would prefer that my final ink be named "Ink 025" or "Ink 026" rather than "Ink 001y" or "Ink 001z."

Ink Diary, 22 September

2010-09-22T07:47:00.001-07:00

Ink 001

Mixed 21 September 2010

First test 22 September 2010

Recipe:

Total of 1/2 cup of ink made with 1 rounded tablespoon of lamp black and 450 dPas linseed stand oil. So far, Hebert's Encyclopædia is the only mention I've found of the proportion of pigment to oil. his recipe calls for one part pigment to seven parts oil by weight. I mistakenly mixed 1:7 by volume which will result in a highly diluted pigmentation.

Drying:

Made one draw down at 9:30 am on 21 September. Within 24 hours the ink was dry to the touch with the exception of a few thicker swells.

Before printing:

Many of the 19th century articles on ink manufacture mention the practice of adding prussian blue pigment to black ink to compensate for poor quality black pigment. This practice continues today. Nearly every commercial black ink I have used has a high blue content, making a true matte black impossible to achieve. What I am striving for with my ink is to make a black that reflects as little light as possible, turning each letter into a miniscule black hole around which the white paper shimmers. My first draw down of Ink 001 is a promising step toward my goal. The ink has a lovely matte finish and no noticeable trace of blue.

Working characteristics:

As I had suspected the ink is too fluid—it even splatters a bit when worked with a brayer. I hate to think what would happen if I put it on my press. The consistency and tack is closer to an intaglio than a relief ink. The linseed oil simply isn't thick enough. On Brian Donnell's website I found my first specific numbers for boiling linseed oil. According to Donnell, the linseed oil needs to be brought to 720-750°F before it makes an acceptable ink. That is a considerably higher temperature than stand oil is boiled to. There is no point in continuing until I boil some oil upstate.

Ink Diary, 21 September

2010-09-21T20:10:00.001-07:00

21 Spetember, Progress on linseed oil

I first read an abridged version of T. C. Hansard's recipe for Baskerville's ink in F. E. Pardoe's,John Baskerville of Birmingham: Letter Founder and Printer [London: 1975]. The general vagueness of the recipe either assumes a prior experience of ink-making on the reader's part or attempts to conceal a lack of specific knowledge on the part of Hansard (it was probably a little of both). Baskerville's ink recipe was a closely guarded secret and the information that Hansard relied upon was gathered either from Baskerville's foreman Robert Martin or, more likely, Thomas Martin, the elder printer's nephew. What first confounded me about the recipe was the method of incorporating amber into the ink but, after further reading, my focus has shifted to the preparation of the linseed oil, the base medium of the ink. Here is the complete recipe as printed by Hansard:

He took of the finest and oldest linseed oil three gallons, this was put into a vessel capable of holding four times the quantity, and boiled with a long-continued fire till it acquired a certain thickness or tenacity, according to the quality of the work it was intended to print, and which was judged of by putting small quantities upon a stone to cool, and then taking it up between the finger and thumb; on opening which, if it drew into a thread an inch long or more, it was considered sufficiently boiled. This mode of boiling can only be acquired by long practice, and requires particular skill and care in the person who superintends the operation, as, for want of this, the most serious consequences may occur, and have very frequently occurred.* The oil thus prepared was suffered to cool, and then a small quantity of black or amber rosin was dissolved in it, after which it was allowed some months to subside; it was then mixed with the fine black, before named, to a proper thickness, and ground for use.

*Here Hansard mentions that linseed oil should not be boiled in the printing office because of the ease by which it catches fire.

When I took my first exploratory trip to Kremer Pigments last week, I showed the clerk Hansard's recipe and inquired after fine, old linseed oil that I could boil. In its stead I was shown Kremer's linseed stand oil, which is a pre-boiled linseed oil that they produce in two thicknesses. I ordered a couple of liters of the thicker oil. Today I mixed some of it with finely ground lamp black which is collected in the same manner as it was in the 18th century. Over the previous couple of days I have played around with little bits of the oil on my fingers and, though it is quite thick and tacky, I have a gut feeling that it is still not thick enough. With that said, the only way I can test it is to make some ink and put it through the press. Intrigued in the meantime to learn more about the preparation of the linseed oil, I consulted Hansard's full text on printing inks in, Typographia: an historical sketch of the origin and progress of the art of printing; with practical directions for conducting every department in an office: with a description of stereotype and lithography [London: 1825]. In it, Hansard quotes from the recipe for Black Ink in Rees's Encyclopædia:

The oil is boiled in an iron pot, capable of holding at least half as much more, because it swells very much; when it boils it is kept stirring with an iron ladle; and if it does not itself take flame, it is kindled with a piece of lighted paper, or burning wood, in order to increase its consistence and tenacity, and to diminish its greasiness. The oil is suffered to burn for half an hour or more and the flame being then extinguished by covering the vessel close, the boiling is afterwards continued, with a gentle heat, till the oil appears of a proper consistence; in which state it is called varnish....

The burning of the oil is intriguing. In Luke Hebert's The Engineer's and Mechanics Encyclopædia [London: 1846], Rees's method of linseed oil boiling is repeated, but Hebert asserts that the burning of the oil is necessary for the ink to dry properly. The fact that linseed oil dries on its own, without the aid of additives, puts his claim in doubt. Rees's assertion that the oil burning lessens the inks greasiness—a consistent goal in every ink recipe I've read—and thickens the oil to the proper consistency makes more sense. I have no doubt that Kremer's stand oil is as grease-free as I am likely to find but the consistency worries me. The ink I made today (which is more properly oil paint) is too fluid to print small type well. ¶These issues of ink consistency will simply need to be resolved through experimentation. Despite my knowledge of Baskerville's ink when printed, I know nothing about how it looked or felt in his iron pot. Further, considerations of ink viscosity change dramatically when using a power driven ink cylinder, as I do, rather than a hand-held baren. Time, or more precisely Speed, is the common disconnect I am encountering. I want to print with my inks tomorrow; yet every published description of Baskerville's ink emphasizes the long periods of time he allotted for its maturation. Not only did he allow his oil to "subside" for months after boiling but he allowed his mixed ink three years to settle before grinding it for use. Baskerville's refined and delicate typefaces only printed well because of his mechanical improvements in press, paper, and ink. One of the reasons his competitors (as if he had any) were so critical of his type's fineness was undoubtedly because they knew they could never print it as well he could: Baskerville's type required Baskerville's ink. I suspect that one of the reasons he let his ink gestate for so long was so that it would thicken to the proper viscosity for printing his type.

I will publish notes on the first ink mixture after I test it tomorrow.

Ink Diary Week 1, Entry 2

2010-09-20T13:01:00.001-07:00

20 September, Progress on amber

Since my initial visit to Kremer Pigments, I have felt increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that, on the advice of two of their employees, I was going to put turpentine and amber in a pot and cook it on my kitchen stove. In my twenties I spent a few years working in art supply stores and, if I may be considered a representative cross-section, there is about a 90% chance that the advice I received at Kremer was wrong. So last night I spent a few hours reading and have had some of my concerns addressed. It turns out that the clerks I consulted at Kremer were misreading Kurt Wehlte's entry, Amber, a Hard Resin, in The Materials and Techniques of Painting:

Some amber is exceedingly hard, softening at approximately 250°C and melting between 290 and 300°C. This fossil resin cannot be dissolved directly, even in hot drying oils, but must be fused or "run" first.... Attempts to dissolve amber directly in turpentine succeeded on a small scale in the laboratory, thanks to some ingenious tricks, but these were without practical value.

The phrase that stuck out as most troubling (besides the extremely high temperatures and "without practical value") was "must be fused or 'run' first." There is no mention of melting in turpentine at heat or of the conditions required for fusing the amber. Additionally, I have no ingenious laboratory tricks up my sleeve. After a few internet searches I found a couple of helpful references on violin making and woodworking blogs. This entry posted in May 2007 by someone calling themselves Fridolin is particularly insightful:

I have recently started making my own amber varnish. I have found the descriptions given in Geary Baese's book on the old italian varnishes to work for me. The difficult part is to fuse the amber, which requires A LOT of heat. In my experience 300°C is not enough. I use special lab equipment (glassware and electric heat source). You also get a lot of toxic and smelly fumes (It can not be done inside). Once you have fused the amber, it easily dissolves in linseed oil (at a much lower temperature) and it gives a very thick varnish that dries within 24h in my UV cabinet.

In the 18th century, when amber varnish was more widely used, it must have been obvious that the amber needed to be fused before adding it to the oil. In fact, Fridolin's choice of words, "Once you have fused the amber, it easily dissolves in linseed oil," matches Hansard's Baskerville recipe exactly. Clearly, my little jam jar of linseed oil and amber will never transform into Baskerville's magic ink of its own accord. Quickly, I began searching for Mr. Geary Baese's magnum opus on old Italian varnishes. Google books has scanned one copy but does not have the rights to make it available. They list Baese as the publisher and that the copy they scanned is at the University of Michigan. Searches on bookfinder, abebooks, and Columbia University's online catalogue yielded no copies. Searching for information on Baese I found this foreboding entry from 1995 on the website of Alf Studios Concert Violins:

The pure resin varnishes he uses cost more than $10 an ounce from Geary L. Baese, 610 W. Mountain Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521, but don't bother contacting Geary unless you are a committed violin maker.

Not only am I not a committed violin maker but.... Google searches yielded no further information on Baese. ¶My next search for amber fusing techniques brought William Theodore Brannt's, Varnishes, lacquers, printing inks, and sealing-waxes: their raw materials and their manufacture, (1893) to my attention. After reading this passage on page 45, I began to have some serious second thoughts:

In fusing it [amber] suffers decomposition. It gives off water, succinic acid, marsh gas, and a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons (known as oil of amber), while a more or less dark-colored substance, the so-called amber-colophony or fused amber, remains behind. This amber-colophony is the substance which is especially prepared for the manufacture of lacquers by roasting amber.... The oil of amber, which in fusing amber may be obtained as a by-product, forms in a refined state a pale-brown fluid of a strong, disagreeable odor. The crude oil is dark brown, and possesses a very repugnant odor.

After reading this enticing description, I began searching for where to buy already fused amberrather than searching for how to fuse amber. The first hit was a 10ml (2/3 tablespoon) vial available from Dick Blick for the discounted price of $133 and change. Successive searches found a number of small workshops making amber linseed varnish at a more reasonable price. I have decided to leave that stage of the process to other craftsmen.

Ink Diary Week 1

2010-09-19T15:58:00.001-07:00

19 September 2010

A few weeks ago, after reading too much news about various corporate trespasses, I decided that my small autumnal rebellion against corporate malfeasance would be to manufacture my own printing inks. Looking, of course, to John Baskerville for guidance I dredged up T C Hansard's recipe for Baskerville's ink from F. E. Pardoe's biography. Neither Baskerville nor his widow Sarah would divulge the secrets of his lustrous black ink but various sources were culled together into a recipe by Hansard in 1825, fifty years after Baskerville's death. On the surface, the recipe sounds fairly straightforward—a bit of lamp black collected from furnace burners mixed in with thickened linseed oil—but for the one predictable exception: "The oil thus prepared was suffered to cool, and had then a small quantity of black or amber rosin dissolved in it, after which it was allowed some months to subside..." [my emphasis] On a close reading of the recipe, the problems begin to multiply. First of all, what does a small quantity of rosin mean? Is it one part per ten or one part per hundred? The issue is one of elasticity: too much rosin will result in an inflexible ink which could potentially crack when dried. The only way to discover the proper proportion is through experimentation. ¶Second, although I can obtain all of the ingredients Hansard mentions from Kremer Pigments, the staff at Kremer assures me that amber has to be dissolved in turpentine (which is highly flammable and noxious) at a temperature of over 500 degrees fahrenheit. The resulting mixture is a shellac used predominantly in oil painting. Considering Baskerville's years in the Japanware business it makes sense that he would be well versed in the use of shellacs. But Hansard never mentions shellac. The rosin is not added to the linseed oil as a liquid but as a solid, it is dissolved in the oil. Which brings up the issue of time and heat. Does, "after which it was allowed some months to subside," mean that it took some months for the rosin to dissolve in tepid oil? Was the oil re-heated to aid the dissolution of the rosin and then allowed some months to subside? Against the better judgement of Kremer's chemists, I am opting to stick with Hansard for the moment. I have added 15ml of solid amber rosin to 150ml of linseed stand oil at room temperature. If the amber has not dissolved at all in a week I will try the same proportions over heat.

The Color of the Tiber

2010-09-07T14:00:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished printing Swan & Hoop 2: A Roman Inscription on Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio. Like Mediæval in Padua before it, A Roman Inscription features a map that has been paired down to the essential landmarks that are discussed in the book. Unlike the map in Mediæval in Padua, though, the Rome map is entirely black with one red structure denoting Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio and a curving bluish line where the Tiber River bisects the city. All of this seemed straight forward enough until I began mixing the ink. The trouble with urban Italian waterways is that the water in them is green (or brown when it rains). This presents a host of problems when printing maps of Italian cities. I have never considered myself a realist but to print the Tiber in a bright aqua would be visually confusing to anyone who has walked along the river's banks. Despite its status as an ever flowing source of myth the Tiber is simply not blue. And therein lies the rub. To print a river in muddy green ink, however accurate, would throw off the visual balance of the map, disrupting the legibility of the image and causing the viewer to momentarily miss the point. So the goal was to make a color that is at once blue and ambiguous, evocative without being sentimental or misleading. My solution to this was to mix a blue that is actually a blue interpretation of brown, an ink composed of blue, green, yellow, red, black, titanium white, and transparent extender.

Open Studio at the American Academy in Rome, 27 May

2010-06-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

Rome Alphabets

2010-03-26T04:27:00.001-07:00

Since arriving in Rome last September I have been working on the design of 10 alphabets. Each of the alphabets draws inspiration, in varying degrees, from an inscription in the city of Rome. Below are samples of 7 of the alphabets paired with photographs of the inscriptions that inspired them.

An inscription in the portico of S Maria in Trastevere and the type inspired by it

An inscription in S Agnese fuori le mura and the type inspired by it

An inscription in the Museo Capitoline and the type inspired by it

An inscription in the cortile of the American Academy in Rome and the type inspired by it

The inscription on the Temple of Saturn and the type inspired by it

The inscription on the Baker's tomb and the type inspired by it

An inscription in the portico of S Maria in Trastevere and the type inspired by it

San Lorenzo fuori le mura

2010-01-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

Annie and I unexpectedly found ourselves at the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le mura yesterday. As with most Roman churches, San Lorenzo is actually a group of buildings variously allied, edited, and re-imagined throughout a thousand year period (give or take); retroactively conceived, as Rome is, as a spatial embodiment of time. Finding its final form in the 13th century, the basilica was spared the steroidal Baroque face lifts that lend S. Maria Maggiore and S. Govanni in Laterano their bloated, though lovely, aspect. By contrast, San Lorenzo is svelte, with a heightened elongation due to its lack of a transept.

The profusion of historical styles that makes Rome so visually delightful is everywhere present in San Lorenzo. The 13th century mosaic frieze above antique Ionic columns; the 1954 war memorial blocking parts of the 13th century frescoes on the porch; the Roman (Pagan) sarcophagus re-appropriated (and inscribed) in 1256 to house the remains of a Cardinal; the rusted metal carapace of an allied bomb on a shelf above 12th century Cosmatesque floors. The relationship between time and artifact is physical, alive, and expressive.

Interspersed throughout the multiple levels of the church are various early Christian and 11th and 12th century inscriptions as well as an extensive painted inscription written in a nebulous Round gothic hand. As we circled the raised chancel, we followed signs to the 12th century cloister which is accessed through the sacristy. In the walls of the cloister are nearly 1,000 inlaid objects including hundreds of inscriptions, either whole or in pieces, many removed from the catacomb on the grounds. Below are some highlights.

Light and airy early Christian inscription below the raised chancel.

Above and below: note the disparity between the highly stylized lettering of the first 4 lines and the rather humdrum lettering in the last two.

Note, also, the beautifully realized CRATO from SACRATO, last word fourth line

Above and below: 1148 inscription above the altar.

Note the MA ligature (between the S and the GI)

1068 inscription with decoration similar to that found in the spandrels of the Basilica of S. Sabina.

Painted inscription in nebulous round Gothic hand. Reminiscent of Mosan lettering of late 12th/early 13th century.

Cloister of San Lorenzo, 1187-1191

Above and below: walls of inscription pieces in the cloister.

Excitedly pointing out a très art deco B

Walk to the Catacombs of S. Domitilla, 5 October

2009-10-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

As I walk through Rome, I oscillate between recognition and dejà vu, desire and inevitability. Turning a corner, looking at a facade, entering a church — every action is expectant, alive with the possibility of reunion. Letters are everywhere: cut into walls and bridges, crammed into cortili, scattered on the ground like seedlings. Rome is an alphabetic tessellation, a lettered mosaic of time. On every walk I take, I happen upon an inscription that I've previously only known from faded books.

Last weekend an historian here mentioned that I should visit a 1st century BCE inscription on "one of the bridges on the Isola Tibernia." Having no specific plan for my walk to Domitilla, I decided to use this as my starting point. The Isola is connected to the western bank of the Tiber by Ponte Cestio and to the east by Ponte Fabricio. When I arrived on the eastern bank, I hung my head over the side and saw the magnificent Fabricius inscriptions that I have seen reproduced so many times but never seen in person. It was thrilling. The E alone is worth the trip: so thoroughly non-Imperial, it is broad and pre-supposing with a decadent lack of propriety. My camera is not equal to the task that these inscriptions present (Annie and I will go back for better images), but the picture below accurately recreates my first sighting of the inscription.

The eastern-most inscription on the northwest face of the Ponte Fabricio

From the Ponte Fabricio I headed down to the via del Teatro di Marcello and the elaborately carved, 12th century cornice of the Casa dei Crescenzi. The arched inscription above the door is wonderfully sober for its period and is a reminder that Romanesque lettering styles defy easy classification: they were local phenomena united by broad generalities. Looking at this inscription would give you no insight into the wild melange of transalpine Romanesque lettering. Instead, it is more reminiscent of early Humanist lettering in and around Florence.

Part of the inscription above the door of the Casa dei Crescenzi

Hoping to make it to Domitilla before the noon break, I proceeded to the Circus Maximus. Once there, I opted to walk through the length of its open track. The sun was so hot, the sky clear. Ahead of me a couple of people wandered around with their dogs, but the general bareness of the place heightened my previous impression of the Circus as a kind of anti-spectacle, a historical no-mans land that makes people uneasy and uncertain. What does one do there? In a different context, the Circus would be a crowded urban parkland but it's status as "RELIC" prevents its utilization. For a designer, the Circus offers many lessons, most notably the lesson of breadth. Emperors and fascists understand this, the importance of breadth in the public architectural gesture. It makes people feel important, makes them feel that their leaders hold them in esteem. But when the spectacle is no longer there, is buried beneath eighty feet of earth, the focus of the space is inverted. You are what is to be seen and the enormity of the space only emphasizes your smallness. It would be an interesting project to try to transform the public perception of this place.

From the Circus, I continued southeast along the broad via delle Terme di Caracalla, finding shade in an alley of umbrella pines and olive trees. The via is made up of four roadways separated by three green spaces, of which the central one is a park in itself with bicycle paths and exercise equipment. In contrast to the Circus this roadway feels disingenuous — it is not grand, it is simply very big.

Within sight of the Baths of Caracalla, I turned once more into the via di Porta San Sebaastiano and headed to the Appia Antica. I arrived at the coffee bar across from Quo Vadis at quarter to twelve meaning that I would have to wait at least two hours before getting in to Domitilla. After a leisurely lunch of Tonorelli Cacia e Pepe, I headed south through the park over the Catacomb of San Calisto.

A gaggle of nuns leaving the Catacomb of San Calisto

Unlike those of San Sebastiano, the grounds of the Catacomb of S. Domitilla are consciously designed as an attraction. There are shaded picnic tables, a small kitchen in which pilgrims can microwave their lunch, and a high pink perimeter wall with DOMITILLA stenciled on it. As you approach the entrance there are faux inscriptions engraved with the symbols of early Christianity — the orrant, fish, anchor, etc — and a gently gurgling fountain. After a two and a half hour walk, the shaded tables of the Domitilla waiting area are very welcoming.

Soon, a pleasant man named Cyril approached and told me that I was the only English and that I would have a personal tour. We descended. While San Sebastiano is crowned by a large Basilica, the Basilica of Nereus and Achilleus at Domitilla is still underground. The roof is new, but neither it nor the rest of the Basilica received the Baroque make over typical of other basilicas. Instead, it is brick and mortar, and the only decorations are the pieces of inscriptions that, according to Cyril, the Vatican has not taken. As we walked through the church, Cyril made a point of saying that they didn't actually know which of the inscriptions were pagan and which were Christian. It didn't matter, though, because after Constantine all of the pagans became Christians anyway.

We headed down into the catacomb. I asked if the few inscriptions in the tunnels were in their original position and he said that none of them were; they were all found on the floor and there is no way of knowing where they were originally placed. (My project was specifically to document in situ inscriptions. There are none.) When I told him that I was interested in studying the inscriptions he lamented that the Vatican had taken all of the good ones and that, although he worked at Domitilla, his favorite catacomb was Priscilla. They have lots of good pictures there, he said. We spent a lovely half hour together. Cyril seemed eager to talk and he appeared especially keen on facts. Among other things, he told me that the catacombs had a constant temperature of 65 - 70 degrees fahrenheit and a constant relative humidity of 70%. He pointed out that the ceiling was coated with glistening beads of water. We ran our hands across a couple of inscriptions and felt the moisture on them.

At one point, while Cyril was showing me a ceiling fresco of Jonah being spit out by the whale (it looked like a squiggle of green paint) we had to move aside to let a group through. He explained that groups can arrange to celebrate mass in a catacomb cryptoporticus. It gave me chills just thinking about it. Is the concept of martyrdom truly a selling point in vacation travel? Have these people seen a newspaper in the last ten years? I tried to imagine the travel brochure. "While in Rome, we'll take you forty feet underground to celebrate mass in a desecrated graveyard. Box lunch included."

As we came to the end of the tour I asked Cyril if it was possible to get a private tour of the rest of the tunnels. He looked at me a little puzzled and said, "Why would you want to do that? There's nothing there. They all look like this."

The pyramid and the Porta San Paolo, through which I re-entered the city

First Walk to the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, 18 September

2009-09-20T05:04:00.000-07:00

It is disorienting traveling through Rome. Sight, sound, space, and time occur at continually alternating paces and scales: the tearing sound of Vespas punctuating the slow trickle of fountains; the exuberant plan of monumental space surrounded by crowded, spider-veined streets; the incessant kaleidoscope of the antique, medieval, baroque, and modern; the collusion of the urban and the rural. Very simply: there are no straight lines here, and my first walk to the catacombs sought to emphasize this.

The physical reality of having had to be buried outside the walls of ancient Rome cannot be conceptualized. The maps that I have been studying, however full of intrigue and delight, are poor ciphers. The human distances, the terrain of removal beyond the hills, the physical drain of visitation — these are things that can only be measured with one's feet. To this end, I decided that we would make our way through the old city first and then head out over the Celio into the campagna.

In my studio before leaving

We descended the Janiculum on the via Garibaldi and crossed the Tiber on the Ponte Palatino. After dashing across four lanes of careening Fiats, we puzzled briefly at the inaccessibility of the Temple of Vesta, and headed on to the Circus Maximus. My first reaction upon seeing the Circus was that I had been misinformed. Where were the stones and the walls, the crumbling capitals? Separating the Palatine and Aventine hills, the Circus is somewhat of an anti-climactic park when one is hopped up on the romance of decay. There is a large central depression bisected on the long axis by a raised berm, transforming the depression into more of a track or course. On the southwest side, the earth rises up toward the Aventine, forming a tiered seating section that runs the length of the Circus. Facing this is another, lower berm rising toward the Palatine. As we walked along the Palatine side, and walked, and walked, I became increasingly aware of the enormity of the place. It is a gigantic earthwork, a pre-historic depression possessed of a quiet monumentality, lying dormant among the clamoring ruins. The Circus is not a ruin. It is a memorial.

The Colosseum with the coffered ceiling of the Temple of Venus and Roma in the background

When we reached the end of the Circus, we turned northeast up the via San Gregorio toward the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum. Traveling from the Republican dent in the ground, the Circus, to the magnificent Colosseum is a compact lesson in the genius of propaganda. A carnal will to empire coursed through me as we approached the complex. The triumphal Arch of Constantine comes fully into view first, but gradually cedes the foreground to the Colosseum. As you begin to round the Colosseum, Constantine is joined by the Arch of Titus and the beautifully coffered ceiling of the Temple of Venus and Roma in the background. The earth rises as you begin to ascend the Celio and the perspective shift seems to suggest that you can conquer the Colosseum, or at least understand the magnitude of vision that conceived it. You cannot. The structure is all consuming, drawing your attention as fire draws oxygen from the air. Looking back at the Colosseum from the top of the Celio, the via Claudia offers a direct view down to the ruin, which sits there, immovable, like an inescapable fact.

As you crest the hill, and the Colosseum recedes from sight, you realize that you have left the city. The via della Navicella takes you down the back side of the Celio. It is a busy thoroughfare, frenzied with people traveling to the southeast ring road and the Autostrada. In the contracted universe of Rome, this stretch of road has a completely different character than the city: it is suburban and subject to the rules of suburbia. The street is wider and more consciously landscaped, the cars more plentiful and unapologetic in their movements. The Commune's nursery is at the bottom of the hill and the orderly rows of plants in faux terra cotta planters feel perfectly at home there.

As quickly as the city transmutates into suburb on the Celio, the suburb gives way to the countryside the moment you turn off of the Piazalle Numa Pompilio and into the via di Porta San Sebastiano. The street is paved with cobble stones and fronted on both sides by high garden walls, over which the tops of pines are visible. The Forum is literally and figuratively very far away. It is here that you begin to understand the political and social distances that separated Jews and Christians from the Romans. The cemeteries or catacombs were in the countryside because it was illegal to be buried within the city walls. The refusal to be cremated was an assertion of political will as well as a religious mandate — it demonstrated a willingness to be ostracized from the official cult. Living in an era when religion is so often used as a form of political theater, my senses have been dulled by the constant volley of religious imperative. The public performance of religion makes me bristle, in fact, but I did not come to Rome to study religion. The performance of early Christianity (before the tables were turned) was a revolutionary act, and as with all successful revolutions the polarities must be symbolically and literally described. Passing out of the ancient city and into the via di Porta San Sebastiano you gain insight into the symbolism of distance.

1327 inscription on the Porta San Sebastiano

As we continued our walk down the via Porta San Sebastiano, the Porta itself inevitably came into view. The gate and surrounding wall are covered with inscribed graffiti, mostly from the 18th century, and one large inscription from 1327. Between bursts of jockeying Fiats, Annie and I managed to photograph most of the inscriptions. Passing through the gate, we were now on the Appian Way.

Graffiti on the Porta San Sebastiano

The graphic identity of the catacomb way-finding signage is wonderfully refreshing. It would be so easy, when faced with designing such things, to fall into shallow mimesis, to adorn the signs with naïve fish, doves, and anchors. Instead the signs are brazenly unsentimental. They remind me of the license plates of 1970s New York — chunky, cramped, navy blue lettering set against a brilliant yellow background. Exchange LATRINE or FACTORY or SUMMER CAMP for CATACOMBE and the sign would make just as much sense.

Dueling motorinos on the via Appia Antica

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the via Appia Antica. It is a beautiful road, but it is being pushed beyond capacity by the traffic that courses through it. When it splits off from the via Ardeatina, the sidewalks disappear and walking along it begins to feel more like a jousting match than a late summer passagiata. Luckily, there is a walking path through the park that separates the two roads, where one need only contend with the grazing sheep.

Sheep grazing above the Catacomb of San Calisto, with the Porta San Sebastiano in the background

When at last we arrived at the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, they were (of course) closed, leaving us two hours to kill before they would re-open. Entering the church, we were immediately confronted by the great Damasian inscription designed by the calligrapher Furio Dionysius Philocalus (third quarter of the fourth century). It is not easy to convey what the experience was like for me. I first saw a reproduction of this inscription when I was 18 years old and I have admired it ever since. If I had ever known where it was located I had forgotten, so I was taken completely by surprise when we opened the door and cast a large swath of daylight across it.

Damasian Inscription in honor of St. Eutychius, designed by Furio Dionysius Philocalus

This inscription gets a lot of attention by lettering historians for a number of reasons: 1) we know the name of the calligrapher who designed it; 2) the lettering style was developed specifically for the texts of Pope Damasus; 3) the lettering is monumental in its conception, but personal in its execution (ie the abundant use of ornament cannot be appreciated from a distance); and 4) the complete inscription is intact. The lettering of Philocalus is unusual in many ways: it is exaggeratedly bi-cameral; the serif formation, while decorative, is too elaborate to be efficiently applied; and the forms are very clearly drawn rather than written. Needless to say, Philocalian lettering did not take off as a tradition. What I find most surprising about Philocalus' lettering is that it anticipates many of the formal concerns of Italian Art Nouveau lettering 1,500 years in advance. In looking closely at the inscription I was happily surprised by an edit made by the carver. Someone had gotten ahead of themselves and spelled TVRBAN as TVBBAN — a very convenient error with a comparatively easy solution.

An epigraphic error with a convenient solution

Before leaving the church we caught a glimpse of a large epigraphic collection behind glass doors. Excitedly, we went to lunch. We lunched on pasta and salad beneath an ivy covered pergola, beside a lazy fountain, overlooking the tomb of Cecilia Metella. After lunch, we took the lackluster English language tour of the catacombs. The rush of cool air that rises to meet you as you descend is eery and wonderful and certainly the most scintillating part of the tour. A few inscriptions remained, but they were a little too conveniently placed for me to believe that they were in situ. When we arose from the land of the dead, we passed by the glass doors of the epigraphic collection. I asked the tour guide if the collection was open for viewing. She said, "There are real things in there, so we don't let people see them," and walked away.