9.27.06

Bookish

Alan, Beth and I went to a reception at the Book Club of California yesterday, at the invitation of our former Typography instructor, Alastair Johnston:

We were the youngest people there by a factor of at least a third, and definitely the most slovenly. However, there was plenty of free champagne, and we were strongly encouraged to come back when they replenish the high-end scotch supply after the new year. More importantly, we saw a number of beautiful, limited edition hand-illustrated and typeset books. I didn’t get a decent photo of either of Alastair’s books, but the photo above should give you a taste of what we saw.

There was also an iron printing press there, circa god knows when – the type you have to manually operate à la Gutenberg. It reminded me of an excellent Alastair quote from one of our class lectures:

This is the kind of printing press you could lose a limb in, or a small child.

Fortunately, this one was simply used to support a pyramid of champagne glasses.

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