The U.S. military hit the wrong house with a 500 lb. bomb today killing 14 innocent people in Aitha, Iraq. Between natural disasters like the tsunami and Bush's acts against innocent people, the timeless ideals of printing and craft beguile and distract.
Basic information to those who are fascinated by beautiful books and their histories has been made available in Fine Printing by William S. Peterson, University of Maryland. Peterson is the edior and designer of The Well-Made Book: Essays and Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike . There is an interview with him at Reservocation and his comments about type faces designed since the digital revolution are insightful. He also talks about the dispersion of collections and notes the importance of the collection at the St.Bride Printing Library.
The St Bride Printing Library opened in 1895 as a technical library. From the beginning it was one of the great collections of the historical literature of printing. The library of William Blades (1824-90), master printer and author of a classic study of William Caxton, was saved from dispersal and acquired in 1891. Other important collections in the library include those of Talbot Baines Reed (1852-93), a typefounder and historian of typefounding, and John Southward (1840-1902), a technical journalist with a wide-ranging interest in contemporary developments.
