About the broadsheets

When, early in 1960, Barbara Howard and I decided to start up a small press (`found' would then have been a term unfamiliar to us in this connection; and with no pecuniary motive we did not think of ourselves as `proprietors'), we had several motives and numerous confusions.

Barbara had become interested in and was producing her first wood engravings. She sought a practicable alternative to hand-burnishing; a press of some sort seemed an obvious answer.

Largely through my close friendship with Allan Fleming, I had become aware of some of the complexities, niceties and rewards of fine printing, typography and book production. Allan encouraged me in the notion that nothing so enables one to appreciate these matters as does the actual designing, setting and printing from type and blocks.

My own output of poems was rapidly outstripping the realistic possibilities of ephemeral publication; one of the obvious solutions was to produce small editions of at least a few poems ourselves, for our own pleasure and that of a few friends.

Also we had produced, by one means or another, a Christmas keepsake each season since our first coming together, in London in 1955. That first effort was in fact a linocut, printed on mulberry paper and tipped onto a grey sugar-paper card. Latterly, however, we had keepsakes commercially designed and printed; a press of our own would enable us independently to produce our future keepsakes, a practice that had become increasingly meaningful to us both.

Our confusions were those of any largely uninformed amateurs approaching a craft with longstanding, elaborate disciplines. Youthful enthusiasm and some sound counsel, however, were sufficient to get us moving in the right directions, and we had the good sense to learn from our initial mistakes. And we were sensible of the pronouncement of that master typographer, Jan Tschichold:

`Beginners and amateurs in typography attribute too much weight to so-called inspiration. Perfect typography comes into being through the correct choice between various possibilities, the knowledge of which rests on long experience. The right choice is a matter of tact and taste. In a good typographical design all single units are interrelated by a single idea. Good typography is an extremely logical art, and it is precisely this inexorable logic that distinguishes it from other art forms.'

Reprinted from A Brief History of Time at The Gauntlet Press (Or, Some Days the Earth Moved) by Richard Outram, the full text of which is available Here.