The printing of a masterpiece A MEMOIRAlan Loney This gem of a book... reminiscent of writers such as Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco Fiona Capp, The Age a beautifully crafted journey of creativity and a reflection on a life’s work of striving to produce something so perfect it leaves you feeling deeply fulfilled. Michael Small, NSW Guild of Craft Bookbinders |
Alan Loney’s interview about The printing of a masterpiece was broadcast on NSW Radio 2SER on the 14 July 2008 episode of ‘Final Draft: Books and Writing.’ In a charming interview with Benedict Taylor former New Zealander and Australian resident Alan Loney reveals insights into his philosophy and art (click here for podcast: note - the Loney interview starts at 17 minutes 05 seconds into the show)
I cannot think of any work that resembles The printing of a masterpiece. It is a memoir of the flowing intermesh of typography, ink-and-paper, Renaissance cultural history and deeply personal, hands-on knowledge. It is about the printing of an exquisite book, an object in which every stage of craftsmanship has been scrupulously considered.
Inside the printer’s narrative there grows, like something marvellous in a tropical aquarium, Leonardo da Vinci’s incipient book on Nothing. The printing of a masterpiece pays its tribute to predecessors and exemplars; to Aldus Manutius, Joseph Moxon or Eric Gill. The reader is gently led to feel inward with Process. It’s a book about making, and about understanding. We come away knowing a great deal more than we did.
Alan Loney is a beautiful stylist - lucid and compelling. He takes us into the heart of that question: How is a book actually made? It is an ultra-fine book whose growth he charts, but what happens happens, in petto, with all printed books. I have never seen paper, ink or type described in such a sexy way, let alone the character of pen nibs. For all its refinement of style and subject matter this text is, as my late Professor used to say, a rattling good read.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe
ISBN 9781876044589
Published 2008
$26.95
126 pgs
The printing of a masterpiece book sample
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Reviews
The printing of a masterpiece
The Limits of the Book
A Fryer Library exhibition
University of Queensland Library, 2009
This book gives a wonderful insight into the nexus between informative text and book-making aesthetics that is demonstrated by most of the books in this section. Combining thoroughly practical matters like the necessary degree of damping of paper before printing with a luminous sense of the beautiful artifact that can be made, the text traces a book's evolution from initial concept to completion, and details some of the choices that are faced in the process. The project discussed is a small edition (26 copies) of The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci of which no copies may be for sale. This does not rank highly as a business plan, perhaps, but Loney offers an unforgettable evocation of the sensuousness of picking up a well-made book:
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The Limits of the Book
A Fryer Library exhibition
University of Queensland Library, 2009
This book gives a wonderful insight into the nexus between informative text and book-making aesthetics that is demonstrated by most of the books in this section. Combining thoroughly practical matters like the necessary degree of damping of paper before printing with a luminous sense of the beautiful artifact that can be made, the text traces a book's evolution from initial concept to completion, and details some of the choices that are faced in the process. The project discussed is a small edition (26 copies) of The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci of which no copies may be for sale. This does not rank highly as a business plan, perhaps, but Loney offers an unforgettable evocation of the sensuousness of picking up a well-made book:
Having [the book] in
your hands, turning the pages, finding the text and the pictures in
some sort of relation with each other, feeling the weight of it,
smelling it, noticing how the colours of the materials and the colours
of the images match or clash with each other, sensing whether the paper
is too thin, too thick or just right in relation to the size of the
book and the quality of its content—all these questions are for
the reader to experience and enjoy. (p.34)
The printing of a masterpiece
Andrew Johnson (Gabriel Press, Cambridge)
Parenthesis, The Journal of the Fine Press Book Association (UK & USA), No. 16, February 2009
This is an intriguing book through which, as Alan Loney said recently in a broadcast, the author ‘wanted to talk to the general reader.’ Those who read Crispin Elsted’s review in Parenthesis 13 will know of Loney as a New Zealand poet and hand-press printer/publisher now living in Australia. The printing of a masterpiece purports to be an account of designing and printing Leonardo on Nothingness at, according to his title page for it, ‘his private press, Utopia.’ The absence of the preposition highlights the ambiguity Loney revels in: is Utopia the name of the press or the place? He did produce Leonardo on Nothingness for his Electio Editions in 2004 and in 21 short sections he takes us through some practical questions of its making (what is the best font, ink, and paper to use; how much of it do I need; how do I keep the paper damp without it going mouldy in a warm climate; how do I print black illustrations on black paper; and so on), meditations on the vocational activity of achieving a book and philosophical explorations on the nature of nothingness with passing references to Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
His first glimpse of the idea of a book as an object in itself came to Loney in his early twenties, when he had access to a large library in a private house. Here he caught the sensuality of leather bindings with their raised bands and gilded tooling, the rough feel of thick paper and impress of type, all independent of content. The delight in the sheer physicality of the book has not left him, as he details the decisions he needs to take, including the economics of it all. Where to begin? The preference he states here is not to plan rigidly to the last detail before starting (‘from the outside in’) but, having made certain basic choices, to allow the book to develop, so that, for example, the title page could be the last thing he designs once all else is printed. His section on choice of font gives us a flavour of him at work: Gill Sans for his minimal text (fewer than 800 words over a dozen or so pages), for its absence of the classically carved form he wished to avoid and its warmth relative to other sans serif fonts. The text he printed for his Electio edition, however, uses the type he explicitly rejects in this utopian book, Mardersteig’s Dante. Loney’s ‘masterpiece,’ we realise, is the book he might have printed but didn’t and this account is the story of what might have happened had he done so.
The teasing becomes clear. ‘It is a great book,’ he writes in his introduction, ‘but I am aware that this is ambiguous.’ The ambiguities lie not solely in the reasons he gives but also in the fact that, like nothingness itself, the volume does not exist except in his (and through his description of it, the reader’s) imagination. He succeeds in his wish ‘to convey something about what I have come to understand about being in the world as a creative person,’ making great metaphysical claims for his occupation. One section is called ‘The printery as cosmological haven,’ an ordered universe in which all phenomena in space and time coexist. For Loney, the book becomes a ‘hallowed’ object, ‘for’, to adapt the words of the fifteenth-century lyric, ‘in this room conteynyd was / heven and erthe in lytyl space.’
With his tone of considered conversation, he conveys what it might be like to be a printer and what it is like to be reader. Why have a title page and running titles, he asks: are we ‘likely to forget what book we are reading, as if I might mistake this excruciatingly erudite tome on particle physics for a romance novel and wonder why I don’t seem to be getting to any juicy bits.’ The printer and writer become readers too: the slow pace of typesetting certainly sharpens up one’s responses to the text.
To those unattuned to Loney’s ‘gnomic utterances’ (see Roderick Cave’s reminiscences of him in Matrix 26), relax and treat yourselves to a series of paradoxes: the fiction of a book which does not exist, on a topic which does not exist, citing an author who does not exist (his Leonardo is also a construct of Loney’s readings and adaptations). Relish the fact that perfection is unattainable. The masterpiece which qualified the apprentice craftsman to join the guild turns out to be elusive as he approaches the next transition. Few books on printing invite you to consider that death is the bridge between being and nothingness. Even fewer suggest this so entertainingly. Gill’s God can look dangerously like Gill; Loney’s God may well turn out to have a greater sense of sparkle and fun.
The printing of a masterpiece
Marcia Karp (Boston University)
SHARP News (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing), Vol. 18, No. 2, Spring 2009
Alan Loney’s masterpiece is a
32-page book, printed on black paper, in an edition of 26, lettered
A-Z. Not until the final twenty pages of his account of making it does
he, who has served literature in so many offices - as writer, editor,
printer, and publisher - write, ‘tomorrow I begin the new work,
the printing of a book by hand’ (pg 81). I give nothing away
about this book - printed in the usual black ink on the usual white
paper - which gives so much to its readers, in quoting the final
sentence. This reminds us of an honorably shared service necessary in
order for literature to thrive: ‘Today I sat down and, with all
the time in the world on my hands, read the book, literally, from cover
to cover’ (pg 111).
You might imagine that the pages between tomorrow and today are filled with the technical matters of printing. You’d be right. They are, and yet, like the book that comes into existence as we watch, the short title of which is On Nothingness: From the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, this one, nominally about fine-book printing, has to do with everything and nothing, so that when Loney finally makes his dummy, shows us how he dampens the sheets - one way to prepare for the black ink of the images (upon the black page), another way for the gold ink of the text, and demonstrates, as he composes, letter by letter, with his newly-cast type, how much more patient he is than we’d likely be, we have already been well-prepared for those matters and many more.
Loney has designed Leonardo’s book ‘from the inside out’ (pg 40). His first decision was to use the black paper, but for what, he didn’t know. As he claims, and as he shows, by letting us in on his meditations, one thing leads to, or away from, another. The history of the book, that of printing, the physical stuff of printing, commerce and art, Leonardo’s notebooks, and Loney’s own poetry, as well as the trust he has in what he knows and what he will stumble over, all accompany him from that beautiful paper on the shelf of his printery to the masterpiece in his hands.
This book, Loney on Loney, is charming. While reading it, you might yearn for the sumptuous texture and intriguing dark and light of that fine book, Leonardo on Nothingness. That yearning is Loney’s, too. Yours, however, will come too late, for none of the 26 copies remains available. Still, there is another yearning, common - though not all too - that a book fine in other ways can satisfy: the intimate populating of ourselves with the language of someone worth listening to. Such a combination is rare enough, but is on offer in Loney’s fine account of his yearning to be part of something great. This book, too, is nice enough in the hands; it is a paperback that doesn’t curl and which has pages of crisp type with generous margins. Look for Albrecht Dürer’s pressman on the cover, and then judge this book for yourself.
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You might imagine that the pages between tomorrow and today are filled with the technical matters of printing. You’d be right. They are, and yet, like the book that comes into existence as we watch, the short title of which is On Nothingness: From the Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, this one, nominally about fine-book printing, has to do with everything and nothing, so that when Loney finally makes his dummy, shows us how he dampens the sheets - one way to prepare for the black ink of the images (upon the black page), another way for the gold ink of the text, and demonstrates, as he composes, letter by letter, with his newly-cast type, how much more patient he is than we’d likely be, we have already been well-prepared for those matters and many more.
Loney has designed Leonardo’s book ‘from the inside out’ (pg 40). His first decision was to use the black paper, but for what, he didn’t know. As he claims, and as he shows, by letting us in on his meditations, one thing leads to, or away from, another. The history of the book, that of printing, the physical stuff of printing, commerce and art, Leonardo’s notebooks, and Loney’s own poetry, as well as the trust he has in what he knows and what he will stumble over, all accompany him from that beautiful paper on the shelf of his printery to the masterpiece in his hands.
This book, Loney on Loney, is charming. While reading it, you might yearn for the sumptuous texture and intriguing dark and light of that fine book, Leonardo on Nothingness. That yearning is Loney’s, too. Yours, however, will come too late, for none of the 26 copies remains available. Still, there is another yearning, common - though not all too - that a book fine in other ways can satisfy: the intimate populating of ourselves with the language of someone worth listening to. Such a combination is rare enough, but is on offer in Loney’s fine account of his yearning to be part of something great. This book, too, is nice enough in the hands; it is a paperback that doesn’t curl and which has pages of crisp type with generous margins. Look for Albrecht Dürer’s pressman on the cover, and then judge this book for yourself.
Alan Loney's The printing of a masterpiece
Michael Small
Newsletter of the NSW Guild of Craft Bookbinders Inc.
March 2009
Alan Loney is clearly a man in love.
He is in love with the layout of a page, the balance of space and
positioning of text, the way the eye moves across, up and down words
and images. He is in love with the feel of paper, its finish, its
weight and how light is reflected or absorbed. He is in love with the
viscosity of ink and how the gentlest of touches between type, ink and
paper involves a chemical reaction. He is in love with how a binding
protects and enhances a book’s content and completes its balance
and beauty. He is even in love with his cranky old Albion printing
press, which on one day can give him perfect results and on the next an
unfathomable mess.
Poet, writer, publisher and printer Alan Loney has written an ode to his love of printing fine books by describing the creation of his ‘masterpiece’, Leonardo on nothingness.
Each chapter describes one part of the process of making a book, from the initial slowly evolving idea of its creation, to design, to choice of paper and ink, to the actual printing and binding and even the creation of a suitable colophon.
In a chapter on ‘The printery as cosmological haven’, Alan evocatively describes his workshop:
And, having been given an early glimpse of this haven, Alan later shares with the reader the rhythmic ritual and dance that is the preparation for each day of printing, the repetitive process of the printing of the pages, and the methodical cleaning and re-arranging of his printery at the end of each day to allow tomorrow to begin afresh. He weaves his way, and ours, through the sequences of preparation for putting ink to paper, each task a labour of love.
And when faced with a difficult decision about what materials to use in the final binding he adopts the strategy many of us use when faced with such a dilemma:
The Printing of a Masterpiece is much more than a description of a process, however. It is a beautifully crafted journey of creativity and a reflection on a life’s work of striving to produce something so perfect it leaves you feeling deeply fulfilled. Fulfilled, but still wanting to experience the masterpiece described: can it be held, can the weight of it be measured, can its words and images be experienced?
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Poet, writer, publisher and printer Alan Loney has written an ode to his love of printing fine books by describing the creation of his ‘masterpiece’, Leonardo on nothingness.
Each chapter describes one part of the process of making a book, from the initial slowly evolving idea of its creation, to design, to choice of paper and ink, to the actual printing and binding and even the creation of a suitable colophon.
In a chapter on ‘The printery as cosmological haven’, Alan evocatively describes his workshop:
After
all, it is a special environment, where slow, careful, meditative
thinking is the rule; where a book and its designer/printer have the
time to grow into the project, for the ideas around it to come and go
as they need to; to watch the work take shape in ways that are
sometimes surprising and unexpected; to allow the concentration needed
to have its intense focus and imagination its full rein.
And, having been given an early glimpse of this haven, Alan later shares with the reader the rhythmic ritual and dance that is the preparation for each day of printing, the repetitive process of the printing of the pages, and the methodical cleaning and re-arranging of his printery at the end of each day to allow tomorrow to begin afresh. He weaves his way, and ours, through the sequences of preparation for putting ink to paper, each task a labour of love.
And when faced with a difficult decision about what materials to use in the final binding he adopts the strategy many of us use when faced with such a dilemma:
Aha!
But I am not trusting the process am I? I have removed myself from the
arena and tried to solve the problem by thinking from the outside in
– What fabric will go with the book? – has been my
question, rather than letting the answer come from the process of
making. The result of my marinating then has been, not to provide a
solution, but to send me back to the printery. I try the oblique
approach. I’ll tidy up.
The Printing of a Masterpiece is much more than a description of a process, however. It is a beautifully crafted journey of creativity and a reflection on a life’s work of striving to produce something so perfect it leaves you feeling deeply fulfilled. Fulfilled, but still wanting to experience the masterpiece described: can it be held, can the weight of it be measured, can its words and images be experienced?
The printing of a masterpiece
Fiona Capp, The Age, 5 July 2008
This gem of a book will delight anyone who takes pleasure in books as
physical objects and who is interested in the traditions of the
hand-made book. Printer and writer Alan Loney takes us through the
making of one particular book, which he printed on black paper in gold
ink with text from Leonardo da Vinci's writings on Nothingness. But The printing of a masterpiece
is not simply a description of the process of making a book. It is a
meditation on the aesthetics of the hand-printed book - the halo effect
around letters, the colophons that provide a brief description of the
book's printing history, the handmade paper, the typography, the design
and so on. Loney's passion for these arcane details is communicated in
playful prose reminiscent of writers such as Italo Calvino and Umberto
Eco. In this beguiling essay he invites us to take our time and savour
the craftsmanship of a finely made book, the alchemy of text, ink and
paper.
Alan Loney's The printing of a masterpiece
Kyle Schlesinger (poet, critic and printer)
cuneiformpress.com [New York], 21 May 2008
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Kyle Schlesinger (poet, critic and printer)
cuneiformpress.com [New York], 21 May 2008
I just read the last page of Alan Loney’s
moving new memoir, The
Printing of a Masterpiece,
new from Black Pepper Press. For those of you familiar with Loney's
elegant and contemplative writing, you will not be disappointed with
his latest book - if you haven’t
read him before, I urge you to partake
in this feast for the mind and heart. Loney discusses, in glorious
detail, a highly personal approach to producing Leonardo da Vinci’s
book on Nothing. I say ‘produced’
because this book was edited, transcribed, typeset, printed,
illustrated, designed, distributed, etc. etc. by Loney alone, so to say
‘published’
or ‘printed’
would hardly describe the range of activities involved in the book’s
conception and construction. Although few of us will ever see this book
(there are only 26 copies) The
printing of a masterpiece documents aspects of the work in
a sturdy, affordable form that will surely take its place among the
ranks of Clifford Burke’s
Printing Poetry
and Harry Duncan’s
Doors of Perception.
Rich with philosophical nuances and and salt of the earth splendor,
this insightful reflection on the work of Australia’s
finest poet and typographer will enrich our understanding of his work
and will no doubt inspire generations of letterpress enthusiasts and
bibliophiles... Do pick up a copy from Black Pepper Press.
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Alex Selenitsch
Architectural designer and art critic (Unitversity of Melbourne)
Leigh Scott Room (contains Robert Menzies’ library)
Baillieu Library
University of Melbourne
13 May 2008
Peter Downton, who is one of a limited circle of my friends who makes things and thinks about these same things, reported on a conversation he had had with another colleague, Andrea Mina. Andrea wondered out loud whether using two hands, as you do when making something, whether the two hands in consort create a different kind of thinking to the kind that is produced while you are using one hand when writing.
I mentioned this to Alan recently, and he told me that he once asked Oliver Sachs whether typing with two hands would ultimately produce something different to the single-handed pen. Sachs thought no – the brain’s language centres are the same no matter how many hands you use. I take this to mean that Sachs thinks of language as a function of brain activity (and that he doesn’t use his hands to make things) because the issue is not just a question of the brain, or even language.
One of the best books – in my opinion, of course, which is the opinion of some-one who makes things so that he can think about them – one of the best books about this has been Socrate’s Ancestor, by Indra Kagis McEwen. This book elaborates a pre-Socratic position in Greek culture: if you make any kind of object, you make a model, which is then a cosmos. You can hear a faint reverberation of this when you speak of making a composition, or claim to have organised something. So some-one who makes a boat makes a cosmos. The same applies for a house, for a garment, for a vase, for a saddle, for a city. And the same applies for a book.
Making a book is not like writing one. It involves both hands, both hands and head, and both hands and head, and heart. In The printing of a masterpiece – and what a modest title that is – Alan just tells it like it is. Or rather like it was. First he did this, then he did that, then it was time to fix this and so on. From a stack of paper, a tray of type and a tin of ink to a compact, tactile wad of data, to something that speaks to the hands and feels marvellous to the mind.
But, of course, writing a book is also what Alan has done. And it is the contemplation of the technical context, the design and decision-making procedures that, almost by a sleight of hand, turn what could be just a report into the unfolding of a cosmos. Because any book is a complex object, and making it even more so, it is an organization in the sense of an organism with integrated sub-systems. It easily becomes a model, where the decisions and values embodied in its form and materials exhibit relationships that can applied elsewhere. For instance, Alan writes about ‘going in from the outside’, that is, making decisions based on a teleological vision and contrasts it with his own procedure which is ‘goes out from the inside’, where you proceed with action before all conditions are planned, in faith, and knowing that while creative problems may be ahead, there may a better outcomes later than anything that can be predicted now. This is an old dispute in architecture, pitting the Italians against the English. You might recognise it in politics as the argument between ends and means.
Further, the book Alan has written is about making a book, which could be seen as a microcosmic bit of behaviour. Does the book which is the main character of this narrative actually exist? If it does, I will be disappointed to hear of it; I prefer to think of it as an imaginary object into which all of Alan’s printing experience has gone. It’s an imaginary book, but not the ethereal ideal ‘book’ of the French School, of Jabes, Blanchot and Derrida, people who separate themselves from matter; people who think with only one hand. This imaginary black book of Alan’s is a curious thing when you think about it. Problematic gold ink on black paper, a too-short text about the philosophical issue of ‘nothing’ by Leonardo da Vinci. It’s a conglomerate of problems and perhaps deliberately so. What could be more boring than a report on things that have been effortless and smooth? I’m reminded of Maurice Ravel’s idea for a book on orchestration, which he was going to fill with examples of faulty orchestrations: all the better to learn from than perfections. This is not exactly what Alan has done, but his self-imposed difficulties allow him to branch out from the technical diary, to history, and to the problems of creativity, and art and craft.
The English crafter David Pye, wrote a wonderful book called The Nature of Design. One of its chapters dealt with the uselessness of workmanship. Pye later expanded this idea into two other books, but the essence of his argument is that workmanship is unnecessary work for function to be fulfilled, but nevertheless we treasure it. Uselessness, in fact, is a value that allows some overlap between art and craft. Generally, these disciplines are separated by us. The difference between art and craft is that the former gets matter to ask questions by rendering everything semantic, while the latter takes matter and gets it to behave, to keep quiet. In art, function is taken away by mislabelling, alteration, interference – in my case, for example, by cutting away parts of a book - but in craft, workmanship removes all traces of faulty human endeavour, and matter becomes eloquent and assertive, outside convention.
Karl Kraus once wrote that no matter how hard you look at language, it always stares back. It’s that moment when the book asserts itself as an independent object, which Alan describes in the last chapter of this book under the title of The nonchalance of the master craftsman. In this case, the black book is dazzling to its maker. As a flicker, you can see Adam attracting God’s attention. If you make things, you know the feeling: you stand there and wonder whether this object in front of you came through your hands, from your imagination, or were you just the medium IT used so that it could come into existence. At such moments, we are flummoxed and charmed, and often want to do the whole thing over again; this effect is the source of Marcel Duchamp’s famous quip that art is a habit-forming drug.
Well, here I am adding to the nothing that Leonardo observed, and I should stop so that something can happen. This something is to announce that The printing of a masterpiece has moved from Alan Loney’s private imagination to our social imaginary world. I always like to find a material analogue of the imaginary, but I don’t believe the windows open in this room and somehow throwing a copy out into the outside space would just mean throwing it onto the footpath – SO, imagine me throwing a copy into your imagination. I’m sure that the publishers would like you to convert that imaginary event into a material one by buying the book and reading it. I think you should.
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Peter Simpson
Director
Holloway Press, University of Auckland
Parson’s Bookshop
Auckland, New Zealand
20 May 2008
Sixty years ago Frank Sargeson dedicated a novel (I Saw in My Dream, John Lehmann, 1949)
To Denis Glover, Poet, Printer.
Alan Loney, whom we have the pleasure tonight of welcoming back to Auckland for the launch of his new book The printing of a masterpiece, is the only New Zealander, apart from Glover, to whom this epithet (poet, printer) could be applied. Alan’s first book The Bare Remembrance, a book of poems which he both wrote and set type for was published in 1971, over 37 years ago. Since then he has produced a steady stream of books, or perhaps I should say two streams of books, one of which he has written the other he has printed, while from time to time the two streams merge as in, to mention a couple of examples, Dear Mondrian (Hawk Press, 1976) or New Leaf (Electio Editions, 2005), nearly 30 years later, where the poet is the printer and the printer the poet. More often the two streams run alongside each other and each has become considerable in volume and length. As a printer, through a succession of four presses in two countries - Hawk Press in the 70s, Black Light Press in the 80s, The Holloway Press in the 90s and now Electio Editions in the 2000s - Alan has printed more than 50 books - indeed an exhibition was held in Melbourne a couple of years ago of all 50 to mark the publication of his fiftieth, Prima Materia - a superb type-specimen book - and the number is being added to every year. As a writer, Alan has not yet, I think, written 50 books, but the number is approaching 30 titles or will do when books currently in production are released. He seems to have been especially productive since moving to Melbourne in the late 90s. The list of ‘Recent books by the author,’ divided into poetry, prose and limited editions, listed at the front of his latest, comes to 24, almost all from the last decade. It is good to know that Alan is not wholly lost to New Zealand, as this event signifies. Later this year he will be printer in residence at the University of Otago and The Holloway Press, which Alan founded, will publish FishWorks, a book of poems and drawings - a collaboration with Max Gimblett.
It is fitting in introducing The printing of a masterpiece to emphasise both sides of the coin that is Alan Loney, writer and printer, because in this book the two come together in a unique way. For in this book the writer reflects on the practice of the printer. It is not a book that he has himself printed; its publisher is Melbourne’s Black Pepper, and a very neat and pleasing job they have made of it. Alan has approached his topic not by reminiscing about the 50 plus books he has printed but by imagining a book he has never printed but which is or would be the masterpiece with which his career as printer reaches its climax and end.
The contents are a collection of statements on nothingness drawn from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks. In a sequence of 21 short chapters Alan escorts the reader through the complete process of making the imaginary book from beginning to end, from deciding what to print and establishing the text, through all the design decisions about the book including such matters as size, shape and number of pages, what illustrations are included and where placed, what kind and colour of paper will be used, what types will be employed at what sizes, the inks to be used, how the paper will be prepared for printing (damp or dry), the actual printing of the pages on the Albion handpress, the decisions about what materials and colours will be used for the binding, until finally the finished book is imagined:
...in
Leonardo on Nothingness all the technical problems were solved well,
the printing is splendidly even throughout, the book lies flat on the
table before me and everything about the text, the images and the
design seems simply to fit, to belong with everything else... And the
result is a masterpiece, the most beautiful thing I have ever made, and
as technically perfect as I have ever managed...
Through this enabling fiction, Alan traverses the processes that go into the making of any hand-printed book including all fifty he has previously made. It is certainly the most detailed, expertly informed and elegantly written account of the printing of a book I’ve ever read and is likely to become a classic of its kind. Alan is steeped in the history of the book and its printing and his narrative is informed by dozens of fascinating anecdotes from that rich history. We encounter many illustrious names from the history of printing from Johann Gutenberg to Eric Gill, including Fra Luca de Pacioli, Albrecht Dűrer, Aldus Manutius, Joseph Moxon, Frederick Goudy, William Morris, Giovanni Mardersteig and Edward Johnston. We learn intimate secrets of the printer’s craft such as the halo effect, the colophon, the difference between short and long grain in a sheet of paper, the purpose of the dummy, the issue of spacing between letters, the concept of an ‘optically even’ page, the notion of ‘less ink, more impression’ and the differences between British and American printers, the varying effects of serif and sans serif typefaces, the differences between gloss and flat, or translucent and opaque inks, incipits and title pages, the role of dingbats and printers flowers, why formaldehyde is added to the water used to dampen paper for printing, plus much more - everything, indeed, which makes up (in Alan’s words) ‘This extraordinary yet very ordinary business of slapping a few pages together with ink smeared over them.’
Just one more thing. The book whose making is so lovingly detailed is imaginary; it does not exist. Yet Alan has printed and published a book called Leonardo On Nothingness, a copy of which (there are only 20 of them) I am holding in my hand. The Contents of the real book and the imaginary book are exactly the same, that is, passages on the concept of ‘nothingness’ from Leonardo’s Notebooks, but in almost every other respect the books are completely different. To mention some of the most obvious: the imaginary book is printed with gold ink on black paper, the real book with black ink on white paper; in the imaginary book the typeface is Gill Sans Serif printed in capitals throughout, in the real book the type is Dante in both upper and lower case, the illustrations in the two books are completely are different, and so on. It is an intriguing complication. To quote Wallace Stevens, ‘Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar’. This book (The Electio edition Leonardo on Nothingness) is ‘things as they are’; this one (The printing of a masterpiece) describes the printing process through the blue guitar of the writer’s imagination. One is the work of the ‘printer’ the other of the ‘poet’. Alan Loney: printer, poet, congratulations. In imagining the printing of a masterpiece, you have succeeded in writing one. Buy a copy; you won’t be sorry.
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Loney biography