These Photographs,

brought back so many memories of when I was in the print trade,

for 5 years I was a bound apprentice, the sad fact is that in just a few years so much of what I had been taught was already out of date as the lithographic press swept away the letterpress machines before them,

as well as printing the company I worked for T. J. Hunt, had a book bindery,

this was a common sight in the women's book bindery section, as ladies hand sewn the books bindings,

I am very familiar with this, it is the justification scale of a monotype machine, I was told at the time that the inventor allegedly had a total nervous breakdown when compiling the above justification drum, as you came to the end of a line numbers indicated on the drum were entered into the machine and the line was justified,

a monotype paper roll, and why these photographs? San Francisco remains a hub for analogue artforms, hosting an annual festival that uses a 7-ton steamroller to print linocuts and housing one of the last remaining publishers of its kind. Arion Press is dedicated to the age-old practice of bookmaking, and with a small team of type casters, proof-readers, printers, and binders, painstakingly produces artist publications entirely by hand,

in an episode of Raw Craft, a film series produced by The Balvenie distillery, visits the publisher with the late Anthony Bourdain as host. For three seasons, the chef, writer, and travel icon toured the U.S. visiting tailors, metal casters, saxophone designers, and myriad crafters devoted to traditional techniques. On his stop at Arion Press, Bourdain explores all steps of the bookmaking process, from using 19th Century technology to print each letter with metal type, proofing the text by reading out loud, and stitching each page by hand, you can look into the publisher’s process in the episode above, and check out some of its latest projects on Instagram, and browse publications, notebooks, cards, and other goods in its shop, You also might enjoy this film chronicling the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times, so many images that I never though I would see again, and bringing back so many memories, and my lasting impression of a monotype machine? the noise! the casting machine was indescribably loud.