Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 6

Trade Exchanges

page 63

Trade Exchanges.

Mexico has now its printing trade organ. We have to acknowledge the receipt of Nos. 1 and 2 (April and May) of La Revista Tipografica, conducted by Eduardo M. Vargas & Co., printers, and proprietors of a printers' supply house at Irapuato. The new paper consists of eight octavo pages and wrapper, four pages being devoted to reading matter.

Crowded as is the field of trade journalism at home, Mr Bassett's Printing World has gained for itself a good position in eighteen months. It has a very large and handsome page; its advertisements are well displayed; and the work of a master-hand is throughout apparent. In the June number we notice that the artistic and unconventional floral initials lately brought out by the Typefounding Company are freely and very effectively used.

The Artist Printer comes to hand this month as usual. It has been purchased by Messrs Keogh & Schroeder. (It is notable how many of the American names of prominent printers, typefounders, and electro-typers are either Irish or German.) There are some finely-printed « process » supplements in the July issue, the first under the new management, and the proprietors evidently intend to maintain the reputation of the paper. We wish them success.

The American Art Printer tells the following little story. Readers may find the moral. « At Vancouver, B.C., a reporter on the World used a capital I for 'independence.' The printer set up the word with a small letter. The proof-reader restored the capital I. The compositors beld a council and decided that the time spent in changing the letter should be charged to the office. The manager and editor decided in favor of the big I, and the printer refusing to make the correction, he was dismissed. Seven printers left the office, preventing the issue of the paper that day. The Typographical Union fined the executive $50, and ordered the strikers back to work. » The July issue is quite up to the mark. An interesting feature is the facsimile reproductions of photographs transmitted by wire, or, rather, reproduced by electricity at the opposite end. They are somewhat broken and streaky, but the portraits are quite recognizable.

The second number of the Specimen, in its new and neat form, has reached us from Marder, Luse, & Co., Chicago. It contains 32 pages, and the whole of the text is set uniformly in various sizes of French Old-style without any admixture of display-letter, and it is needless to say that the effect is harmonious and pleasing.

The Pacific Printer is good as ever. It is full of local and personal items, and has the knack of making these usually dry paragraphs readable. There is a good deal of work in each monthly issue.

The summer issue of Barnhart Bros. & Spindler's Typefounder is a good number. The cost of producing so large an issue— 24,000 copies, on fine calendered paper, and superbly printed—must be very large. The firm show an engraving representing their fine new premises, and give an interesting history of the house from its establishment in 1868 to the present time.

Trade Lists and Samples.

Whitcombe & Tombs, Christchurch.—A very handsome engraved quarto circular, on « perfection » paper.

Klimsch & Co., Frankfort.—A finely-printed illustrated price-list, showing all kinds of engravers' tools and ruling machines. The scrolled and floriated border is of superb design, and the four figure-subjects at the corners are exquisitely drawn.

Raphael Tuck & Sons.— « The Golden Age of Christmas and New Year Cards » is the name of a pretty and compact small quarto pamphlet of 86 pages, containing a catalogue, with numerous sketch illustrations, of the cards, booklets, &c, issued by this firm. This beautifully printed list gives some idea of the marvellous and ever-increasing variety of cards produced by Messrs Tuck & Sons. It is not too much to say that in this class of work they stand at the head of all English houses.

The following little epigram, of unascertained authorship, appears in a contemporary:

Amongst the men what dire divisions rise—
For « union » one; « no union » t'other cries.
Shame on the sex that such dispute began!
Ladies are all for union—to a man.

Modern authors (says the Graphic) are constantly being accused of plagiarism: but now a learned Indian student finds that even Dante was not original. The Italian poet's Divine Comedy bears a remarkable resemblance to a famous Persian epic, the Verafnamen (or Vision) of Ardai Viraf—so says the author of a paper recently read before the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Dante is hardly likely to have heard of the Persian poet; yet, notwithstanding the difference of centuries, and of nationality, the two works are identical in plan and procedure. Both poets visit hell, purgatory, and paradise, and both are inspired by religion, Dante by the Roman Catholic faith and Ardai Viraf by the doctrines of Zoroaster.

The Saturday Review writes: « It is no longer considered needful for a book or newspaper illustrator to have passed through a careful, still less an academic, training. The general average of draftsmanship has risen in a remarkable degree, and clever illustrators now hang upon every blackberry bush. We fear that too often the blackberries are their only food. Illustrations are so easily to be found, and a certain clever knack is so common, that an artist of this class cannot now command a decent price, unless something in the individuality of his touch or his surpassing merit make him a favorite with the public » In these colonies, the exact reverse is the case. It is quite the exception for a « newspaper illustrator » to know even the elements of drawing. When he departs from the schoolboy practice of tracing his design from other people's work, he is all at sea.