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 8

Trade Exchanges

page 7

Trade Exchanges.

Very dainty is the Christmas number of the Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades Register, in its cover of bronze and blue, and with its text and cuts in a pleasant shade of blue-black. With so many exchanges, it seems an extravagance of time to spend nearly an hour with a single number, yet that is what we have been tempted into doing. There are nearly a hundred pages, the articles are well written and well chosen, the engravings choice, and the advertisements—well, they are genuine, too, and are interesting in their own way. This excellent paper, we see, is in its thirty-fourth year of publication.

Mr Morriss's Stationery and Bookselling last month told its readers to be on the watch for the Christmas number. It is now to hand, and is an extraordinary issue, from the handsome chromo wrapper to the end. Full quarto size, with red ruled borders, superbly printed, and embellished with the best engravings from the best Christmas books, it is in all respects a grand success.

From the curiosities of advertising at the Chicago exhibition, the Journal für Buch-druckerkunst has quoted two. One is that of a firm of pianoforte makers bearing the curiously similar names of Starck & Strack. On their placards the firm name is thus set out:

With similar typographical economy does a manufacturer in another branch set forth both his name and his wares:

The Journal is one of the finest Craft papers in the world. Nothing of importance escapes the editor; no opinions are passed off at second hand, but every subject is dealt with in a thoughtful and thoroughly practical manner.

The most interesting feature of the British Printer for September-October is the specimen of a picture in Husnik & Häusler's new photochromotype process, in three workings. It is a still-life subject—fruit in a scarlet vase, and a brilliantly-colored parrot. It is in all respects equal to ordinary work in from ten to fifteen printings, and is, we feel sure, the color process of the future. Professor Husnik, by means of a complementary light-filter, secures three negatives of the color-subject, each including the whole of one of the three primaries, whether singly or in combination—thus the negative answering to blue represents all the shades of blue, purple, gray and green in the original. No artificial arrangement approaches the accuracy of selection thus secured. The subjects are etched in relief by what is known as the single-line process, the lines for each color lying at a different angle. When worked in register, in the pigments most nearly resembling the prismatic primaries, the effect is wonderfully pure.

We are pleased to note the improvement in all respects which the Revue des Arts Graphiques exhibits on its predecessor, the Gutenberg-Journal. The issues for November and December are finely printed, and are embellished with a number of exquisite engravings from the Christmas and New Year publications of the leading French houses.

The Newspaper Man (Palmer & Rey, San Francisco), keeps up its crusade against the custom of the daily press of publishing realistic details of murders and other crimes of violence. It maintains that decency is continually outraged, and the minds of the young corrupted thereby. This is true enough; but so long as that kind of thing pays, the practice will continue. In New Zealand this evil is not so prevalent; but one equally great—the publication of the foul effusions of advertising quacks—is on the increase. Of the vampires that prey on society, these men are the worst; yet we are sorry to say that they find ready access to nearly every newspaper in New Zealand.

The Printing World for October contains a long illustrated article describing the great engraving establishment of Messrs John Swain & Son. The frontispiece, from a wash drawing, is a beautiful piece of process-work; and « Off the Isle of Man » is a charming example of chromotype. We find an interesting obituary notice of Mr John Bishop, who volunteered as missionary printer at Creek Town, Old Calabar, for the United Presbyterian Church, and who, after doing good work, fell a victim to the deadly climate. Some attractive novelties are shown in the advertising pages.

Paper and Press for November contains a splendid half-tone etching — a portrait of William Cullen Bryant. Other excellent half-tone specimens appear in the same number, which is as usual full of practical technical information.

In its new form, the Printing Times and Lithographer takes a high place among its trade contemporaries, and as regards the practical value of its technical articles it is not excelled by any. We hope that Mr J. W. Harland's treatise on the Theory and Practice of Line, now appearing serially in its pages, will, on its completion, be published in separate form—it would take its place as a standard text-book. In the neatness of its pages and beauty of its presswork, the Printing Times is a model.

Trade Lists and Samples.

Golding & Co., Boston.—Illustrated catalogue of printers' material. 100 pp., beautifully printed, with handsome embossed cover.

Jackson Bros., Limited, 50 Call Lane, Leeds.—Price list of specialties (chiefly drawing instruments and materials) for technical schools—a 16-page illustrated catalogue. One of this firm's specialties—the new « Injector » drawing pen — was described in a recent issue,

F. T. Wimble & Co., Clarence-st., Sydney.—An elaborate advertisement set in rule and borders, brought out with lithographic tints. It represents the angle of a room, showing both floor and ceiling, and a folding screen in front, on which the advertisement is displayed. The colors are well chosen, and the perspective, though necessarily imperfect, is better than in most specimens of the kind.

« Ten thousand snares are offered to the public. » So, with unusual candor, says the prospectus of a new company in Melbourne. The compositor has scored a bull's-eye.

As an authority on demonology, the Dunfermline Press, a Scottish paper, rivals the War Cry. It says:— « The devil is not yet in hell, but ruling in heavenly places. Spiritualism, hypnotism, and theosophy are the operations of the demon, who will not rule in hell because he is fated to be tormented with chains for ever and ever. »

The Rev. Philip Thomas (denomination and locality not stated) is another demonolo-gist. The press, he says, is the adversary of Christ's kingdom upon earth, and as a whole is unmistakeably hostile to Christ. The senior editor of the press is the devil, and the press does the work of the devil.—If this be a fair sample of the husks wherewith this gentle pastor feeds his flock, there must be a mighty famine in the sheepfold.

The Gaelic Journal of Dublin prints the following characteristic piece of vituperation, dating from about 1800. Pat Murphy (we alter the name) was High Sheriff of Clare:

The Lord is pleased when man refrains from sin;
Satan is pleased when he a soul doth win;
Mankind is pleased whene'er a villain dies;
Now all are pleased—for here Pat Murphy lies.

The Journal does not state—perhaps is not aware—that with the exception of a few verbal alterations, to give it a personal application, the entire quatrain is stolen.

A collection of James Russell Lowell's letters has been published. There are occasional verses scattered through the letters (says the Scotsman) to make of themselves a respectable book. Here is a delightful scrap, for instance:

Thank Heaven! whatsoe'er the rate is
At which some other things are sold,
Nature is ever had « free gratis,
Children half-price, » as 'twas of old.

And here is a delightful invitation to dine upon sucking pig—not, by the way, the only pig poem in the book:—

Fragment of a Pindarique Ode in the Manner of the Late Divine Mr. Abraham Cowley.
Come, oh my Fields,
Leaving the Citie (with ill Authors vext),
At half-past two on Thursday next
Come, try what Sweets the Country yields;
Come and eat Pigge!
For such the swelling Nature
Of that delicious Creature,
That ere another Week he'll be too bigge.
Come, and bring her with you
By whose fair Presence graced
An Irish Stew—
Nay, a meer emptie Board were an imperial Feast.