Crispin Elsted
For years I’ve wanted to publish something by my good friend Crispin Elsted, and last year, by chance, I picked up an anthology he and I had contributed to back in 2009. The book collected one poem from a variety of Canadian poets and asked each to write a short essay describing the process of writing their selected piece. I had, of course, read Crispin’s contribution when the book was published, but it wasn’t until last year, when I picked it up again, that I remembered how absorbing and thoughtful it was.
¶ Crispin’s poem, “The Turn,” is a captivating meditation on the memory of his mother hanging laundry, expanding out from that image, like the gust of wind the poem describes, to explore the physical, emotional, and linguistic implications of the remembered scene. The essay, in turn, teases out those implications, presenting a ruminative and fascinating exploration of the poem’s creation.
¶ In addition to the usual process of designing, setting, and printing the book, this project also included something I set out to do more than a decade ago, when I brought home Jim Rimmer's matrix-making and casting equipment (see more on that acquisition here and here). Jim was the last person in Canada still designing new types and cutting them to cast in metal. Along with his casting machines, I also acquired Jim's matrix-making gear, but the skills involved in cutting new mats were far beyond me at the time. After years of reading on the topic, attending a number of American Typecasting Fellowship conferences, studying Jim's own books & notes, along with hours of raw footage from the documentary Making Faces (thank you Rich Kegler!), I slowly, over the course of that decade, and with much trial and error, managed to figure out what to do with the various pieces of equipment required to make a usable matrix.
¶ The full, gory details of the various processes involved are explored in two articles to be published in 2024: the first, "In the Cut: Engraving foundry-style matrices at Greenboathouse Press," for #47 of Parenthesis, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association; and the second, "Cutting New ATF Matrices at the Greenboathouse Press" for #46 of the American Typecasting Fellowship's annual newsletter. The short version of those two articles is that over the course of 2023, I finally managed to design and engrave a new titling type, which is here used in a book for the first time. The type, Orfei, is a set of inscriptional capitals based on the 16th-century lettering of Luca Orfei (Horfei), which I had discovered years ago amidst my studies of Renaissance letterforms.
¶ The second challenge for this project involved cutting new matrices for two missing characters, as well as a smaller size of the ornament used on the book's title page. Crispin's essay required a number of accented characters, some of which were included with the ATF matrics for Cloister Lightface, but two were not: the italic ä an ç. However, I also own the orignal copper patterns for the type, so was able to cut new matrices for the missing letters. Next up was the 36pt Troyer ornament used on the title page, which I wanted to print as a pattern on the binding. However, the 36pt size was too strong for a printed pattern, so I laser-cut an acrylic pattern based on the 36pt size, and engraved a new matrix at 24pt, and then cast 900 of them for the wrapper.
¶ I try, each year, to introduce a new skill with every Greenboathouse Press project, and this year certainly provided plenty of opportunity to learn. In the end, each challenge yielded a reasonably good result, both in the form of an entirely new type and the production of new mats based on original ATF patterns, and it's been a pleasure to finally put the full range of Jim Rimmer's equipment to work.
Crispin Elsted was born in 1947 in Vancouver. He worked variously as a bear ward, an actor, a musician, and an itinerant ranch hand, and taught English, cultural history, theatre history, and acting in college and university. Finally tiring of the quiet life, in 1977 he and his wife Jan established Barbarian Press during a sojourn in England, moving back to Canada in 1978 and settling in Steelhead in the Fraser Valley, where for forty-seven years they have continued to produce letterpress limited editions, lately with their daughter Apollonia. Their books have won many awards in Canada and abroad. In 2015 they were awarded the Robert R Reid Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Book Arts in Canada. Elsted’s poems appeared in Climate and the Affections (Sono Nis Press, 1996) which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. He regularly publishes essays, articles, and reviews in a variety of journals. He was a contributing editor to Fine Print, and from 2005 to 2009 he edited Parenthesis, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association.
9" × 12.5", 22 leaves, 65 copies.
The main text is hand set in ATF Cloister Lightface, cast from the original matrices. However, as the matrix set for the italic was missing ä an ç, new matrices for these two characters were cut based on the original ATF copper patterns. The display type, used here in a book for the first time, is Orfei, designed by Jason Dewinetz based on the 16th-century letterforms of Luca Orfei. The type was designed digitally, then laser-cut into acrylic sheets at 300pt, these being the master patterns used on an Ogata pantograph to engrave the 48pt matrices in foundry-style brass blanks. Additionally, the 36pt Troyer ornament used on the title and section pages was redrawn digitally, patterned, and cut as a 24pt matrix to cast the sorts for the patterned paper binding. The type was all cast on a Monotype Super Caster here at Greenboathouse Press. The text paper is Khadi handmade, printed damp, with Hahnemühle Bugra for the end and divider sheets, and handmade Saint Armand for the binding.
“The Turn” and “Like a Moth at a Window” first appeared in Approaches to Poetry: the Pre-Poem Moment, edited by Shane Neilson and published by Frog Hollow Press in 2009.