friday, october 23, 2015

John Stroble Fass and his Hammer Creek Press

John Fass in his room at the Bronx YMCA, ca. 1955. Right: The Hammer Creek Press Type Specimen Book, 1954.

In many of my conversations with my friend John De Pol, he reminisced about a man who was one of the earliest supporters of his efforts to engrave on wood. Working as a production assistant learning the printing trade at Lewis White’s shop in New York in 1950, he met John Stroble Fass during a visit to the office. Fass offered him a few of his small printed items, De Pol offered to make some wood engravings for future efforts, and an enduring friendship was begun. One has only to look at their collaborations to understand what a sympathetic relationship it was. Although I was exposed to John De Pol’s memories, I wasn’t exposed to any of Fass’ printing until the very end of De Pol’s life, when bookseller Aveve Cohen made me a gift of a Fass booklet with De Pol’s engravings, and a print made by Fass from two chestnut leaves. Armed with those two items, and a copy of the book that Mrs. Cohen put together as a tribute, I began my own search for the work of John S. Fass.

Born in 1890 and raised in Lititz, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Amish country, John Fass roamed the countryside, and fished in the Hammer Creek, so named for the water mills that powered the large hammers in the forges built on its banks. From the age of twelve until after graduating high school, he worked at the local newspaper, the Lititz Express, where he learned the basic skills that would form his career. In 1918, he went to work as a compositor in Philadelphia, and two years later landed a job at an advertising composition company in New York City. From 1923 to 1925, he honed his skills as a compositor working for William Edwin Rudge at his plant in Mount Vernon, putting Bruce Rogers’ designs into type. His personal style was strongly influenced by Rogers, and they remained friends for the rest of Rogers’ life.

Late in 1925, Fass and fellow Rudge employee Roland Wood, and Wood’s wife Elizabeth, founded the Harbor Press, specializing in fine book-work. Together they produced 114 titles for themselves and other publishers like the Limited Editions Club before Fass withdrew due to ill health. Subsequently, the plant was liquidated and the personnel merged with the Marchbanks Press. As typographer for the press, Fass’ style had matured, and upon examination the books show much of the same playful use of typography and ornament that defines Rogers’ work, and Fass’ later work at his Hellbox and Hammer Creek Presses.

As a youth, John Fass had developed woodworking skills that he continued to use throughout his life. He carved numerous seahorses after the pressmark used by the Harbor Press, and small detailed boxes as gifts. About the same time he left the Harbor Press, he fashioned a small 18″ tall version of a common press that would print from foundry type – this he dubbed the Hellbox Press. He produced a tiny specimen book in two colors on the press, inking the borrowed types and rare old ornaments with his thumb, noting in the specimen’s Aftermath, “When going to press we discovered a shortage of roller – in fact, none – so we printed this booklet without any.” Likely the rarest item in my Fass collection, it was produced in an edition of 15 copies, complete with slipcase. He also produced bookplates, and some tiny Christmas cards on the press, but it was largely used for amusement.

He continued to work for advertising typographers throughout WWII, and in 1950 he acquired a small 1905 Hughes and Kimber Albion with a platen size of about 7″ &times’ 10″. The press had been acquired by Bruce Rogers in 1919 and brought to this country by him after traveling and working in England. Fass would have been very familiar with the press, as it occupied a prominent spot in Rogers’ office at William Edwin Rudge. Illustrator and printer Valenti Angelo had purchased the press from Rogers in 1949, and sold the press to Fass a year later, as he had purchased a larger Washington press with which to print. Two years later Fass issued a notice in booklet form, The Hammer Creek Press Has Engulfed The Hell-Box Press issued with wood-engravings of both presses by John De Pol, thus bringing to an end his first entertaining private press experiment.

John Fass snapped this picture of his Hughes and Kimber Albion (which he had purchased from Valenti Angelo in 1950) neatly displayed with his books and prints accumulated during his 50+ year printing career. Bookseller Herman Cohen stated that never before had he seen so many items stored so neatly in such a small location.

In the twelve years that he owned the small Albion, Fass rented a small apartment in the Bronx Union YMCA. De Pol related that when he visited, one could sit on the bed (under which Fass kept his type cases), and reach out and touch the press. His printed items were made for fun and for experimentation in very small editions, and he was known for pulling copies from his jacket pocket and presenting them to friends at lunch or dinner. He was encouraged to print larger editions by his friend and bookseller Herman Cohen, who then included them in his catalogues. In those twelve years Fass printed more than sixty items, in editions ranging from 122 copies to one single copy. Many of the illustrations and pressmarks were provided by his friends A. Burton Carnes, Valenti Angelo, as well as John De Pol. Fass printed on sheets of handmade, mould-made or Japanese papers without dampening, often using several colors of ink that he would vary within the editions. He bound the books himself using western and Japanese-style bindings, and often made matching slipcases.

As a member of the Typophiles, Fass counted some of the most talented people in New York printing circles as his friends, and when Print: A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts published an article in 1948 titled How to Make a Hay Prints by fellow Typophile Arthur Rushmore, he must have taken notice (my own copy was once owned by Fass’ close friend A. Burton Carnes). Fass appears to have started printing from leaves in 1958-59, with his first book Twenty-five Poems About Trees & Leaves Including Some Prints of Leaves printed in an edition of thirty copies. He devoted more and more time to his experiments with this medium, and a number of his final productions were issued as books or portfolios of leaf prints, several as a single copy.

In the late 1950s John Fass started experimenting with leaf prints. His friend Arthur Rushmore had been making nature prints for over a decade previously, and historically Pennsylvanian printers had been very important in developing leaf printing on Continental currency. Whatever was his impetus from 1959 on leaf printing was an important part of his printed work, in books and portfolios of very small editions, sometimes numbering only a single copy.

Herman Cohen and others organized an exhibit of the work of the Hammer Creek Press in 1962, which then traveled to the Book Club of California in San Francisco. Later that year at age 72 Fass was forced to move from his YMCA apartment, so he sold the press back to Valenti Angelo, including his accumulated types and ornaments. Soon after, in failing health, he moved back to Lititz where he had kept a room in his family home that was then owned by his sister, dying in 1973.

The Hughes and Kimber Albion was used by Valenti Angelo throughout the remainder of his life. Many of the borders and ornaments that Fass had acquired throughout his career were sold to the Angelica Press in New York when, after the death of his wife, Angelo relocated to San Francisco. Fass’ types and a few borders were used by Angelo until his death in 1982. The press was then given to the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, but they did not acquire the types, and their whereabouts seem to be lost to time.

Of the sixty-plus printed items of the Hammer Creek Press I have been able to locate forty-five, but the most precious to me is a copy of the Hammer Creek Press Type Specimen Book, which is inscribed: “To John De Pol, friend of the Hammer Creek Press from John S. Fass.”

This article originally appeared online as one of a series of interesting typographic footnotes published by the American Printing History association, through the efforts of Paul Moxon.

Letterpress Printing Meets Scrapbooking

Review of Letterpress Now, by Jessica C. White, Lark Books, Asheville, 2013

March 27, 2013

Letterpress printing is a complicated process, and today, in 2013, trying to explain it to neophytes through the medium of a do-it-yourself instruction book is problematic at best. Letterpress Now, written by Jessica C. White, and published this year by Lark Books, Asheville, North Carolina, attempts to offer a basic background of the craft, plus direction toward the completion of a few simple (and a few not so simple) projects that could be produced on an assortment of printing presses that are commonly found by hobbyists today. I wish that I could say that she was successful in her effort, but the omissions and misinformation that starts with the very first paragraph of text is multiplied throughout the book until I cannot imagine how a beginner could possibly benefit from it.

On the first page, which lays out a convoluted history of letterpress printing, it becomes obvious that Ms. White has not done her homework. She assumes that historians have any idea of the methods with which Johannes Gutenberg cast his type, and alludes to knowledge of the make-up of the metal he used for his types. Since these two subjects, along with the configuration of his press have been debated hotly by historians for centuries, I find that opening her book with this misinformation reflects on the lack of detail offered throughout the book. By the fourth paragraph she states that the “first major change to Gutenberg’s model” happened in the 1840s, with the invention of the first platen press, completely ignoring the many developments including the iron screw, all of the innovations of machine and materials used to build presses by Adam Ramage, Lord Stanhope, George Clymer, William Rust, Robert Hoe, Richard Cope, William Nicholson, Friedrich Koenig, Daniel Treadwell, Isaac and Seth Adams, and dozens of other inventors and innovators at the beginning of the Industrial Age. 

Granted, much credit can be given to Stephen Ruggles for his invention of the first self-inking, treadle-driven jobbing press, but so much more happened in the previous 400 years. Ruggles didn’t actually invent a working vertical platen press until 1851, and when George P. Gordon’s platen jobbing press was introduced in 1857 it soon captured the small press market, eventually morphing into the Chandler & Price manufactured machines that dominated the market until the company closed in the 1960s. Rounding out her page of history is a paragraph that takes up almost a quarter of the printed text, about rotary and web-feed presses, which, at the end of the paragraph she dismisses as not being germane to the rest of the book. 

Of the four presses Ms. White offers as examples for machines that beginning printing enthusiasts might encounter only one in considered a production printing press. The first is the much-inflated in price and construction, Kelsey Excelsior tabletop platen press, a press that was sold for decades to a hobby printing market.

The second is the backbone of the job shop, the Chandler & Price platen jobber, which for some bizarre reason sells for less than most tiny Kelsey presses (which should be proof to those who watch the recent resurgence of letterpress printing that preciousness is more important than production). Considering how many people get injured using this kind of machine I am amazed at how little caution is offered in this book. 

The third press described is completely mislabeled as a tabletop cylinder press, when in fact it is classified as a roller and bearing proofing press. Ms. White does not seem to understand that the round, hard rubber roller used to apply pressure to the printed sheet is not in fact a cylinder. If this were the case then the metal rolling pins sold by some printmaking suppliers would also be categorized as cylinder presses, which they are not. Sadly, the printers who use these kinds of presses to excess discover that the ancient rubber on the roller can no longer withstand impression (especially the heavy impression that is now in vogue), and deteriorates with no source for replacement. 

The last press described is the precision cylinder proofing press, which is represented by the ubiquitous Vandercook (although in the section on cylinder presses it is somehow operated interchangeably with the roller press mentioned above). Although these presses were never designed to be production presses, they have become the most sought-after press in the hobby market, selling for many thousands of dollars, eclipsing the value of production sheet-fed presses that were designed for commercial use.

The book is loaded with technical errors, like inverted quoins, metal-on-metal lock-ups, uninformed placement of gauge pins, and projects that have ridiculous positioning on the press. There are plenty of photos, but they don’t always match the description of the proposed projects. The description of dampening paper is for the process of etching, and is not applicable to anything but the heaviest of papers. There are lots of close-ups of projects, which clearly show the lack of any kind of make-ready, and a definite over-abundance of impression. Most of the projects seem to be printed on some very heavy cover stock, which seems to ameliorate the need for any kind of description of proper make-ready.

The text doesn’t seem to be well planned, and jumps back and forth especially in the sections that deal with setting up and making ready the described presses. Sections on paper and ink seem to be out of place, and do nothing to help the flow of the instruction. The different sections seem to be loosely divided by a short Q&A with printers who I assume are friends of the author, but the questions seemed very repetitive, and the answers were not terribly informative. The printed works featured on these pages had no descriptors, and I assume that the pictured items were made by the featured printers, but it would have been a nice touch to give proper credits as to date created, finished size, and limitation if any.

The preciousness of the projects will have appeal to the Etsy crowd, and I suppose that if the reader knows nothing about letterpress printing it might whet their appetite for more information, but I really hope they might instead take advantage of the few books listed in the section on recommended reading to find out how letterpress printing is really done.

On June 22, 1851 a fire swept through the northern part of San Francisco burning the buildings on the north side of Portsmouth Square, including the premises of the Alta California newspaper. This daguerreotype taken about a month later shows the paper's new building nearing completion. In the same year the publisher installed the first steam-operated printing press in the city.

 The building shown on the left was the office of San Francisco's 

first daily newspaper, the Alta California, located on the north side of
              Portsmouth Square, the first public square in the new city, circa 1851.                                                     

El Cuartel, Monterey County, CA. circa 1880

Historic American Buildings Survey 

O'Donnell Collection Monterey, California. 

California's First Press

I have a fascination with hand-presses and the printed work that has emanated from them over the years. I seek out not only printed items when affordable, but have a small but growing collection of books containing historical accounts of presses and their operators, as well as manuals that describe their operation. Being situated on the coast of the Pacific Ocean and but a few miles from the town of Monterey places me close in miles, if not in time, to the location of the first printing press west of the Rocky Mountains.

The press was what is called a Common Press, made by and with improvements by Adam Ramage, a Scotsman who settled and plied his trade in Philadelphia. It was constructed of wood, with an iron screw to lower the platen, and a stone bed on which the type was assembled for printing. A complete printing office had been ordered probably in 1831 by missionaries in Hawaii, by the time it was  to be delivered it was no longer needed or wanted. The press had left Boston as part of the cargo of the ship Lagoda in May, 1833 bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), a voyage that took nearly a year. In a copy of a listing of the ship's cargo preserved in the James Hunnewell Papers, Harvard College a single entry reads: 1 Case Printing press, Type and apparatus complete. The captain of the Lagoda then carried the equipment to the port of Monterey, where it was purchased by Augustin Vicente Zamorano to print Mexican governmental documents. Zamorano had arrived in Monterey in 1825 to perform the duties of the executive secretary of the Territory of Alta California, and served for 11 years as the second administrative officer.  The first preserved document known to have been printed on the Ramage Press was dated July 28, 1834. The press was used to print government papers, and the first book printed in California before the American occupation: Manifiesto de la Republica Mejicana, by Governado Jose Figueroa. A small arithmetic book and a small catechism were also produced. During the Mexican Revolution in 1836 the press saw various owners, and was for a time removed to the home of  General Mariano G. Vallejo in Sonoma. It was used to print a total of twelve books,  nine in Monterey, and three in Sonoma, with a total output of seventy-seven items. The press ended up neglected in a storage room probably somewhere in or near the Presidio, where it was found by Reverend Walter Colton, a navy chaplain and writer, and Robert Semple, a Kentuckian remembered for his extremely tall figure. Both men were with the Navy Squadron that took over the old capitol of Monterey in July, 1846 .

Colton and Semple assembled the remaining equipment, having to make spacing from lead sheets cut with a pocket knife, among other inventions, and together they produced the first newspaper in California, aptly named The Californian. Press and types were set up in an adobe, a former Mexican government building called El Cuartel that was located on Munras Street, close to the Presidio. The first issue appeared on August 15, 1846. The type found with the press was Small Pica No. 1, manufactured by the Boston Type Foundry. There was only one size of body type, Roman and Italic, with small caps; Four Line Pica Shade was used for the masthead, and Two Lines Brevier Double Shade was used for the smaller masthead on the second page of what was only a four page paper. The page size was eight and one half inches by twelve and one half inches, with two columns of 21 picas. It was printed weekly in both English and Spanish. The text font was purchased with a letter count designed for Spanish usage, and as Walter Colton stated in an extra two-page sheet published Thursday, January 28, 1847:

      OUR ALPHABET. - Our type is a spanish font picked up here in a cloister and has no W's in it as there is none in the spanish alphabet. I have sent to the Sandwich Islands for this letter, in the mean time we must use two V's. Our paper at present is that used for wrapping cigars; in due time we will have something better, our object is to establish a press in California, and this we shall in all probability be able to accomplish. The absence of my partner for the last three months and my duties as Alcald[e]d here have deprived our little papes[r] of some of those attentions which I hope it will hereafter receive.
                                                                                          WALTER COLTON

The little paper limped along with limited readership, but it became obvious that San Francisco was developing as the major port in the area. Semple who had sole ownership by May, 1847 moved The Californian to San Francisco. Later, after the Gold Rush had begun it was used to print the Placer Times at Sutter's Fort, the Stockton Times, in Stockton, and in 1850 it moved to Sonora to print the Sonora Herald. It's last move was to the mining town of Columbia to print the Columbia Star in 1851. The owner at the time defaulted on payments, and the press was seized and partially dismantled. The wooden frame of the press which had been left on a sidewalk overnight was set on fire by rowdies, bringing the first press in California to an undeserved fiery end.                                                                                                                                            

This well mustachioed printer poses with a fine specimen of an R. Hoe 

Washington hand-press. The press, probably built in the late 1870s, 

now resides at the New York Center for the Book, 

where it is occasionally used to print.