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A Lecture by Kitty Maryatt

Emulating Gutenberg with B-42 Type

A Lecture by Kitty Maryatt

July 19, 2008 2-4 pm at The International Printing Museum 315 Torrance Blvd.. Carson, CA 90745 Free admission but please RSVP to bookarts@printmuseum..org Download the PDF flyer at www.printmuseum.org

On July 19, 2008, the International Printing Museum will present a lecture by Kitty Maryatt, Director of the Scripps College Press, “Emulating Gutenberg with B-42 Type.” This lecture is sponsored by a generous grant for the Book Club of California. Founded in 1912, The Book Club is a non-profit organization of book lovers and collectors who have a special interest in Pacific Coast history, literature, and fine printing. Its chief aims are to further the interests of book collectors and scholars and to promote an understanding and
appreciation of fine books.

Ms. Maryatt will discuss her fascinating experiences hand setting a facsimile page of the Gutenberg Bible using Dale Guild Type Foundry’s B-42 type, a faithful re-cutting of the types of Johann Gutenberg, as seen in his monumental 42-line Bibla Sacra, ca. 1455 Production of this font required that 245 characters were drawn, cut and cast.

In her lecture, Ms. Maryatt provides an explanation of scribal practices used in medieval books to enhance an understanding of the abbreviations and ligatures in the font. She will also provide information and elaboration related to the printing press, the handmade paper and vellum used for the edition, the decoration and aspects of medieval bookbinding practices and bookselling.

In addition to the lecture and PowerPoint presentation, attendees will have opportunities to see one of the printed pages pieces and see some pieces of the Gutenberg type.

210 BCE
The Chinese Emperor, Quin Shi Huang, burned most of the extant books of the time and executed many of the leading scholars in his kingdom.

1483
Printing was forbidden to the Turkish population by command of the Sultan Bajazet II and again, in 1515 by Selim I.

1562
Friar Diego de Landa conducted an auto-da-fe in Mani, when he burned 27 books in Maya writing, leaving only 4 Mayan books for scholars to puzzle over.

1933
20,000 books are burned by the Nazis in a Berlin public square. Books that Goebbels referred to as holding “….the unclean spirit of the past.”

1981
Sri Lankan policemen and other government sponsored enforcers set fire to the Jaffina Public Library destroying 97,000 volumes, including many culturally important and irreplaceable manuscripts.

1992
During the Bosnian War, the Oriental Institute was attacked and 5263 bound manuscripts were destroyed along with hundreds of thousands of Ottoman documents.

On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Mutanabbi Street is in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the famed 10th century classical Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, this is an old and established street for bookselling and has been for hundreds of years. Mutanabbi Street also holds cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.

Any group that wants to control a people also wants to control the content of every printed page, and they inevitably come to regard any other unsanctioned page as a possible threat. Those that targeted Mutanabbi Street were— are, as much affronted by any novelist or poet as they are by any political or religious tract. They want ultimate control, and they will kill as many as they need to, until no other voice but their own leaves the printed page. Oppression extracts not just a terrible human toll, but it also subtracts the words and images of the writers/artists who hold and express the cultural memory of any people.

This is our starting point: where language, thought, and reality reside; where memory, ideas, and even dreams wait patiently in their black ink. We are extending our call to letterpress printers to contribute a personal response to the bombing on Mutanabbi Street. To date, we have received 42 broadsides which may be viewed at the Florida Atlantic University/Jaffe Center for Book Arts site.

We would like to add to our existing archive, to bring the total to 130 broadsides, which is the approximate number of people killed and wounded on Mutanabbi Street that day.

The pacific Center for the Book Arts is having a printer Fair.  There will be workshops, table top press demonstrations, vendors, and more. The guild’s Printer’s Playground will be collated on site.

Sponsored by the PCBA

Registration information in a PDF.

Last night on BBC4. If you are in the UK you can watch it online now with their iplayer.

Those outside of the UK will have to get it from the usual torrents.

“Stephen Fry examines the story behind the first media entrepreneur, printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg, to find out why he did it and how.”