Golgonooza Letter Foundry & Press has been working since 1979 making metal types in the tradition of letterpress and movable types. Started in Boston, it moved to the foothills of New Hampshire in 1982 when its two proprietors, Dan Carr and Julia Ferrari, a couple of 20 something’s with poetry in their blood and stars guiding their universe launched out on an unlikely journey into the deep world of typography.For over 30 years books of literature were set and printed in the 150-year-old brick building that housed them, near the Ashuelot river, in the Village called Ashuelot… or in Algonquin “in between.” from The Gardens of Golgonooza by Beryl Black and P. Daniels
In just four days I will be heading to Paris to seek out the French punchcutters at the Imprimerie Nationale, where my partner, Dan Carr (who died in June of 2012) learned to engrave punches in the French technique in 1992. This eventually led to his creating the capitals of Regulus, (he finished the lower case on his own in 1989) and Parmenides, an archaic Greek typeface, — two new typefaces of the very few created in metal in the late 20th century. There at the Imprimerie, they have the most beautiful collection of typographic punches in the world. Typefaces of kings … the Roman d’Roi, for instance; incredibly precise Egyptian hieroglyphs; and typefaces done for Napoleon to name a few— just exquisite typographic craftsmanship.
Then off to Hyeres for a few days to visit two artists, Kim and Philippe Villard. After that I go to the Netherlands for a study period on the comp casters. I can fix and run a monotype keyboard, proof galleys, work on the frame make corrections, and print, but after losing our skilled caster person, Dan, I feel it is important to put myself in front of the task of making letters in metal.
I have engaged another person to accompany me on this mythic journey, a former apprentice Gahlord Dewald, who will also come and learn and document everything. After the monotype caster work we will be traveling to London to work at the Type Archive with my former teacher, Gerry Drayton, now 86 years old, to study the super caster,—the caster to make display type for titling. It was Gerry who first taught me how to take apart a monotype keyboard in 1985, and put it back together, adjusted. Gerry was never sexist in this very masculine machine world, encouraging me to work to my potential alongside Dan, telling me stories of an all woman’s monotype shop in Piccadilly Circus in London that did everything themselves except clean the pumps (too heavy). He always made me feel that it was within my power to master these typographic wonders of the industrial age.
This is where these travels and this quest will be documented.