#matrix 8

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Decorative Sunday

These samples of Chinese decorated paper are inserted into the article "Chinese Decorated Paper" by the Uruguayan-British decorative-paper collector and graphic art historian Tanya Schmoller (1918-2016) in Matrix 8, Winter 1988, pp. 94-98. These samples were imported to England in the 1930s. The symbols and patterns on the papers are traditional and denote good fortune: a butterfly meaning companionship or a good marriage; a bee diligence; a fish plenty; the wheel, the crane, and the bat long life; and circle with squares at their centers, money. Much of the article conjectures about the locations and methods of manufacture, but in the end, Schmoller concedes that the "papers are showy with little real worth and cheaply splendid."

Tanya Schmoller was the personal assistant to Penguin Books co-founder Allen Lane and was married to Penguin's director of typography and design Hans Schmoller. In 1987, the couple, along with Bird & Bull Press owner and printer Henry Morris, published the book Chinese Decorated Papers, which we blogged about almost four years ago. That book and Matrix, printed at John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England, are donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

HOWARD PHIPPS

British wood engraver Howard Phipps (b. 1954) began his artistic career as a painter. In 1976, after he began teaching, he discovered that wood engraving was ideal for long winter evenings. Phipps writes:

It  seems a remarkable transition from 4 x 6 ft. canvases to 4 x 3 in. boxwood blocks. However, equally dramatic and intense effects can be gained. . . . it was only by chance that I discovered this unusual medium, just at a time when there has been such a revival of interest in it. This has been largely brought about by the Society of Wood Engravers and the enthusiasm of a number of fine private press printers, and it is for this reason that I am sustained in what after all is a very solitary artistic activity.

These prints were printed directly from the original blocks and included in Phipps’s article “A Painter's Approach to Wood-engraving” in Matrix 8, Winter 1988, inserted as a separate 8-page signature between pages 80 and 81. The color wood engraving entitled “Ox Drove” serves as the frontispiece to Matrix 8. It is printed in four colors, with the key block printed in grey and the colors (yellow, orange, and blue), which overlap to create secondary colors, printed from linocuts.

Matrix was printed by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in England, and is a donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

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Typography Tuesday

This letterpress-printed wood type specimen sheet is included as part of Elizabeth Harris’s article “Typographic Collections at the Smithsonian” published in Matrix 8, Winter 1988, pp. 81-88. Harris was the Curator of Graphic Arts in the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, from the 1970s until her retirement in 1997. 

In 1981 the Museum purchased the Morgan Press Type Font Collection, consisting of about 700 fonts of wood type, 2500 examples of foundry type in various sizes, 3000 pictorial cuts, and several hundreds sets of borders and ornaments. All of the material is American from the 19th and early 20th century, with the wood type demonstrating the strength and variety of this very American industry, some of which can be seen in this broadside.

Matrix was printed by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in England, and is a donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

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Pochoir Printing for Decoration

Today we present “Pochoir: Practical Watercolour Stencilling of Illustrations & Designs for Books &c” an article by Vance Gerry found in Matrix 8, Winter 1988, printed at the Whittington Press in Gloucestershire, England, edited by John and Rosalind Randle. The article gives instructions for printing using the pochoir printing method, which involves cutting your own stencils. It is illustrated with five original pochoir prints.

In the “Pochoir Postscript” included at the end of the article, Dennis Hall, whose wife Sylvia Stokeld did much of the pochoir for Matrix 8, writes:

“The scale of the work is interesting. As Matrix’s run is 950 copies, it represents a large undertaking for pochoir work, and as one person could not complete it in the time, it had to be spread between four (Geoffrey Bamford, Carol Boothman, Marlene Sanderson, and Sylvia Stokeld), which presented something of an organizational problem as, with two or more illustrations on one spread, reams of sheets were sent dashing about Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. And pochoir is labour intensive: each illustration means picking up the sheet and positioning it accurately, bringing down the stencil, getting the correct liquidity of paint, removing the sheet, stacking it, covering it with blotting paper and lowering a large dictionary to prevent cockling.”

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–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern