Alastair Johnston
Alphabets to Order
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York, NY
6:00 PM, Friday, November 9, 2001
Free and open to the public.
Lecture:
Typographer and letterpress printer Alastair Johnston discusses his recent Alphabets to Order: The Literature of Nineteenth Century Typefounders' Specimens (published by Oak Knoll Press and The British Library). Johnston surveys the inseparable visual and literary experiments of the anonymous craftsmen who set English and American type specimen books during the "typographical explosion" of the 19th century.
With the arrival of display types, the specimen books became the "playground of the compositors." Johnston will show "the controlled chaos" of 19th century typefounders' specimen books, and discuss some of the "labyrinthine byways" he traveled in exploring these texts. "Lost in the stacks I encountered poison candy, vice and superstition. Then found some peculiar books, lost to time, that revealed the reading habits, politics and whimsies of typestickers of yore" - some of which may be compared to the later work of concrete poets and dadaists.
Alastair Johnston is a typographer and letterpress printer at the Poltroon Press in Oakland, California, which he founded in 1975 in partnership with Frances Butler. He is well known as a historian, lecturer, and author on books and type, and edits The Ampersand, published by the Pacific Center for Book Arts.
This event is co-sponsored by:
Location:
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York
(between Park and Madison Avenues).
The closest subway stops are at Fifth Avenue (N and R trains) and at 59th Street (Lexington Avenue 4, 5, and 6 trains and N and R trains; exit north end of the station, at 60th Street); buses stop at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 60th Street.
APHA Contact:
Lowell Bodger
212-777-0841 for more information.
Grolier Contact:
Eric Holzenberg
Director & Librarian
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York, NY 10022
Tel. 212-838-6690
Fax 212-838-2445
email: jh@grolierclub.org
| 
