Eastern Corp. Broadsides

I had probably 5 or 10 of them at one time, but not any more. The one which I framed (the one on antique victorian types), had some of the ink fade after a while, so from that experience, I wouldn’t recommend keeping them in constant light.

I would be very interested in hearing what the final count is anbd a listing of them if possible. I have a lot of them also. I think I’ll go down and make a list and post it here and perhaps others can add to it and we can see if we can come up with some kind of consensus. These posters came in their own envelopes can had a data sheet with each. I’ll post more one I get downstairs and find my stash.

Rick

Well, this seemed too intriguing so I just went downstairs and found mine. They are in no particular order so I’ll just start listing what I have.

They all basically start with “This is a specimen sheet of…” so I’ll just list what the subject is.

Alternate Gothic and Franklin Gothic
Garamont.Garamond Bold
Futura Type
Grayda Type augmented by Barnum
Janson Type
Binny & Ronaldson
Fairfield Type
Lutetia Type
Perpetua - Monotype
Cheltenham (a gorgeous poster!)
The “Lost” Goudy Types (there are TWO versions of this!)
Lydian & Lydian Bold
Monotype Baskerville
Bodoni Types
Caslon Roman & Italic Types
Square-Serif
Cloister Black
Monotype Baskerville
Caslon Type Variations
Goudy Old Style
Bernhard Modern, Roman & Italic
Calligraphy
Centaur Type
Old-Fashioned Types (probably their greatest!)

That totals 24 subjects. There is a font substitution on the Lost Goudy Types poster and each version was printed on a different stock.

These posters are very fragile (brittle) because of the age and nature of the stock they were printed on.

They came folded, individually in their own envelope which also included an 8 1/2” x 11” card giving details about the typeface(s) and designer of the specimen sheet, etc. and listing all of Eastern’s Merchants.

Please add the subject/name of any others out there that are not on my list.

Rick

to all

Not closely linked to the “faded nature of some specimen sheets of founts, but at the 1988 Expo In Brisbane (Australia) on display was an original Magna Carta believed to be the only one in existence. The others had been exposed and eventually deteriorated. This one had been “hidden” in a drawer for most of the centuries. Magna Carta is best described as a publication through several copies (should have been identical) which were distributed, and it is believed that the message was to given to the general public by being promulgated in churches.

Which suggests to others who hold important specimen sheets, is it possible to frame the specimen sheets, and cover them in some way so that they are not exposed to too much light?

In the case of framed display material, would it be possible to frame the specimen sheets, and cover with facsimiles pasted to thin opaque card in the form of a jacket which covers the front, and overlaps the sides, going a short way around to the back; this may give complete coverage of the printed image?

The thought is to give protection which is readily removed, but which (more importantly) is easily replaced. It should be shaped so that it completely covers the specimen sheet.

Alan.

P.S. I’m very drowsy at the moment, hope I picked up the miss-spellings. - A.

re protecting specimen sheets from deterioration

Only miss-spelling I picked up is a pair of close-quote marks near the beginning of the above story; Australian English, of course. If any wants a longer, more detailed explanation, ask for it. Three edges of the a sliding cover of a picture frame may be likened to a capital J, the fourth (lowermost) side is open, but no doubt an ingenious person should be able to rig a reasonable cover here; I suggest velcro would keep a flap closed, but I do not know of any way to check the effectiveness of any protection.

Alan.

re protecting specimen sheets

Would it be kinder/gentler-on-the-images to photo-copy the specimen sheets once than leave them exposed to light all day, most days? Even photo-copying photo-copies (after the first) may be possible?

Should be not too much “fuzz” if a good photo-copier is accessible. Although, when we produced a news-letter, by small-office offset, for the church, we were asked why we did not serially copy the masthead; I tried to explain the deterioration this causes.

I learned a lot during those days (including a problem with the person who did the “typesetting” for us, the first time); after that, I did our own, would have liked to continue and expand the service, but ill-health in the family eventually stopped that venture.

Alan.

P.S. More in another post should be useful to persons following the path of digital typesetting and the plastic plate. — Alan.

to those who follow the path of digital typesetting and platemaking and that form of letterpress:

The Church I belong to tried, many years ago, a newsletter which was 12 to 16 A4 sheets each month. When they called on me, knowing that I was a “printer” (although actually a compositor) they had struck a snag; they had bought a large quantity of A3 paper, then found that the owners of the photo-copier, which they had been given access to, had not purchased the auto-feeder for A3, could pass only A4 paper through the machine.I took the paper to my good-friend at a commercial printer (they still had line-shafts just above floor level, the late-teens daughter of the owner lost her dress to the shaft, but had no injuries except her embarrassment and nervous-shock) and the A3 was cut to A4, or nearly A4, there were slight differences of width. Folded A3 makes a good newsletter, although this limits the differing numbers of pages to steps of 4, unless a guillotine is available to change one of the sheets (usually after printing print-and-twist, or print-and-tumble) to two pages on a single sheet of A4.

Then I had to paste-up the pages. I contacted the typist for about a dozen lines of correction which had been not found in proofreading.

This typist had been asked to typeset to half-width of page so that two columns per page could be pasted; later, this worked out, in the text size we used, to (I think) an average of 65 characters per line. The typist had not done this work previously for paste-up, only photocopy, so set the page margins, then the end of the first column-width to the MIDDLE of the page, which means the right-hand column is narrower than the left.

Another volunteer typist later was downcast when we pointed out that her machine produced an image that, to her was black, but to us was light-grey.

Deadline was rushing towards us, and a number of volunteers had been allocated a particular day on which to work. A clergyman of the same church but a different parish set aside his spare day (Tuesday) to run his small-offset press.

I made up the pages, some of them oversize, then took them to where I knew there was a photo-copier which could copy at (say) 93% of original image. Unfortunately, these copies were not up to a standard which we should have had, they were only just legible.

Then the photo-copies of the paste-up went to an accessible offset-plate-maker, but the operator asked us to do the wiping with the chemical which “fixed” the image. The owner of the press asked me to purchase a bottle (about a gallon) of demineralised water, as the township water where he worked had a lot of mineral in it. But he did not give me any advance warning of this, more time lost on
printing day which was fast disappearing.

When we arrived there at his church, he had the press in the vestry; his first wipe of the first page-plate wiped the image, he did not say a word; the heat-treatment of the plate had not worked because the heater had been on not long enough. Back to town to get plates re-exposed.

Eventually we had a set of plates which were (barely) usable. Fortunately the press itself behaved, except for an occasional misfeed which sometimes wrapped the inking rollers. At full speed the press runs about 6000 (six thousand) an hour. On a later occasion, a sheet was reduced to powder mixed into the ink; the press continued to work.

We laid the printed sheets out to dry the ink, in small piles on the pews of the church, the first lot being returned to have the second side printed. We allowed as much time as possible for the ink to dry between printing first and second sides. When we had completed the whole run (600 copies) we packed the sheets, in their correct stacks) into supermarket plastic freezer bags to keep them clean and so as not to have them blown out of the motor vehicle and delivered them to town where, on another pre-scheduled day, a team of ladies collated and hand-stapled (down the spine); I never ventured on this site.

The newsletters were delivered to the various church sites through the parish and I believe the venture was successful.

Then improvements were made. An “elder” of another Church lent me his typewriter (one with fount discs); all I had to do was drive 40 or 50 miles each way to his dairy farm. I tendered for a second-hand machine, but lost out; it went for something like two weeks’ wages. While I was on holidays, I bought a different typewriter which justified, but could not take corrections except when its print-out had reached the actual character to be corrected; from memory, this applied to the whole file, and only one file could be stored, it was necessary to delete the file used previously before starting on any subsequent file; thus a file had to be perfect, and there was no back-up. We carried this typewriter on the back seat of our car, only a distance of about 700 miles from where we bought it. The typewriter carriage was about two feet from left to right. Second-hand it cost about two weeks’ wages. I do not remember if it could use differing founts, but think so.

When the pages were nearing full paste-up I went to the newspaper site where I worked and photoset the headings of the stories, with the permission of the foreman. Here, for a certain story, I got a transparency of a line-drawing of one of our clergy (of another parish) done, so that I could flip it to suit the layout; fortunately, he had a reasonably symmetrical face; this can be a trap.

My wife was exceptionally skilled with the photo-copier at the local high school where she worked, was able to improve the density of some photo-copied line-drawings I wanted to use.

For one issue, I started pasting-up the pages, found that it would fit 14 pages except that there was not enough room for the headings on more than half the pages; so, go to 16 pages and add some filling, and open spacing of the pages.

The Editor, the minister of the church I attended, was taken aback when I said we would go to press without his Editorial which, due to pressure of his pastoral work, was delayed. He knuckled down, realising that a number of volunteers had set aside a particular day and this was difficult to change. We went to press on the allocated day, with Editorial. I was never able to explain to him why, if a page worked out that there was a full-width story at the top and a single-column story under it, so that the major story would have had only 3 lines in its second column, I preferred to turn-over the major story after 3 lines of text from the start, and place the whole of the single-column story down the left column.

My memory is faulty, but I think we got a word-processing computer with table-top printer towards the end of this venture. Proof-reading and correction became easier. I think during the whole time I was doing the typesetting, the only proof-reading error I let through (by mistake) was to call a musical string instrument a volia; I knew the correct word, just failed to find the error; it looks something like a violin. I bought a small-offset press, from another parish, only 200 miles away. As my son said, it weighed about the same as a Volkswagen engine and gearbox. Late, I bought a machine which would make offset plates, or paper photo-copies, but family illness stopped us at that point. I would have liked to take on vanity printing, with a signed acknowledgement from each customer that it was vanity printing.

The clergyman whose press we used owned a simpler plate-maker; although I did not understand it, we managed to make it work; my son pointed out that trying to make an offset plate with one side of the outer shell of the machine removed would expose the whole plate to light. When I told a person who had much more experience that I had wiped the image transfer drum with a rag to clean it, he said “Boots and all”. The mirror was also dusty. But it worked, and if a run of a particular page was a little short of the others, the few copies needed were photocopied.

Although this is only similar to, and not identical with, the method digital typesetting and photo-plate then letter-press, some of the difficulties are near enough that following somewhat similar hints for fixes could be useful ideas. he owner was subsequently able to use the offset-plate-maker, which was quite a boon, especially when a church of a different denomination misunderstood his directions on how to make up the paste-up of a job we did for them no cost except for the paper. But I understood their confusion, he mixed his words, having spent his early years on a cattle property (ranch) so that he referred to “combustibles’ after I had described them as “consumables”. In his talk with that other church, he had used the word border where he meant blank margin. Many years ago, one of our local journalists thought that the manufacturer of a certain aircraft was called “Controversial’ (like Consolidated) because it was always referred to, in Australia, as the “controversial F-111”.

Believe me, I am happy that we, at the Church, never tried to do this in metal type, although for wayzgoose the social club at the newspaper successfully did so.

Alan.

P.S. I hope that my proofreading has not left any confusing
bits in the text. — Alan.

Alan, when i was just learning to be a linotype operator i worked in a small typesetting company, we set lots of type for local print shops, many monthly and weekly newsletters. One of my first jobs that i set was a church monthly newsletter, i’ll never forget my error, The church had just got a new reverend, i skipped a line in the copy so the story read ” The reverend Mr. Baharian, who was born in 1948 and married the same year.” Luckily we had a good proofreader who caught this so it never made it to print. Somewhere around here i have a sheet of paper with errors from church bulletins, very funny, i don’t know if i can find it but i’ll look for it.

to dickg

At the daily (morning) newspaper, the proofreader came out to me, very annoyed. The distributor had stopped, I got up and omitted to mark my place in the copy; what I set was good grammar, but also nonsense; I think I skipped from the middle of one paragraph to the middle of the next par.

Some other persons’ errors included
the sound of a gong instead of the the sound of a going (the
Exodus)

An apprentice did not know the meaning of a ring around an abbreviation; we ran news about the Queensland Women’s Association (nearly always better known as the CWA); their correspondent wrote Qld Women’s Association, and we published Old Women’s Association.
The name Muller came up frequently, with the German u in it, should have been written with two dots over it (are those dots called diaresis ? they are intended to show that the letter is pronounced the same as the name of the letter) but the operator followed copy, Muller (two dots over the eyes) and it was not picked up; we had been using this.as the nearest we could get to the u with two dots. I sometimes wondered why we had lots of pi matrices (some were ligatures) which were never used, but some which could have made things easier were never purchased.
A local weather forecaster is given the privilege of having his name spelt as he wishes: McILwham; try it any other way. I knew two brothers, one spelt their name Thomson, the other Thomsen.

The Disciples should have been described as an obscure little band, but were published as an obscene little band.
Holy Communist instead of Holy Communion in the church times notices.
One of our Prime Ministers was referred to as Ming the Merciless from the serial Flash Gordon (or sometimes Speed Gordon); the correct pronunciation of his name, though not used in Australia, included the sound ming as in the Chinese dynasty. We were cautious when a journalist, against our advice, used the slugname (filename, catchline) MING; we succeeded in preventing it from ever appearing.

We had a case of a grave site needing to be shifted, and for the only time, needed a heading REBURIAL; unfortunately, no one threw the line away, kept it as a standing heading, and it was used for an ordinary funeral.
The first use had been for a grave which was used after our worst storm in 1918, when 80% of the buildings were badly damaged. The barograph went off the chart, though not quite off the paper; claimed to be the record low atmospheric pressure ever recoded anywhere at sea level.

Some operators inserted nicknames instead of real names for sports stars; the operator forgot, the proof reader missed it, so it was published.

A proofreader thought to frighten an operator out of this practice, deliberately let one go, then forgot it, several hours later was searching the proofs on the OK spike.

Since tradesmen typesetters and proofreaders are “no longer required” the prevalence of using the wrong word has increased greatly.

Some journos do not know the difference between reign rein and rain; also the different forms of the noun and verb lead and led etc. They also write about road vehicles being “stranded” in flood waters.
A clean-up was called for at Sandy Creek instead of Sandfly Creek, about 20 miles apart.

At the afternoon daily paper the arrows (on separate slugs) fell out of the block lines between two single-column pictures of people, were replaced the wrong way round. I wonder now if we should have used selotape to hold the arrows in? A comp was called away from the work he was doing, forgot the job, and the display advert did not make it to the forme. Later, he found the work, so the metal and the paper copy and order form etc went into the remelt furnace. At the morning daily, I found in the trash bin (“dumpster? ” ) the stereo matrices and order-form papers for a series of advertisements. No one thanked me.

I had to suggest to the Editor that it was unlikely that passenger aircraft took 8 or 10 days to travel from Britain across the Atlantic to America. He never acknowledged that I could be correct, he re-wrote his (leading) editorial.

We took back some hand-written copy to a journo, to ask him what it said; he grunted that he meant to re-write the lines, with different words replacing the first draft; we think he could not read his own writing.

While I was still at school, the newspaper took some writing to the letter-sorters at the nearby mail centre; they deciphered the text.

The lines with a social picture were changed from “some ladies having a drink” to “some ladies enjoying a cup of tea” although the pic clearly showed beer goblets on the table at the local horse races.

The heading and intro to stories travelled separate paths to the general text; unfortunately, the headings and intros were not accompanied by a slugname though the text was. There were two cycling (racing) clubs, which were at loggerheads, and we interchanged the two texts, so that the stories started out for each club, then went on to describe the alternative club’s activities. I noticed a delegation of very beefy men waiting to talk to the Editor.

There were two patrons of the women’s croquet clubs, their families in business competition; the journalist put the wrong name on a report of a presentation to one of the clubs by one of the patrons.
The City Council changed the name of a street from Albert to Gordon; a nearby parallel street was Alfred.
We still have two neighbouring townships (villages) called Mirani and Marian.

Alan.

Sorry

Change that reference to CWA to QCWA, the Queensland Country Women’s Association.

Alan.

Much earlier, reference church newsletter, should have read 12 to 16 A4 pages, not 12 to 16 A4 sheets. Vast difference.

Alan.

Re protecting specimen sheets

In the world of museums and archives, displaying old documents is common, but it poses a challenge so the historical piece is not compromised by over exposure to light. Colors, especially reds and blues are the most susceptible to fading. Black ink is less problematic. The organic nature of the paper is also susceptible to light damage over time. This is why most museum exhibits are in windowless galleries with controlled lighting conditions. To assist with this, such documents are framed with a sheet of Plexiglas containing UV filtering over the document. The document is also mounted and matted with acid free mat board to minimalize acids leaching into it. These documents are usually on exhibit for a limited amount of time and then are replaced with a good photographic copy, which can be virtually indistinguishable from the original at a normal viewing distance. Depending on the value of your specimen sheet, never display it in direct sunlight nor in strong ambient light. If it is something worth saving, I would suggest a good photographic copy for everyday, and bring out the real thing for special occasions.

As for the Magna Carta, four copies of the original 1215 version in existence, each a bit different from the other. Other versions were issued later in the century. See: http://www.emersonkent.com/historic_documents/magna_carta_1215.htm

Bob Mullen

to Bob Mullen

Thanks

Alan.

Hi Bob,

Great information of conservation of prints. I am dumbfounded as to how this simple querry about the Eastern Corp. broadsides got hijacked into this mile-long ramble completely off-topic. Geoffrey mentioned some fading on his poster and I simply mentioned that they were fragile and it had more to do with the deterioration of the paper stock itself. You addressed those issues with clarity.

Thanks,

Rick

I’d LOVE to get this thread back on track and see what we can find out about total number and subject matter of the original series of posters.

Foolproof546:

the one you don’t have is Weiss. I have 2 copies of the Lost Goudies, but they look identical. You have a Caslon I do not. Can we swap some images? I sent you a note offline, but maybe it got junked.

Hi cheloniidae

There are maybe a half-dozen of these that I really admire and a few that I have actually framed. Which Caslon are you missing? I have “extras” of the Caslon Type Variations poster, but only one of the Caslon Roman & Italic Types. I am a complete Luddite at scanning digital images (I prefer letterpress! - imagine that). If it is the Caslon Type Variations you are after I will simply give you one. Where are you located????? I am in central Iowa, but will be in Phoenix, AZ in early June for the APA Wayzgoose, I’ll be in Mt. Pleasant, IA for the Ladies of Letterpress Regional Conference in late June and there again later in September for the Midwest & Great Northern Printer’s Fair and I’ll also be in Two Rivers, WI in early November for the Hamilton Wood Type Museum Wayzgoose. I can bring it to any of these events. Hate to ship it because it is so fragile, but could send it in a tube also.

The TWO versions of the Lost Goudy Types poster are:
The one printed on Atlantic Bond Sub. 24. This has a brief story about Goudy set in two columns just below the Trajan specimen. The other is printed on Eastern’s Atlantic Antique Laid and the whole story about Goudy has been replaced by a boxed-in ad for that very stock. A rather cheesy substitution. Unfortunately, the “cheesy” one is the one framed in my library becuase the other is stained pretty badly.

I have seen the Weiss poster now that you mention it. I really have no need for an image of it, but thanks for the offer.

Rick

Rick:

It’s the Caslon Roman & Italic I need. Thanks for the kind offer of the other tho. I’m in Vancouver. If my ideas for a project around these broadsides coalesce, maybe you would be brave enough to send me the Roman & Italic to be scanned here, and quickly returned. It sounds like the note I sent thru your Briar profile didn’t connect. I’ll try again, with my coordinates. Thanx again. HM