Gravers and files

It’s a superb video. Title is “The Last Days of Metal Type,” and chronicles Carl Dair’s internship at the Enschedé Foundry in Holland in the 1950s. Later, Matthew Carter added a voice-over, which is very helpful, and most recently Rod McDonald adds an introduction. A must see.

Emily Hancock
St Brigid Press
stbrigidpress.net

Dair died on a return flight to his home in Toronto on September 28, 1967. He had lectured the day before in New York City on type design where he had shown this film. He expressed his concerns about the emerging electronic technologies and how they would affect type design. There is an excellent write up about this in the October (or maybe November)1967 Inland Printer. I was a subscriber to the IP in 1967 and it has been 50 years since I read these magazines and they now serve to jog my memory about what were very exciting and changing times in printing. Dair was a relatively young 55 at the time of his death.