The Old Print­ing Office by Frank Luther Mott is an account of Mott as a printer’s dev­il for his father’s small town week­ly papers in Iowa. It’s set in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, but the peo­ple could just as eas­i­ly be from any present day cre­ative shop. Take the high­wheel­er cyclist:

“My Uncle Artie worked in Father’s print­ing office for sev­er­al years; he was a fine, spruce young man who excit­ed my unbound­ed admi­ra­tion by dress­ing up in approved bicy­cle costume—sweater, tight pants, and black stock­ings in the evenings and rid­ing a high­wheel­er along the wood­en side­walks and dusty streets of What Cheer.”

There is also a sto­ry of a wan­der­ing “tourist typo” com­pos­i­tor. These tourist typos were also known as grass hands, smouts, or tramps back in those days. The scene brings to mind many of my own friends, some also heav­i­ly tat­tooed, who set and make type from the far reach­es of what seem dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents each year.

“He was the son of par­ents who were cir­cus per­form­ers and had been trained as a child aeri­al­ist; but a fall from a trapeze had injured his feet and turned him from the big tops to the print­ing office. He was tat­tooed all over the upper part of his body; and when he worked near the big win­dow of the shop in the sum­mer­time with his shirt off for cool­ness, he drew such a crowd on the side­walk and made such a scan­dal that a sleeve­less under­shirt had to be pre­scribed as min­i­mum cloth­ing. Wether this offend­ed him, or what it was, one morn­ing he sim­ply did not show up. He left no debts behind him; indeed he had a cou­ple of days’ pay due him and he had paid his land­la­dy ahead for board and room. Appar­ent­ly the old wan­der­lust had car­ried him off between days. We nev­er heard of him again.”

Old Print­ing Office
By Frank Luther Mott
Pub­lished in 1988 by Black­well North Amer­i­ca, Lake Oswego, Ore­gon & Black­wood, New Jer­sey
Designed by Neil Shaver at Yel­low Barn Press
The type was hand­set in 12 point Ital­ian Old­style by Fred­er­ic W. Goudy
Wood engrav­ings, includ­ing cov­er pat­tern, by John DePol.
Print­ed on Mohawk Superfine paper.

Hard­cov­er
20 pages