The missing kiss

Where is the bite of type in this film on the letterpress?

I was excited to learn a few weeks ago of a new documentary on letterpress printing. I hastened to see it and found that after a run at film festivals, it was now available to own on DVD for $24.99. Though the price was steep for me, I was still eager to get it. Just before I placed an order for it, I noticed it was available to rent and stream on Amazon. That seemed so instantaneous (and cheaper) that I ended up watching it streaming. And was I glad I didn’t buy it: Pressing On: The Letterpress Film left me very disappointed. And puzzled.

It isn’t a deeply fulfilling film for people who love letterpress, and neither is it basic enough (or seductive enough) to win over an audience curious about letterpress. I’m not sure whom it was made for. More frustratingly, it stops short of showing the appeal of letterpress: the bite of type into paper.

One saving grace

The camera shies away from lingering or dwelling on a finely printed page or capturing fine typefaces (I don’t think I heard a single typeface being named!) or from even showing what letterpress can result in — we see, for example, students or amateurs being introduced to letterpress: they print a page or a broadside, and then as it comes off the press, the film-makers don’t close in to reveal the magic of letterpress.

The joy, beauty and pleasure in letterpress is the impression metal faces or type ornaments make on paper, something you can’t obtain with offset and digital printing. What’s missing here is the kiss of letterpress. There’s a young couple here who seem more enthralled with buying old printing presses and restoring them than achieving fine presswork.

That’s a fine goal in itself (there are luckily historians and curators who collect letterpress equipment) but this couple’s letterpress work on posters is what is mostly held out as being thrilling about letterpress printing. I fear that

Pressing On may actually put people off from exploring letterpress.

Only Hopkins

The one saving grace of the documentary is Rich Hopkins and his Hill & Dale Private Press and Type Foundry. Of all the talking heads in the film, Hopkins is the only one who is able to offer something exciting and substantial to take in, and his tidy and sparkling printing shop is a treat to behold. As are the (all too brief) scenes where he shows us glimpses of the workings of his Monotype Casters.

The portion particularly where he reveals what he has been doing lately with letterpress composition — that he has, with a help of a wizard friend, hooked up his Mac to type and compose from, rather than from the Caster’s keyboards is a revelation. Though, of course, we know now that quite a few contemporary fine press printers compose on their computers, and print from polymer plates with astonishingly tactile results, it is still fun to see this beauty Hopkins has engineered. I have written about Hopkins before, in my column about a rare Indian type specimen book from Gujarati Type Foundry. He spent decades chasing after and salvaging precious letterpress equipment from destruction and oblivion, from heavy weight casters to matrices, inspiring others to do the same.

A boutique line of work

Alas, there’s too little of Hopkins. I couldn’t help wondering why the film-makers simply didn’t get this venerated foundry type caster to show the audience how Monotype — the foundation for modern letterpress printing — works. I, for one, have always been fascinated with and curious about this invention’s amazing ability to cast type in metal right inside your very home! One other engaging part in the film is on the museum for letterpress printing presses and its impassioned owner-curator, Paul Aken of the Planten Press Museum.

Pressing On felt to me like a film more tilted towards print shops involved in design and graphic work than fine press printing. While it does profile hobby private press printers, there’s an emphasis in the film as it progresses on wood type, large font sizes, posters, flyers, broadsides. Printing of ephemera is showcased or aimed at — and while that’s traditionally been a delightful aspect of letterpress, it can end up making letterpress look like a boutique line of work (as it sometimes feels like here).

The film begins with showing us a display of beautiful incunable printing: two leaves of handmade paper in rich black ink and rubricated initials and decoration — a perfect way to begin, and I wish it had followed the work of these early printing masters and drawn the line right down to our contemporary fine printers who continue this magnificent tradition of fine bookmaking. It’s difficult enough to find funding for docs like this, so Pressing On feels to me even more like a missed opportunity to make a case for letterpress.

The author is a bibliophile, columnist and critic.