#matrix 13

Many hundreds of varieties of prayer sheets used to be produced by specialist ma-chang printers all over China. Many of the limited range made today are the cheapest offset-litho jobs on the cheapest machine-made papers, but the designs still imitate the original woodblock prints.

Modern Taiwanese sheets of cash, made from recycled paper, sold very cheaply by weight in Taipei.

Mock money and other ceremonial papers for religious ceremonies will be gathered in "bowls" of crude papers, usually made of a mixture of rice-straw and bamboo fibers.

The simplest form of mock money is made traditionally with thin layers of tinfoil affixed to the center of a small piece of bamboo paper, although in contemporary production the cheapest grades of machine-made paper will be used instead, and in Taiwan and Malaysia metallic inks may be used instead of tinfoil.

Here's a piece of mock money in traditional colors with auspicious designs, and tinfoil brushed over with a dye from the pagoda tree to make it resemble gold.

Contemporary Taiwanese ceremonial paper.

Another variety of gold mock money, with inscriptions and symbols for good fortune building up the design, usually still quite well printed from woodblocks on fairly good quality paper, but sometimes now mass-produced by offset lithography.

Contemporary ceremonial paper printed letterpress on a stout machine-made paper in Hong Kong. The yellow coloring might have been brushed on by hand, but otherwise production of these attractive sheets has been mechanized completely.

At the Feast of Hungry Ghosts many large sheets of paper with pictures of all the clothes one's ancestor could need are burned. Although images of the paraphernalia of modern life like cell phones and computers might be printed on these papers, the clothing is always of traditional style.

Red paper envelopes with good luck symbols have been used for many years to enclose gifts of money made at New Year. They may be found wherever any ceremonial papers are sold; today usually with elaborate and eye-catching gold-stamping.

Decorative Sunday

The examples shown here are original paper samples included in Roderick Cave's (1935-2019) two-part article on "Ceremonial Papers of the Chinese" published in Matrix 12 (Winter 1992, pp. 51-66) and Matrix 13 (Winter 1993, pp. 161-177), printed at the John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England.

In these articles, Cave, a noted print historian, librarian, and educator, discusses the history, manufacturing, printing, distribution, and uses of Chinese ceremonial papers used in rituals, celebrations, and festivals associated with the gods and the ancestors.

Our copies of Matrix are a donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

LINDA HOLMES

Presented here are five original wood engravings by English engraver Linda Holmes (1950-2015) created as illustrations for a translation of a monologue entitled My Justification by the 17th-century Transylvanian Hungarian type designer, punchcutter, printer, and Hungarian patriot Totfalusi Kis Miklos (known in English-speaking countries as Nicholas Kis, 1650-1702). The text and blocks for the translation were printed by British designer Colin Banks (1932-2002) and inserted between pages 112 and 113 in Matrix 13 (Winter 1993), printed at the John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England.

Kis was trained in Amsterdam by punchcutter Dirk Voskens (who likely cut many of the punches for the Fell types). Kis became one of the leading punchcutters of his time before returning to Hungarian Transylvania to print bibles. His Roman fonts were purchased and used by Anton Janson, which led some to believe that they were his creation rather than Kis's. The so-called Janson typefaces recut in the 20th century are so-named because of this confusion. Kis felt beleaguered in his own time and thus wrote this monologue in his frustration.

Wood engraver Linda Holmes originally worked as a journalist for the BBC. In 1985, she and her husband, BBC journalist David Holmes, retired from London to Walpole, in Suffolk. In 1989, Holmes attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (now Camberwell College of Arts) to study wood engraving under Simon Brett and Yvonne Skargon. Holmes enjoyed a 25-year career as both a wood engraver and a painter until her death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.

Click or tap on the caption for each image to see the monologue they illustrate.

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Typography Tuesday

Presented here are examples of assembled type ornaments designed by English artist, designer, and college administrator David Bethel (1923-2006) for the Monotype Corporation, including his Glint (1955), Scorpio (1958), and Blaze (1958) ornaments. The noted typography scholar and long-time marketing manager for the Monotype Corporation Beatrice Warde was a great champion of Bethel’s Glint ornaments, and even invented the Glint Game where participants try to make as many typographical arrangements with the Glint ornaments as possible. The game is still played today, and there is even a Glint Club dedicated to the pursuit of the game.

These images are from David Bethel’s article “Creating Printer’s Flowers,” published in Matrix 13, Winter 1993, pp. 103-112. The first image is a tipped-in letterpress-printed display sheet of Glint ornaments by Milwaukee-born letterpress printer and book artist Michael Tarachow, who would later publish a sample-sheet portfolio entitled The Glint Ornaments at Work and Play under his Pentagram Press imprint. The rest are type displays reproduced from the Monotype Recorder as part of the article.

Curious side note: Michael Tarachow grew up in Milwaukee and started his press here; he even worked at the UWM Library for a time. The post we did yesterday on the Dell comic book version of The Wizard of Oz was owned by Tarachow when he was a child, and was donated to us by his mother Joan Tarachow. We love when things just kind of fall into place.

Matrix 13 was printed in an edition of 925 copies by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in England, and is a donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

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