#matrix 18

Decorative Paper Sunday 

Earlier this week we shared some typography from the Winter 1998 issue of Matrix, a typographic journal celebrated both for its content as well as its production and design. The above pattern paper samples are also from Matrix 18, printed at Whittington Press in Gloucestershire County, England by John and Rosalind Randle in an edition of 825. John and Rosalind founded the press, named after their Gloucestershire village, in 1971, producing the first edition of Matrix in 1981. 

The first collection of papers (image three above) accompanies a reprinting of the obituary of painter and designer, Enid Marx, written by art historian and scholar of architecture and design, Alan Powers. The selected papers represent four of the five Marx-designed papers published by the short lived Judd Street Gallery (run by Powers and his wife, Susanna), selected from unpublished pattern blocks in Marx’s studio. Power’s writes, “Marx’s genius for patterned design, more jazzy, risk-taking and lively than that of her male friends was as instinctive as perfect pitch.” Also included in this issue is an essay on the interaction of production and design by Marx, originally published in the February 1944 edition of Architectural Review. 

The second set of pattern papers (image four) appear alongside a review of In Praise of Patterned Papers. The 1997 publication by Incline Press collects essays on patterned papers, some of which are reprinted classics like a 1927 Paul Nash essay from The Woodcut, with some newly commissioned for the book. Reviewer David McKitterick writes:

“This remarkable book, spoiled though it is with innumerable misprints, is both a monument to a passion and a collector’s piece in itself. Much of the writing in it has a fervency and immediacy that no cold-blooded historian could match. More than ninety tipped-in examples enliven the whole volume with a sense of immediacy that no reproductions could command, allowing one both to test the weight and quality of the paper, and also to gain a much better sense of the tactile nature of so many of these papers.”

You can find more on Enid Marx from our collection here. 

Find more posts from Matrix here. 

View more Decorative Sunday posts here. 

Typography Tuesday

We made two posts in the past week on a publication printed for Nonesuch Press by the Fanfare Press in London. Not much useful information about the press can be found on the interwebs, but there is an article about the Fanfare Press by former Trinity College, Cambridge, librarian David McKitterick published in Matrix 18, Winter 1998. pp. 24-43, that not only discusses the press but also displays the types and ornaments used by the press (shown above).

Fanfare was founded in 1925 by the flamboyant advertising publisher Charles William Hobson, but it was more closely associated with its managing director Ernest Ingham, who developed a reputation for impeccable design and printing and forged close working relationships with important type designers of the day, especially Eric Gill and Stanley Morison. The press “was designed on a deliberately modest scale: for setting publicity and advertising copy, employing an increasingly diverse range of typefaces,” but it soon became much more than that. Two of the firm’s major clients during the 20th century were the Nonesuch Press in England and the Limited Editions Club in America.

Shown above are the 1931 Fanfare Press type specimen and a 1938 display of type ornaments designed for the press by noted German type designer Berthold Wolpe.

Matrix 18 was printed in an edition of 825 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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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Once again, we’ve come across another wood engraver we are unfamiliar with. This time it is British printmaker and sculptor Rachel Reckitt (1908-1995). Reckitt had a very long career, exhibiting 23 engravings with the Society of Wood Engravers from 1933 to 1994. Hal Bishop, former curator at the Exeter City Museum, remarks that Reckitt “probably had a greater creative span at the block than any other wood-engraver” of the 20th century.

Reckitt witnessed the Blitz of London from September 1940 to May 1941, making many drawings of the devastation and later engraving a few of them. Only five of Reckitt’s wartime engravings are known, and we show four of them here. These engravings were reprinted as an insert to Hal Bishop’s article “Rachel Reckitt: Letters from the Blitz” in Matrix 18, Winter 1998, pp. 58-71. The first image, N. F. S., was printed on the dust jacket of the magazine. Bishop writes:

In Rachel’s work it is these ripped-open buildings that are the main focus: slab-like walls cut-away to reveal the intimate interior and the incongruity of such exposure. The stress is on monumentality, while the juxtaposition of household effects, personal possessions and building rubble creates a surrealism which is entirely uncontrived.

Matrix 18 was printed in an edition of 745 copies by John and Rosalind Randle at the Whittington Press in England, and is a donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts from Matrix.

View other posts relating to the Whittington Press.