Typography Tuesday

This week we present some interesting typographic approaches from Gilbert Beale’s Cadenza Press, as represented in Michael Taylor’s article “Singing an Unconcerned Song: Gilbert Beale and the Cadenza Press” in Matrix 19, Winter 1999. Beale operated his press from various locations in England from 1966 to 1995. Beale was deeply interested in spelling reform and developed his own orthographic system based on English Orthography. His system required that new matrices be made for thirteen special characters to conform to 12- and 14-point Bembo. He called his system Advanced English Orthography, and its most complete use can be seen in his multi-volume, hand-printed, 1991-95 publication Homo Intelligens, a sample page and detail of which are shown here. To break up the visual monotony, Beale commissioned a series of one-inch-square wood-engraved capital letters from the master English wood engraver Simon Brett, samples of which are also displayed here.

Beale completed the text for his master work on Advanced English Orthography in 1996, which unfortunately was never printed as Beale died in 1997. Michael Taylor writes:

Was Homo Intelligens simply a folie de grandeur? Some will find it too idiosyncratic, personal and inaccessible. . . . But I can’t help admiring its craggy monumentality and rejoicing in the human qualities which Gilbert Beale brought to its making -- ingenuity, unconventionality, determination and seriousness of intent. We need our private presses to be something like Gilbert Beale’s Cadenza Press: embarking on individualistic, impossible projects, going their own out-of-step way when all else is uniform and orderly; idealistic, singing an unconcerned song.

Our copies of Matrix, published by John and Rosalind Randle at their Whittington Press, are another donation from our friend Jerry Buff.