Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian (1964)

"The Pedestrian. Tweedweave Gray, 14.2 x 21.2 cm. Cover of Tweedweave Midnight Blue. 12 pt. Bembo; Bembo title. An illustration by Joe Mugnaini is tipped in. 291 unnumbered copies (colophon states 280). Before publication 10 copies were inscribed and 10 others signed. September 6." (RAS #2)

This book establishes the basic format most of Squires' subsequent publications would follow: a single signature, tasteful but not exuberant typography, minimal decoration. He sewed his chapbooks with colorful threads, with the knot tied on the outside. Not very tidy, the ends left unnecessarily long, but that was his taste.

The printing isn't bad for an early effort, but his presswork got better. The Tweedweave - a machinemade commercial paper - has a laid texture on one side, and it impedes the 12-pt type's clarity. The inking is a little uneven - too heavy at the edges of lines. This could have been resolved with some adjustments to the rollers and/or makeready. Part of the problem is that Squires was following the custom of commercial letterpress printing of the era, which emphasized a minimum of impression. There's a longer discussion around that, but suffice to say it was in no small part a desire to replicate the "modern" appearance of offset printing, which was overtaking letterpress as the industry standard. Squires was also a fan of the work of Leonard Bahr's Adagio Press, and you can see it's influence on his printing and design; that'll be a subject for a later post.

To this day printers disagree over how much impression is desirable. The best answer is, a consistent amount. What that is depends on the paper & type being used. But you want some impression, because letterpress is a relief printing technique; it requires pushing the image into the paper. The "kiss" impression that some people consider ideal is simply an apologetic attempt to make letterpress appear to be offset. One of the problems it creates (besides lacking any character) is that you need more ink, which is why you end up with over-inked, blobby letters like the ones in The Pedestrian.

The two images shown here are from different copies: you can see the ink is less heavy in the second (below), which is good, but in both instances the letters at the edges (look down the right side especially) are over-inked &/or printed too hard. That's a common problem with clamshell-type presses (I think Squires used a Chandler & Price; more about that later), and also easily fixed. These images also give you a sense of how the paper's texture competes with type for your eyes' attention. This would be less a problem with a larger type size.

Harold McGrath, a renowned New England printer who printed some of the most famous American fine press books in the later 20th century, understood the balance required between impression and ink. He talked about the "kiss" of the rollers over the type: the rollers should be minimally charged with ink, and passed over the type several times to build up sufficient ink coverage, rather than attempting to slather it on in one pass (the lazy approach). Sufficient impression into the paper was then required to achieve clear, crisp letterforms.

A technical digression, but this blog is primarily about printing. As we'll see in future posts, Squires' skills at the press improved quickly and admirably.

One thing to note that will come up again with subsequent Bradbury titles: his signature is printed on the front cover. People frequently mistake his printed signature (i.e. facsimile) for the real thing. The prepublication signed copies of this title must be among the most desirable (& scarce) of Squires' books.