Talk:Joseph Blumenthal (printer)

Summer 2014 revisions

I'm going to begin a thorough rewrite of this article. Currently it looks like somebody's school project--although the writer has researched many sources, he/she appears to be new to the subject matter.D.B.Updike (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I ended up throwing out two sections of the existing article. They were very general discussions of book design and had no bearing on Blumenthal specifically. Blumenthal was cited, but he was mainly reporting well-known ideas about books.D.B.Updike (talk) 22:01, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Possible Sources

• http://library.rit.edu/cary/sites/library.rit.edu.cary/files/files/CSC%20039%20Blumenthal(1).pdf
• http://library.rit.edu/cary/collections/joseph-blumenthal-spiral-type-collection
• http://ic.galegroup.com.proxy.library.csi.cuny.edu/ic/ovic/NewsDetailsPage/NewsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=News&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=&displayGroups=&sortBy=&source=&search_within_results=&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CA175534527

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4047185

• 3 pages written by Blumenthal on book design.

"Book design is a severely circumscribed form of applied art in which cne consideration-ease of reading-is the absolute to which all other factors must yield. The function of book design is to provide an appropriate vehicle for a given piece of literature. The designer employs the printed alphabet, arranges it, disposes it and manipulates it within the confines of a restricted space, hoping that he may produce an object of articulate beauty and, perhaps, nobility. But always the text must remain the big show. These are plati- tudes to which all designers and printers have paid lip service. William Morris and others before and after him wrote about the book beautiful with one hand and designed unreadable tomes with the other"

"When we wish to buy a chair, we have a wide choice of design, price, function, etc. But for a certain book, there is usually only one edi- tion, and we must accept its typographic design. Thus, every publisher must present his books with the utmost discrimination"

He explains why book design is such an important job. The reader does not have a choice of different versions of the book. They know what they are buying and the designer must keep the book from looking dull or repetitive.These conditions can lead to a bad book.

"Repetition is a factor unique to book design, of all the graphic arts, and it is the designer's most difficult problem.The text page is the most inhibiting and most important phase of his job. He has considerable free- dom with the cover, title page and a few pages of front matter, yet he has also to contend with the traditional rectangle of type which repeats itself hundreds of times with no variation except perhaps in a running head or a page number. If paper and manufacture are mediocre or worse, this repetition becomes the bottomless pit of despair. "

He claims the most important factor in the design of a book is its "feel". It should appear that the book designed itself and no two books should be alike.

Format and arrangement of type are the most important. "It is the harmony of the whole."

• JSTOR WAS OFFLINE ADD SOURCE TO PAGE** — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfgx4 (talk • contribs) 03:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306976

• book review of The Printed Book in America by Joseph Blumenthal

http://www.jstor.org/stable/29781160?seq=2

• "The Role of the Printer" - Joseph Blumenthal on the importance of the printer and its role.

"We are not concerned here with the flood of printed matter that pours out of huge machines every hour of the day and night. We are concerned with the tangibles and intangibles that are essential to fine book production, with an understanding of the physical planning and production of a book which becomes a notable object of beauty."

"Joseph Blumenthal is a book-and-type designer and printer who founded the Spiral Press in New York in 1926 and is still its active director. The work of the Press has been shown in special exhibitions at the Newberry Library in Chicago and a number of other institutions including the American Institute of Graphic Arts in New York. This organization conferred its gold medal on Mr. Blumenthal, the same medal once awarded to Bruce Rogers, who is the subject of much of this essay. An exhibition, Thirty-five Years of the Spiral Press, was held in November 1962 at Cornell University, which maintains a complete collection of the Press's work in the Rare Book Room of the Olin Library."

"There have been three great cycles in the production of the book. The first, most pure and most limited in output, was the illuminated manuscript. Next came 500 years of printing which started with production of a few hundred completed sheets per long day. Now we are in the third phase, one of complex machinery with computer typesetting, of presswork which employs chemistry and physics in plants where men do not touch type or ink or paper with their own hands but only electrical push buttons. Is this not the beginning of a new era? Typographically notable books will not be produced by science as we now know science. Whether the book will retain its humanistic tradition during this period of overwhelming mechanization is anybody's guess. I rather suspect that the form and the materials of the book will change. Almost every great book has been printed on handmade paper, or a special paper made to the designer's order, slowly and painstakingly on small papermaking machines. The making of such paper is rapidly becoming a lost art and the printers capable of sustaining the tradition of fine presswork by letterpress on fine papers are also becoming rare. The scribes in the 15th century must have felt their world completely shaken by that "vulgar" new invention known as printing. We are now in the path of another revolution of vast mechanical acceleration. If we believe that spiritual values are predominant and will survive, as we must believe they will, then the spirit and vitality of the book as the embodiment of culture will survive. Whether it will survive in the form we have known, produced by craftsmanships we have heretofore revered, is a nice subject for speculation."

• ADD TO REFERENCES WHEN JSTOR IS BACK ONLINE — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfgx4 (talk • contribs) 03:41, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

http://apps.appl.cuny.edu:83/F/256I2MF5IP4BKDI38TFG1S694TSIEXBYGLS5HKGUDG37GEIGIH-07127?func=full-set-set&set_number=031576&set_entry=000004&format=999

• book in CSI library with an essay by Joseph Blumenthal

http://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ml29.html

• bio info and some available records of the Spiral Press and Joseph Blumenthal

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/16/obituaries/joseph-blumenthal-typographer-for-frost-s-poetry-is-dead-at-92.html

• article discussing his and his wife's death. As well as some biography information and a brief introduction to his relationship with Robert Frost.

http://library.rit.edu/cary/sites/library.rit.edu.cary/files/files/CSC%20039%20Blumenthal(1).pdf

• article with biography/history. Detailed

http://library.rit.edu/cary/collections/joseph-blumenthal-spiral-type-collection

• article with 2 paragraphs on Spiral Type
• "Joseph Blumenthal, an American printer, printing historian, and type designer, designed Spiral type in 1931 in Germany so that it could be cut there by Louis Hoell and cast by the Bauer Type Foundry in Frankfurt-am-Main. It was recut and cast in 1935 by Monotype Corporation, Ltd., who distributed it under the name Emerson." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfgx4 (talk • contribs) 04:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

http://typophile.com/node/15269

• comments and discussion about Spiral/Emerson Type. Other people looking for sources

http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Emerson.gif

• Image of the entire alphabet of Spiral/Emerson

http://books.google.com/books?id=dM2-PAAACAAJ&dq=joseph+blumenthal+typographic+years&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qzVoUoqBDMet4AOmjoB4&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA

• book by Josephy Blumenthal

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1180663

• The Printed Book in America by Joseph Blumenthal

http://www.lawsonarchive.com/joseph-blumenthal-fine-printer%E2%80%94part-1/

• Add to bio
• As a young man excited about printing, he naturally enough looked to some of the fine printing plants of the 1920’s as a source of inspiration, giving direction to his own plans for the establishment of a office that would allow full scope to his own concepts of excellence.

He had received his initial introduction to the world of print in a publisher’s office in 1924, after attending Cornell. In 1925, he took a European trip, during which he saw so many examples of fine printing that he decided to become a printer.

His first opportunity to become intimately involved with the Black Art was a stint of a few months duration as an unpaid helper in the famous establishment of William Edwin Rudge in Mount Vernon. New York. This most fortuitous beginning was followed by still another wageless experience, this time for the redoubtable Hal Marchbanks in New York City.

To be a printer was now uppermost in his mind. He lost time in taking the steps to set up his own printing plant. In 1926, with the purchase of about a hundred pounds of type and, a treadle platen press, the Spiral Press came into being. Because of the cultural instinct of its owner, however, this tiny establishment didn’t begin with the printing of a letterhead for a grocer, but for its first item produced an entire book in an edition of 350 copies. Titled Primitives, it contained poems and wood blocks by the artist. Max Weber.

Full of enthusiasm, Blumenthal now began the serious effort necessary to make his shop a full-time effort. Fortunately he solicited publishers. art galleries and museums rather than the small businesses more commonly sought by a one-man plant. This thoughtful approach helped him to become solidly established. With improved prospects, he took as a partner George Hoffman, then superintendent of the Marchbanks Press, and began immediately to acquire equipment more suitable for the kind of work he was soliciting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jfgx4 (talk • contribs) 17:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)