Citations for APHA's 2004
Awards for Distinguished Achievement
APHA presented its 2004 Individual Award to D.W. Krummel, Professor Emeritus of Library Science and Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana. He is the author of many books on music printing and the history of bibliography. These acceptance remarks were delivered at APHA's annual meeting held at the New York Public Library on January 24, 2004, and have been slightly revised for presentation on the web.
Acceptance Remarks of D.W. Krummel
I’m delighted by this honor, but I’m also rather embarrassed. I surely don’t want to move that APHA should impeach its Awards Committee. But my manners are bad, my taste is bad, my faith is bad, and my scholarship is bad, and I need to ask you to allow me this confessional.
First, the bad manners: This, briefly, is the sad story of my talk at the annual APHA meeting eighteen years ago. A blizzard kept me from coming in from Illinois a day or two early. So, the day of my talk I got up with the roosters at 4 am, caught a 6 o’clock flight that landed at 9:30, caught a cab, and read my paper about 10:30; and during the afternoon session the day caught up with me. I remember the person I sat next to later giving my a knowing smile that said, “Yes, you did really snore; and loudly.” My other sins lie deeper, and may be less forgivable.
As for bad taste, this is not my own printing many years ago. (After all, it was no worse than my piano playing.) Rather, it is that I should study music printing in the first place. Now music and printing have much in common. Both work through an artistry based in craftsmanship—trained hands working in the one with trained ears, in the other with trained eyes—all of this best learned not from textbooks but through practice under a master. But in one important way the two are quite opposite. The music is gone as soon as it sounds: one must listen very carefully. Printing, on the other hand, leads to objects that are there to be examined afterwards. Good oboists know how to breathe in the middle of a phrase, Wagnerian sopranos know when to mouth it because the brass will drown them out, and the skill with which they cover up is part of the beauty of the performance. But printers who cheat like this are humiliated as long as their presswork survives.
Printed music is rarely handsome to look at, for good reason. Its notation can either be committed to memory, so performances can be thought out: the notation is for reference use, an aide memoire, and the printed copy is a last resort. Or the music may be sight-read: and now the momentum of performance needs to overrule any visual distinction that might distract. Over history, furthermore, musical notation has become increasingly nuanced, so that the ideal printed page has come to look less like a Trajan column, more like an engineering blueprint. Admittedly, without printing, Beethoven would be forgotten; the wonderful heritage of American music would be lost. In the printer’s garden, music may be a weed, but its curative powers can be wonderful.
Next, my bibliographical wickedness. Let’s begin with my 1984 book on compiling, and its review in Sovietskya Bibliografia. Here I am accused of being not only “zhurnalistica” (and for this I’m as sorry as I can be, believe me) but also thirty years behind the times. This is because I don’t see the future of bibliographies as tied to downloading. (I’m naughty; and unrepentant. And I’ll be in even bigger trouble with my next book on the history of bibliographical practice. I can hardly wait.)
Bibliography, to my thinking, has its yin and yang, one called rules, the other service. Let me recall Don McKenzie’s 1992 Bib. Soc. centenary lecture, in which he proposed another contrast: stability and durability, on the one hand, and evanescence on the other. Stable systems are those designed to work rather like the medieval Catholic Church: quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus—forever, everywhere, and for everyone. In bibliography, this stability of course allows us to do wonderful things, like verifying citations and locating copies. It also biases our work: the English language rules the world, and subject coverage is often awkward and obsolete for specialized readers. It gets all the more constrained as production schedules and cost accountability enter the picture. The world of ideas, I should like to think, is one more of hunting and gathering than of farms and factories; and bibliography is (or ought to be) part of the world of ideas.
My heresy is actually a bit Pentecostal, in that my faith is less in systems that work from the top down, more in dialogue that works from the bottom up, out of respect for the work being cited and the needs of readers. I use OCLC (that bibliographical Wal-Mart), even if it is dull and often mean: Bigmore and Wyman is less useful, but I love it because it was done for readers like me. Citations work best when they serve their readers. The ideal may be “concise but sufficient,” but it helps if citations serve me and my kindred. Citations ought to play up the odd details of written memory that stimulate readers—and these are of course details of physical presentation as well as textual content. APHA members know how the taste and experience that go into producing physical objects are reflected in the experience of reading. The same spirit of sensitivity—the same crystal goblet—needs to go into the dialogue that leads readers to citations. Over the week you’ll no doubt have picked up citations. It’s one reason why you’re here in person, and why you talk to colleagues.
Finally, bad scholarship. (Strike four.) The list of my typos and errors is long. I’m left-handed, a bit dyslexic, a romantic visionary, lazy, in other words much in need of good editors and proofreaders. Also, like too many of us, clueless, even clueless about my cluelessness. And sometimes just plain wrong, as in the story of the first printed musical notes in Jean Gerson’s Collectorium super Magnificat (ca. 1473). Dull stuff to look at: five quads placed in the forme upside-down at various heights on the page, the staff lines to be drawn in by hand. I’ve too often repeated the conventional wisdom that the printer was Conrad Fyner in Esslingen. Instead, it may be the work of Heinrich Eggestein in Strasbourg. I learned about all just recently in the Sotheby auction catalogue of the Kraus inventory. (And so booksellers’ citations are often more reliable than scholarly prose or cataloguing records: and so who is surprised?) Sotheby-Kraus cites a 1950 Gutenberg Jahrbuch piece by Victor Scholderer. Now I remember old Scholderer from the British Museum. Alec Hyatt King, my mentor there; pointed him out to me in the North Library, and most admiringly. But Alec’s own book on music printing says Fyner.
So did Alec even know Scholderer’s piece? Or did he talk to Scholderer, who said he had second thoughts? ISTC (or now IISTC2, or someday IIISTC3 or 4) may settle the question. And it could be that fifty years behind the times is the right place to be. In any event, my cop-out—and my point—is that bibliography (like music making, and like printing) depends on stability, evanescence, and monuments, but also on activities and processes. It works when scholars and compilers know how to talk to readers, both at large and in their specialties; and readers who know when and how to figure out what is really going on. To my thinking, bibliographicalbricolage—tinkering, improvising, tweaking, wits and smarts—is just as important as methodology and system. (Understandably, my life in academia has not always been a happy one.) In music, similar skills are needed by a string quartet when, for instance, the violist has a bad back, the weather outside is unseasonably balmy so as to affect the intonation of the instruments, and I am snoring in the third row. In printing, I live in hopes of someone writing a history of the practice of makeready.
Here endeth my confessional, and I hope nobody is too disgraced. Have no doubts about it, however: for all my ill manners, vulgarity, heresy, and fallibility, I’m absolutely delighted to receive this honor, and most genuinely grateful.
D. W. Krummel
23 January 2004
Posted with the author's permission. Copyright remains with the author.
Acceptance Remarks of Richard L. Hopkins for the American Typecasting Fellowship
Note: APHA presented its 2004 Institutional Award to the American Typecasting Fellowship, represented by Richard L. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins, editor and publisher of the ATF Newsletter, spoke without notes using a Powerpoint presentation at APHA's annual meeting held at the New York Public Library on January 24, 2004. The following notes were the basis for his off-the-cuff remarks, and have been expanded and slightly revised for presentation on the web.
What Is the American Typecasting Fellowship?
From the outset, I express my profound thanks to the American Printing History Association for selecting the American Typecasting Fellowship to be recipient of its 2004 Laureate Award for "a distinguished contribution to the study, recording, preservation or dissemination of printing history." I am honored to be here among you to accept the award.
Since I suspect many of you have never heard of our organization, I will attempt to explain who we are. I can take credit for founding the American Typecasting Fellowship simply because I was the one who called the first meeting of typecasting enthusiasts together back in 1978. I was acting upon the consuming fascination I had with metal type--something which had "infested" me when I was in the seventh grade in 1953. By 1978 I had acquired my own Monotype system and had been successfully casting type for about seven years.
The reason I called the group together was simple: I knew there were other individuals "out there" who shared my fascination with type, and I wanted to bring them together to see if we might have a common bond. Thirty persons attended that first Conference, and it proved to be a "little gift from God to all of us," for we found there was an intense common bond. Some were on such a "high" they never went to bed for three days. Instead, they stayed up through the nights, with non-stop chatter about Monotype machines, type designers, type designs, engraving mats, electro-depositing mats, three-phase electricity, converting machines from natural gas to LP gas, and all the other "in-between" stuff you get into when you become your own typecaster.
At one point during the meeting, I was on an errand to a nearby LP gas supplier to obtain hoses and couplings so we could hook up an ancient Bruce pivotal caster brought by Pat Taylor in pieces, strapped to the top of his sub-compact car. (I believe it had originally belonged to Ben Lieberman, a founder of APHA.) Pat and others had assembled the machine in my garage and they wanted to make type with it--and they did! But I've gotten off track. While I was out seeking these supplies, a group headed by Harold Berliner decided to name the organization and set up its by-laws. There was a good amount of alcohol involved, and the original text was scribbled on the back of an envelope. Here is what they came up with:
"Article I. The name of this association is the American Typecasting Fellowship.
"Article II. There will be no officers of this association.
"Article III. There will be two committees: a meeting committee and a communications committee.
"Article IV. There will be no dues and the committees are urged to use their imagination in raising what little money they need for expenses.
"Article V. There will be no other by-laws."
Clearly, no one had vision of a "continuing organization." I promised those in attendance that I would forward to them all a listing of discontinued American Type Founders faces which I had pulled from the 1959 ATF specimen book, along with a list of those in attendance. Hence, I put together my first edition of the ATF Newsletter, a combination of four 8.5x11 pages letterpressed and six offset.
Over the ensuing years, the only things which have held our organization together have been (a) the Newsletter, which I have continued to publish about once a year, and (b) our biennial meetings, called "Conferences," which have ranged from Oxford, England, to Provo, Utah, and several places in between. From the outset, my single goal has been a strong orientation toward typecasting (and linecasting) equipment, its use, its maintenance, and proper care. On occasion the organization has strayed into the realm of what I call "bookish" venues, but I always have tried to pull us back to this central focus of using type-making equipment.
After two issues, I changed the format of my ATF Newsletter to a 7x10 page size so I could do it two pages at a time on my 10x15 Heidelberg windmill. I now also am a professional printer, so I'll confess to having done several issues via offset, but there's always been a thrust to try to do as much as possible hot metal. After all, that's why we exist, right? And yes, my issues have, at times, become quite "bookish." But also in these issues you'll see articles about how to readjust a Monotype bridge, how to clean the waterways in a mold, or other down-to-earth practical discussions. I have neglected Linecasters and Ludlow machines only because their users only infrequently have come forward with articles; I have knowledge of these machines but don't feel qualified to write "how-to" articles. The Newsletter generally ranges around 40 pages per issue, so perhaps I should not have stayed with the name for indeed, as the samples I have with me will demonstrate, the publication is closer to a "scholarly journal," as haughty and repugnant as that term might seem to me personally.
I insist there is absolutely nothing impressive about a dead, dusty, greasy Monotype machine sitting in the corner of a museum. The same can be said about a Linotype machine. But it is astonishing how animated and intrigued people become when they see one of these machines in operation. Way back when I was a college typography professor, my students, when visiting typography shops in Pittsburgh, always lingered in the hot metal departments, but scarcely raised an eyebrow when facing a big beige box described as a phototypesetting system.
I firmly believe the massive amount of human engineering, innovation, and sheer blood, sweat and tears, involved in the development and perfection of these devices--the technology, if you will--is just as important for preservation as the machines themselves. That's what ATF is all about. There is a side benefit to this--the supplying of fresh type to those who continue to pop up as "private printers" or "private pressmen." Without our typecasting efforts, soon their presses would all become silent.
Several of our ATF conference have had sessions regarding matters of equipment disposition, and the "training of a new generation of typecasters." I personally had no instruction from a so-called "professional"; I taught myself how to use my Monotype machine in 1971. But many associates of ATF (keep in mind, we have no members!) were either typecasters by profession, or received their knowledge by working with professionals. In my Newsletter in 1994, I put out the call to start offering classes, but few responded. So I asked my good friends Paul Duensing and Roy Rice if they would help me with a week-long hands-on session with Monotype machines. They agreed and we took on our first four students. Somewhere along the line, Paul Duensing labeled the session "Monotype University." That was in 1995. Since then, we have conducted sessions every two years and now have 26 graduates. More importantly, we have a new generation of typecasters enthusiastic enough to seek out and obtain their own equipment, and use it. There's nothing more gratifying to me than receiving a small package in the mail containing a couple lines of type cast on a new machine by a graduate of Monotype University.
Thus, one might conclude that the American Typecasting Fellowship is trying to live up to the honor of this APHA laureate by both recording typecasting history and technology in its Newsletter, and by passing essential information among its members (especially via e-mail) and on to a new generation of typecasting enthusiasts. Perhaps our lack of formal organization is to our great advantage? Time will tell.
I am most gratified that the American Printing History Association has seen fit to name the American Typecasting Fellowship as recipient of the "institutional laureate" for 2004. The award states we've been "a significant contributor to the preservation of printing history" and I concur. It's been our goal from the outset, with our quirky little angle of keeping the machinery that helped build this industry alive and operational. Words on paper are not adequate for the preservation of printing history. We seek to keep alive the machines and their technology, complete with their smoke, grease, and occasional metal splashes. Your laureate gives us a bit of self-satisfaction and encouragement, and for that we remain most grateful.
Richard L. Hopkins,
American Typecasting Fellowship
23 January 2004
Posted with the author's permission. Copyright remains with the author.
Interested persons may contact ATF and Rich Hopkins by writing directly: Richard L. Hopkins, P. O. Box 263, Terra Alta, West Virginia 26764. E-mail wvtypenut @aol.com.
The complete program, registration form and conference hotel information are now available for APHA’s 35th Annual Conference, “Learning To Print, Teaching to Print,” in Washington, DC, October 15th–16th, 2010, at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. Download the program and hotel information. Download the registration form.
The Summer 2010 issue of the Newsletter is comprised of a story about the revival of UCLA's Horn Press; the program of the upcoming 2010 annual conference; a reminder of the 2010 Lieberman Lecture; chapter activities from across the country; a review of the 2010 Hofer Lecture; and the bicentennial of George Phineas Gordon. Download it in PDF form here.