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Publications: CW Journal: Past Issues: Autumn 2001
The Art and Mystery of the Printing Office
by Edward R. Crews
In the thirty years master printer Willie Parker has demonstrated his
craft to Colonial Williamsburg visitors, he’s never lost his relish
for what he calls the “oh, ah” moment. It comes when the Printing
Office turns a blank sheet of paper into a page full of words. “You
get ohs and ahs from people every time you lift that paper off the press,”
Parker said. “It’s like magic.”
Parker’s delight in the creation of that instant of insight is
shared by journeyman Peter Stinely and interpreters Bill Dell, William
Jones, and Jack Oblein. They work in a basement pressroom on Duke of
Gloucester Street in the Historic Area. The pressroom is small and crowded
with the tools of the printer’s trade-two presses, cases of type,
and ink balls. Often, freshly inked pages hang to dry on lines strung
across the shop. Printing lacks blacksmithing’s captivating clang,
clamor, smoke, and fire. It is a quiet, undramatic craft. Nevertheless,
crowds congregate. There is something irresistible about the presses.
“People like watching us work. They like to see what we’re
doing, and they like to get up close. They all seem fascinated by the
press and how it produces printed material. For some guests, it seems
like a really ancient machine, which may be part of its appeal. But,
in its own time, it was state of the art technology,” said Dell,
a retired U.S. Navy pilot.
Under Parker’s guidance, everybody in the shop builds on the inherent
interest visitors have in the trade to educate them about the craft
and its importance in the 1700s. “Our goal is to show how printing
was done in eighteenth-century Williamsburg,” he said. “We
show the procedure and the products. We talk about the people who worked
here. Visitors like seeing how the press operates. We hope they leave
with knowledge of how newspapers, broadsides, and other printed materials
were created.”
When Parker came to work at the shop
in 1970, he understood little more about printing than the average
visitor. Nevertheless, he knew a great deal about the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, and about cooking. Parker started working for the foundation
while a high school student in the 1960s. A job at Chowning’s
Tavern got him interested in the culinary arts, and he majored in
food administration at Tuskegee University. Drafted soon after graduation,
Parker served a tour as an Army cook. When his hitch was up, he
went home and thought about rejoining Colonial Williamsburg, but
he wanted a new experience. That led him to the craft program and
the print shop.
It was a good fit. In three decades, the soft-spoken Parker has
mastered the printer’s craft and worked his way from apprentice
to journeyman to master with plenty of eighteenth-century printing
knowledge to share.
Journeyman Printer Peter Stinely at a
reconstructed colonial press. -Tom Green |
To help people understand the craft as it was practiced in the 1700s,
Parker often begins by discussing its origins in continental Europe
during the 1400s. Until about the middle of that century, most reading
material was handwritten. Production was slow and costly. Books were
few, expensive, and, in general, owned by institutions or the wealthy.
About 1450, Johannes Gutenberg, a craftsman with an entrepreneurial
streak, realized that business opportunities awaited anybody able to
cut production costs. He developed a system of removable, reusable,
and uniform metal type to use on a wooden press.
The letters of the type could be arranged-or composed-into words, locked
into a form to be set on the press, and inked. Fashioned somewhat like
presses used to squeeze olives or grapes, Gutenberg’s forced paper
against the inky letters, transferring their images. It was thus possible
to strike inexpensive multiple copies. When a job was done, the type
was removed from the form and sorted for storage by letter until it
was time to compose a different pamphlet or book.
The printing press reduced the cost of books, increased their availability,
and encouraged the spread of literacy. It helped alter the economic,
scientific, social, and ideological outlooks for the next five centuries.
It did little for its inventor, however. He died in poverty.
Working in the print shop are,
left to right, Journeyman Printer Peter Stinely at the typebox, Master
Printer Willie Parker with the paten, and Interpreter Chadwick Jones
with the ink balls. - Barbara Temple |
“During 300 years, there was little change in the technology,”
Parker said. “For example, type was set by hand throughout this
period. Gutenberg could have walked into an eighteenth-century shop
and felt quite comfortable.”
Like all 1700s crafts, printing required an apprenticeship. A printer’s
apprentice had much to learn, but the basics were simple. To start:
Select the letters from the storage case, arrange them in backward words
and lines as they would appear on a page in reverse, lock them into
place with an iron frame called the “chase,” and put them
on the press.
Press operation usually required two men-a beater and a puller. The
beater put ink on the type using two balls made of animal skin and stuffing
and covered with ink. The press used a moveable, flat horizontal surface,
a platen, to press the paper evenly against the type. The puller put
the paper on points, which held it steady. A small bar and a worm screw
controlled the platen, beneath which paper and type were positioned.
The puller pulled the lever that operated the worm screw, which moved
the platen downward to press paper against the inked type.
An efficient beater-puller team might produce 180 to 240 printed sheets
an hour. This work was taxing. Days could run fourteen hours. The more
demanding of the two jobs was the beater’s, Dell said. Putting
ink on the type required vigorous use of the ink balls. A beater easily
worked up a big sweat in a small time. Many Southern printers used slaves
on the press, Parker said.
An apprentice learned early that printing was part science and part
art. He was taught to space letters and lines so they were attractive
and easy to read. He couldn’t apply too much ink to the type. If
he did, the letters would blur.
There are conflicting theories about the origins of the phrase “minding
your Ps and Qs.” One is that it dates to the eighteenth century,
when, at a glance, the lowercase types of those letters, castlike all
type in reverse, might easily be confused.
“Typesetting is not difficult, but it is boring,” Dell said.
“You pull each letter individually from the case as you need it.
Even if somebody is really good at this, it can take twelve to fourteen
hours to set two newspaper pages. All that time you’re standing
on your feet.”
In the bindery shop, are, left
to right, Interpreter Addison “Brown” Evans, Master Bookbinder,
Bruce Plumley, and Journeyman Bookbinder Dale Dippre. - Barbara Temple |
Parker said, “You can tell when you look at a piece of 1700s printing
just how good the printer was. Some were meticulous; some were slipshod.
You can look at a piece and determine what kind of a master might have
been in charge.”
A print-shop owner needed funds for supplies and equipment, as well
as business sense. “Printing was expensive,” Parker said.
“A master printer needed to buy paper, ink, a press, and type.
That took money. He also needed to be in a location where he could make
money, a place with a lot of people and a need for printed material.”
A talented printer might develop an eye for attractive layout, design,
and typography and, on rare occasions, develop literary skills. Benjamin
Franklin, the most famous American printer of the period, was an accomplished
writer and publisher. He learned the craft as a teenager and maintained
a lifelong pride in his printing skills. Franklin, however, was exceptional.
Most printers in Great Britain and America set into type only what others
brought them, Parker said.
Before the Revolutionary War, most large printed works came from Great
Britain. There, big printing operations in major population and educational
centers produced Bibles, dictionaries, novels, reproductions of classics,
and how-to books. London boasted a daily newspaper by 1702.
In America, however, most people lived on farms, and there were few
urban markets to support large printing operations. The colonies did
need some printing, however.
By Virginia standards, Williamsburg was a good printing market. There
were public documents to duplicate in the capital-laws, proclamations,
currency, bonds, and indentures. Churches needed broadsides and sermons.
The colony needed a newspaper. Other clients required playbills, auction
notices, tickets, ledgers, account books, and business forms. The College
of William and Mary needed forms. Like most books, the texts the students
used came from abroad, but books were printed in Williamsburg as well.
During the colonial period, Williamsburg was home to at least twelve
master printers. Best known was William Parks, an energetic businessman,
who came to Williamsburg about 1730 and eventually opened a shop on
Duke of Gloucester Street. He was the public printer of Virginia, charged
with the job of reproducing the acts of the General Assembly. He also
did a lot of work for businesses. In 1736, Parks founded the Virginia
Gazette, the first newspaper in the colony, and promised to deliver
the “freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick.”
These reproduction printings example
some of the more popular pieces to come from the eighteenth-century
Williamsburg press. Newspapers, political pamphlets, almanacs,
treatises, and tracts all fed the public’s appetite for inexpensive reading
material, and created a community of theories, ideas, and arguments. - Tom Green |
Besides his printing business, Parks operated a post office in
his shop and sold paper products from other establishments, including
writing paper, books, and newspapers, some of which came from
London. Parks also tried his hand at papermaking. In 1743, he
started the town’s only paper mill. Franklin offered advice
and encouragement for this venture and purchased paper from it.
Clementina Rind was Virginia’s first female newspaper editor.
She took over her husband’s printing business, which included
the newspaper they had founded, after his death in 1773. She also
was printer to the House of Burgesses.
Williamsburg’s printing market, however, shrank in 1780,
when the government moved to Richmond. The printers followed.
Today, Colonial Williamsburg’s Printing Office, Post Office, and
Bookbindery complex keeps alive the traditions of the colonial craftsmen.
The shops like to tackle projects that expand the skills of today’s
Williamsburg printers. One of the most popular has been a reprinting
of Every Man his own Doctor; or, The Poor Planter’s Physician.
Parks printed the seventy-two-page book in 1736. It is a heal-thyself
guide to curing diseases ranging from whooping cough to a sore throat.
The reproduction is as an example of the eighteenth-century printer’s
craft and is the shop’s best-seller. Parker, though grateful for
its popularity, is a little puzzled by its steady appeal. Another reliable,
but not quite as popular, title is Treatise on the Propagation
of Sheep.
These days the shop is printing versions of three mastheads that appeared
successively in Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette during the
spring of 1776. They show graphically the Virginia colony’s growing
sense of independence from Great Britain. The first was in use early
in May 1776. Its centerpiece is the coat of arms for the Royal Colony
of Virginia. The second was used in mid-May, following the adoption
of the Virginia Resolution to declare the United Colonies free and independent
states, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence upon the crown
or Parliament of Great Britain. This masthead centerpiece is text in
a box that reads “Thirteen United Colonies-United We Stand, Divided
We Fall.” By early June, a new coat of arms bore the motto “Don’t
Tread on Me.” The purpose of the reprints is to show people not
only how a printer worked, but how the press reflected popular opinion
and current events.
Parker finds it interesting that during the past thirty years, while
teaching so many visitors about the trade and its role in colonial society,
his pupils so often have had the same questions.
Many wonder about the “ƒ” that appeared in eighteenth-century
books and newspapers. Parker said it was a holdover from handwritten
material. The “ƒ” was used at the beginning and
middle of a word, but not at the end. Printers gave it up about 1800.
Why didn’t printers have common words like “the” and
“of” cast in type? Because, Parker said, if a letter in a
cast word was damaged, the whole word was useless. If one letter of
type was damaged, a printer lost only one letter.
Many visitors too are surprised to learn that eighteenth-century paper
was made from rags. Paper from wood pulp didn’t come into common
use until the 1840s.
Nearing retirement, Parker glimpsed into the shop’s future. “As
far as I can see,” he said, “things will pretty much continue
like they are now.” He anticipates that Colonial Williamsburg’s
printers will keep setting type and printing books, newspapers, and
pamphlets, and collecting all those “ohs and ahs.”
Ed Crews contributed to the summer journal a story on witch bottles, hidden
shoes, amulets, and charms.
Learn more:
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Historic Triangle