As many of you might know, at the end of 2022, we (Niels Goovaerts from Atelier t and yours truly) got a scholarship from the Flemish government to enter into our own expert-level letterpress learning programme led by Thomas Gravemaker (Letterpress Amsterdam). The practical lessons will be taking place between the workshop at the Museum of Industry in Ghent and Atelier t in Bierbeek. With a 3-day course every two months, accompanied by assignments and reading.

After celebrating the Christmas holidays and enjoying the vacation it was time for a 'kick off' Zoom meeting to discuss the actual program and some practical details. We finalized the last details and decided to start the lessons in February. So on the 17th of February, we met at the workshop of the Museum of Industry, pul our aprons on, prepared the composing sticks and notebooks and were ready to start our first 3-day course.

During day one Thomas guided us through the tools of the trade, composing stick, tweezers, ruler, setting rules etc. As well as the organisation of the workshop.

Well, it doesn't matter how long have you been running with tweezers and a galley full of metal type in your workshop, there is always something to learn. Something useful, something practical. For instance, in order to set the line width in the composing stick, placing the amount of quads that are needed to attain the width and adding a very thin piece of paper between them. To obtain a line that is slightly wider and that can be squeezed. Most typesetters had a set of (usually marked) quads of their own for this purpose, as the spacing material can vary in length and cause problems (which we had). To set for instance a 20-cicero width, it is better to take 5 quads of 4 cicero long. Then the setting rule (or composing rule), with one or two lips, always slightly shorter and with slightly rounded corners, can be added in order to glide the line of text in and out of the stick and on to galley. So no more messing around ;)

After lunch we moved on to the next step: setting a simple frame in a solid 2pt brass rule, modifying it and adding a dotted inline of 1pt. It might seem like an easy task but it wasn't. I rebuild my frame twice before having it built correctly and finally being able to add a line of text. Then it was time to bind our two formes in one frame and printing it on FAG 405.

Once the setting frames with single and dotted inline became clear, we moved on to the next exercise: setting a table with a header. Which I enjoyed a lot.

On the last day we looked at a large forme made up of wood type. Thomas showed how – with minor modifications – a stronger composition could be achieved. Then we moved to the next topic: the organisation of the workshop. Which is no less important than the actual typesetting.

In April, we'll meet again for three days. That time we'll be working at Atelier t in Bierbeek. Stay tuned!

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Born in Armenia, grew up between Russia and the Netherlands and now living in Belgium chasing my graphical madness