My original interest came in a manner not unfamiliar to others when I received a gift of a small printing set using rubber hand-set types in a kind of composing stick. It had two ornaments. I have since lost the set except for the types which I still treasure. My progress was then to be incremental over many years. There was the old Kelsey catalog of 1947 over which I dreamed for hours and planned everything I would need for my shop; there was the year of setting type in the letterpress class at Franklin Junior High in 1949; there was the pur-chase of Stanley Morison’s Four Centuries of Fine Printing in 1962 which made me aware that printing was far more than I had ever imagined; this was followed quickly by J. Ben Lieberman’s Printing as a Hobby and Daniel Berkeley Updike’s Printing Types.

 

Eventually this all led me to a morning when my best friend suggest-ed that I look in the local classifieds to find a press. My reply was that I was a member of all sorts of printing organizations, and he just did not understand that they didn’t advertise in local papers to sell such goods. He then went out, bought a paper, brought it home and cir-cled an ad in the classifieds and inquired whether I or he should make the call. I was stunned at how easily I would have evaded this eventuality, and I thank him to this day for ignoring my ridiculous apprehensions. The press was a Vandercook 325g, large enough to print a form 24 ½ “ long. It was in perfect condition, with all of its original documentation from its previous and original owner of Mackenzie & Harris. I bought it on the spot and had it moved in the next week. I took a class in letterpress at a local workshop under Betsy Davids. Eventually a friend died and the thought occurred to me to try my hand at a memorial card to be given out at her Requiem. I came up with an attractive typography, but I was so naïve I didn’t even know how to position the form and had to print in the middle of a large sheet and trim it down! The results were stunning, and I let go a few unashamed tears, partly for my friend and also partly in relief and amazement that this actually worked.

 

The shop has grown steadily. In addition to the Vandercook 235g it has a small foolscap folio Albion from the Pratt Wagon & Press Works in Utah, a 30” Challenge guillotine paper cutter.  It has a huge collection of foundry piece borders, fancy initials, and a carefully chosen library of over a hundred type faces. The type held in largest quantity are 20, 36 Bauer Legend, 16 Poliphilus & 16, 24 Blado Italic, 16 Aurora Uncial, 18 American Uncial, 22 Centaur & Arrighi, 14, 18 Ondine from Deberny et Peignot, 18 Stymie Medium, 30 Hermann Zapf Civilite, 16 Eric Gill Sans Serif, 18, 24 ATF Civilite, 16, 24, 36 Bauer Hyperion, 20 Bauer Privat and probably something else.

 

The Press has been prolific, and the work of it would cover the entire house wall to wall, front to back. The work of the Press has been some juvenilia and a lot of liturgical printing for a local Anglican church whose catholic service covers about everything known to that species. The direction of the Press is changing still. I am looking to acquire Greek printing types for use in still more liturgical printing for the Greek Cathedral locally. I am also working on the “runaway” journal of a friend now 93 years old who road the boxcars out from Chicago during the depression and kept a detailed record of what happened. I have a book planned which will be a first for the Press. It will contain fifteen hand-water-colored plates of my own doing. The text is 113 pages in a current reprint edition, probably more in my format. No edition of anything will be more than 25 copies, absolute-ly never!

  

I love working with hand-set type. I have no complaint with the new digital world of letterpress and polymer plates, but it is sadly lacking in the feel of craft which I value over “composing room efficiency.” Because I am not in this for a living I can take all the time I need to work with the craft to get the results I want. Nothing compares withhand setting type under skylights in the rain.

 

Philoxenia Press has a website: www.philoxeniapress.com and the name is explained there. The accent is on the next to last vowel, and is Greek for hospitality.

My name is Norman McKnight. I am now 68 years old, and I have been actively printing since 1994 when I established a studio at my home in Berkeley under the imprint Philoxenia Press.