I’ll tell you how expanded my thinking is about The Crystal Goblet … pursuant to the dozens of well wishes I received on Felt & Wire on Nov. 30, on the occasion of my 60th birthday. All of which I will cherish e-ternally.
I had chatted with Thomas after taking his nested accordion-fold workshop. I mentioned that I had once written a paper promotion comparing the experience of looking at and touching paper to the experience of looking at and tasting wine, and he immediately nodded, “Oh, like The Crystal Goblet.” Of which I had never heard. He explained that it had been written by Beatrice Warde and that it had to do with typography. And the conversation moved on.
You may be familiar with Beatrice Warde as the author of This is a Printing Office, written in the early 1930s. (We wrote about it here, and Felt & Wire friend Jennifer Kennard wrote more about it on Letterology.) Warde’s manifesto is only 70 brilliantly chosen words long.
As literary and letterpress luck would have it, two nights later, I was in Ojai (pronounced oh-hi), Calif., having dinner with Norman Clayton, of Classic Letterpress, and his family. En route to the living room, to read to the younger Claytons, I cast an eye over Norman’s library of art, design, and fine press books … and there was The Crystal Goblet, waiting for me!
“The Crystal Goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible” is Warde’s reworking of a lecture she had delivered 20-some years earlier to the Society of Typographic Designers in London. The essay, first published in 1955, is seven beautifully typeset pages. In her introduction to the book, Warde acknowledges that “… it is the sort of thing which has to be said over again in other terms to many other kinds of people who in the nature of their work have to deal with the putting of printed words on paper — and who, for one reason or another, are in danger of becoming as fascinated by the intricacies of its techniques as birds are supposed to be by the eye of a serpent.”
Warde’s “long-winded and fragrant metaphor” is that, much as the perfect wineglass presents its contents with no distortion, distraction or fingerprints, so does fine typography deliver its content. She presents her main idea thusly: “that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement is what you might call the front door of the science of typography. Within lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming that printing is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas, it is very easy to find yourself in the wrong house altogether.”
Warde segues to legibility and readability, book typography and advertising, the skill of the printer and the strength of “a really interesting text.” I love this essay — and I love that it works without illustrations, and that the last line is “worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.” You can read the essay online — where used copies of the book abound.
And thus I segue to my birthday wishes on Felt & Wire, “set” by software, composed by each commenter, shared with the universe. Much as I love real mail, the context provided by paper and ink, the “just for me” conferred by a postage stamp, and the delight of recognizing the handwriting on an envelope — I love this e-trail too. I marvel, not just at the surprise, but also at the richness, made possible by technology. And I bask in the body electronic that is so much greater than the sum of its pixels.
Photos: © 2011 StudioAlex
