ADVENTURER WITH TYPE ORNAMENT
B.R.
Paul A. Bennett
Revised and amended from P.M., Vol. II, No. 5, New York, January 1936.
To anyone who has set or handled type, the achievements of Bruce Rogers in combining decorative type units to form a design are extraordinary. This may seem undiluted enthusiasm; actually and sincerely it is but simple fact.
How? Why? Only a detailed examination of a particular B.R. design with type ornaments will reveal. An examination, that is, accompanied by simultaneous scanning of a proof of the individual elements comprising the design. When one sees the units alone—some of them so seemingly useless that one wonders that anything, even second-rate stuff, could possibly be done with such drab material—then one appreciates the typographic magic B.R. has accomplished.
How he sees anything in some of the units he uses so dexterously, I don't know. When and how he first became interested in doing designs with type ornaments is worth considering.
His experiments date back to Riverside Press days, though in that period no attempts were made to use type ornament except by conventional combinations into borders or head-pieces. But even at that time he had several seventeenth-century flowers recut for the decoration of a collection of early American documents, titled Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along the New England Coast, 1524-1624, edited by George Parker Winship.
Interest in combining type ornaments was shown again while at the University Press in Cambridge, England, during 1918-19, but he developed it there into nothing more than the revival of two or three other earlier ornaments which were used, as at Riverside, in conventional ways. A page of his scrapbook shows also a number of trials with Egyptian hieroglyphs, but apparently nothing came of these.
The germ of his allusive use of ornaments is probably to be found in the "Goosefest" menu which he concocted at Carl Rollins' Montague Press; when at the bottom of an elaborate bill of fare three of Will Bradley's strutting little figures are set (or laid) flat on their backs in a row, with the legend, "Turn over (not us but the leaf)."
The earliest traceable use of ornaments and punctuation marks that in combination bear directly upon the text thus decorated was in the heading for the first page of The Symbol and the Saint, where a line of parentheses, a cross and three dolphins symbolize the overseas quest of the hero of the tale. This same motif was developed and elaborated later in Joseph Conrad the Man, The Ancient Mariner, and other pieces. His scrapbook shows many unused variations on this theme. The sea and leaping dolphins and palms seem to be his favorite preoccupation.
Probably the most difficult compositions of this kind he has produced are to be found in Conrad's unfinished novel, The Sisters; where in a space the width of the page and one-quarter to one-half inch in depth may be found suggestions of illimitable Russian wheat fields, Paris with its mansard roofs and French roads leading into it, a farewell scene at sunset on a winding Spanish road, etc., each based upon some phrase or paragraph in the story itself.
Most certainly B.R.'s accomplishments surpass those decorative combinations of type ornaments shown in early printers' and type-founders' specimens—yes, even including the foremost achievements of the hallowed rule benders.
Little research is necessary to support these rather inclusive statements. An excellent example is the Utopia title page, done for the Limited Editions Club. Here is swirling movement in a border, if ever you saw it. And accomplished, mainly, with two traits of ornament and their reverses. The entire border took but several more.
Setting them out individually, doesn't give a hint of their possibilities. Yet look at the result of their use by B.R., scan the design closely to discover just where and how each element is placed with such telling effect—and you begin to appreciate the man's ability.
Another example—old stuff B.R. will call it—is the title page of a little Christmas book issued a dozen years ago by Rudge. Could one reasonably expect anything remotely approaching typographic whimsy from a few typographic toy soldiers, a dog, an elephant, a few Christmas trees, a half moon and some stars? Just glance at The Symbol and the Saint title page though, and see how B.R.'s subtle skill utilized material teetering toward the junk pile.
"Never," your perceptive collector will say, "has anything more masterful been done with type ornaments than in the Grolier Club Pierrot of the Minute." Few would disagree, for if ever there was a typographic jewel, the Pierrot is it. Yet B.R., in discussing it critically, termed it "French millinery. Probably all right for its purpose. Rather over-decorated, but then the poem itself seems over-decorative."
There are dozens of other examples of B.R.'s mastery of typographic decoration. But space is not limitless, and I want particularly to say something about some designs with Linotype ornaments (drawn by T. M. Cleland) that Mr. Rogers devised a few years ago for the Linotype Company. These were used for the first time in the insert discussing the auction prices of twenty B.R. books, which appeared in Barnacles From Many Bottoms, several of which are shown on pages 290, 299 and 300.
That "something" may best be told, I believe, by excerpts from letters written to a Company executive, in April and May 1931, by B.R., who then was in London:
"... In an odd hour I got to playing about with some of the Cleland ornaments, cutting them out of a specimen and pasting them into a design which finally evolved itself into several amusing compositions. Later on it occurred to me that you might be able to use them in some piece....
"Having only a limited number of proofs, and no slugs whatever, I was able to work out the idea in only the roughest fashion—not fit to show anyone—but the principal one of the designs is for a page heading ... or the elements composing it could be used singly—as tail pieces, initial letters, etc.
"This probably is an impractical idea Additional proofs of the Cleland ornaments were sent immediately to Mr. Rogers in London. With them he made eight designs, cutting the proofs and pasting the ornaments to show the desired effect. This tree, for instance, was used on the title page of the Barnacles insert: This was printed from a line engraving made direct from Mr. Rogers' paste-up, and used "as is" to show how accurately his layouts for this type of work reach the composing-room. A month later, in May 1931, Mr. Rogers returned his layouts with this note: "... I have only just been able to complete the designs I had begun.... One or two other combinations occurred to me, which I have also put in—but we could go on endlessly, almost, when once started on this kind of thing.... I would have built up the designs with impressions from sections of a slug, had you sent an inch or two of each unit; but it is perhaps better, though slower, to cut and paste proofs, as each cutting is a guide to the compositor as to how and where trimming or beveling the ornaments are necessary. But only a few such trimmings are required, and all the bevelings are at 45 degrees—as is the diagonal composition of the oak tree heads. "If at all possible I would like to have a chance to revise proofs of these, before they are actually printed—but if that isn't feasible, then I must rely on the compositors getting the closest possible approximation to my pasted-up designs. As close setting as possible is the secret of most work of this kind. The various parts must hang together well—though I do not mind a slight indication at the joints that they are made of individual pieces of type. I once had an over-zealous electrotyper fill up all the joints with solder—and ruined the appearance of the design—it looked like a drawn one." It wasn't possible to show Mr. Rogers what had been done with his layouts for the insert in Barnacles, which was essentially a surprise book distributed as a keepsake at a dinner in his honor. The "fighting cocks," to cite one instance, were originally suggested by B.R. to be used to dress a page folio at the bottom of the page; in the insert they were raised to the top of the page and printed with his initials. Other slight adaptations of similar character were taken in that piece of printing. "Typographic whimsy," wrote Carl Purington Rollins in B.R.—America's Typographic Playboy, in 1927, "is a pretty difficult achievement. The compositor at the case is too much concerned with the practical minutiæ of his craft to have much time for such trivialities, and the man who designs printing at a draughting board is apt to find his humor, if he attempts it in type, limping like a thrice-told jest. Mr. Rogers has had the advantage of enough familiarity with type to know what can be done, and he has been able at times to work with compositors who take a large and robust view of their calling." That "whimsy" Mr. Rollins had reference to lies in many of B.R.'s more ephemeral efforts, frequently reproduced. It is reflected to a measure, by The Symbol and the Saint page. But there is considerably more than whimsy in the type ornament designs by B.R. These have graced dozens of books of varying subjects ... and the marvel of it all is, to me, that the man never repeats himself—he swings off on a new tack ... adventurous, exploring, mastering new trails, scattering typographic inspiration for dozens of others, pointing up paths they previously never even suspected. Postscript, 1951: It is fitting to add a note concerning one of B.R.'s more distinguished recent projects, the great folio Bible designed for The World Publishing Company, which was four years in the making. The design of the World Bible employed decorative treatment for the bordered title page, the sixty-six book openings, initial letters and numerous tailpieces. "These, together with the type selected In discussing the matter of ornaments in the Bible with the publishers, B.R. revealed his thinking concerning their use: "... Most of the Books will probably not begin at the top of the page and the use of ornaments are to me necessary to separate the end of the preceding book from the title of the following one. "The Bible has always been a book on which much decoration and illustrations have been lavished, and there is no reason in tradition why it should be treated solemnly in that respect. The very first edition (of which I have specimen sheets and a whole Bible printed from the same type and with the same decorations by the same printer, twenty-five years later, 1635) is just peppered with woodcut decorations and type ornaments. So we have a good precedent for a decorated treatment—if any were needed. You know the Bible is on the whole one of the most exciting texts in existence, and the modern 'practical' treatment of it as mainly a book of devotion is ignoble, to say the least...." Some of the typographic decoration and initials used in the Bible are included here. William Targ's detailed account, The Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible, contains most of the decorative elements—initials, tailpieces and chapter initials—and reveals the intimate story of the progress of the book's production through the four years. It was published by World in 1949, in a limited edition of 1875 copies, 500 of which were for sale. COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES Book labels devised with typographic ornament by B. R. In the originals, a second color was used for each excepting the Reydel.
