Letterpress job shop · established 1893 · room 62

The Composing Room

Every word begins backwards. Every promise leaves right-reading.

Friday 10 July forme locked / ink up

Bench instruction № 01

Set your own line

01 / 06

Pick type from the California job case. We’ll lay each sort into the stick exactly as a compositor sees it: wrong-way round and gathering from the left.

Keyboard works, too. Uppercase lives above the rail. Twenty-four ems maximum.

01Choose a sort
02Read it backwards
03Lock the line
04Pull it true

CASE 1410 PT · OLDSTYLE32A / 64a

W. PARSONS & CO. / BOSTON

Composing stick 0 / 24 ems

set a line ↓

what your hands seeread ← this way

The nick faces up. Read the line from right to left.

PROOF

THE COMPOSING ROOM · 16 BLEECKER LANE

YOUR LINE PRINTS HERE

Pulled on Pearl No. 3 · fresh ink

A compositor’s caution

Mind your p’s
& q’s.

In the hand, a lowercase p and q are mirror twins. Returning either to the wrong compartment is “putting type in the wrong case”—a small error that survives until the proof tells on you.

Foreman Nell Rourke fined apprentices a penny per pied line. In 1908, young Silas Bell lost eleven pennies setting a grocer’s circular that promised ripe quears.

pwhat the paper reads

The face of a p resembles a q in the hand; the proof resolves it to p. Click to swap the case.

Foundry measure

A point is a point.

03 / 06

Body 36 point

Seventy-two points make one inch. Twelve points make one pica. The eye, however, makes the final correction.

Rags make paper paper makes money · money makes banks · banks make loans · loans make beggars · beggars make rags Caslon Oldstyle / shop recut / 36 pt

Ag12 ptbrevier Ag18 ptgreat primer Ag30 pttwo-line Ag48 ptfour-line pica

On the nail · July 1893—2026

The job wall

Ink dries. Deadlines don’t. Six jobs wait above the stone.

J–3081

Rourke & Daughters

Summer Dance Bill

Stock: French kraft
Ink: Union red / black
Run: 250

J–3084

Dr. Mireya Vale

Calling Cards

Stock: Crane pearl
Face: 12 pt Copperplate
Run: 100

J–3077

Local 319

Meeting Notice

Stock: Newsprint
Ink: Dense black
Run: 1,200

J–3088

North Ferry Co.

Fog Timetable

Stock: Oatmeal cover
Rule: 2 pt brass
Run: 600

J–3062

Mrs. Ada Sun

Quince Labels

Stock: Gummed cream
Cut: 1¾ × 2⅛
Run: 480

J–3090

Bell & Finch Grocers

Saturday Price List

Stock: Butcher’s manila
Ink: Black / union red
Run: 900

Shop practice № 62

Keep the forme square,
the rollers soft,
and your word.

Ink by the ounce

Our black is cut nightly with a thumb of burnt plate oil. In winter, the can sleeps by the boiler.

Furniture by the pica

Cherry reglets, steel quoins, and no lucky coins in the chase—despite what old Mr. Lusk insists.

Proof before press

A clean proof carries three marks: compositor, reader, and customer. Silence is not approval.

“Type remembers every hand that set it.”— Nell Rourke, foreman, 1911