Mind Your Ps and Qs -- Original Art in a Limited Edition (Wood Type Collage)

Description

No one seems to know exactly where the idiom "mind your Ps and Qs" originated, but it's a good bet that it came from advice to typesetters. In letterpress printing, the words are set metal type letter by metal type letter, left-to-right, but each letter is inserted upside down. For beginning typesetters, backward-facing letters are confusing, especially the mirrored lower-case letter pairs p and q, and b and d. There are many competing theories to the origin of the phrase -- one of my favorite: an instruction from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately -- but I'm partial to the printing meaning!

This 8"x10" (20.25x25.5cm) broadside is printed letterpress using my collection of wood type in two colors on plush pearl white paper. The colors are golden brown and teal. This is a limited edition of 40, with each broadside numbered, dated and signed on the back. The second photo shows the entire print, with the white space around it.

Each print is hand pulled making it an original and slightly different than the others, due to anomalies in inking. They were printed, one color at a time, on my hand fed 1890s platen press (see the last photo).

The broadside fits is a standard frame. Sent in a flat no-bend cardboard envelope with a protective plastic sleeve.

Wood type, a cheaper alternative to metal type, has long been used to print posters and broadsides. The Hamilton Wood Type Printing Museum in Wisconsin has a lovely website with information about the history of wood type and lots of pictures (Try starting here: http://www.woodtype.org/museum_information_about.shtml)

Added on Oct 28, 2008

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