The rule bend­ing machine is a mere tool to achieve what the wider job­bing let­ter­press world was aim­ing for at the end of the 1800s.

It was easy, look­ing back from the 1920s, to scoff at the com­plex­i­ty and mad­ness of the 1880s and 1890s, but the there’s some inevitabil­i­ty to how print­ers end­ed up work­ing in this way.

The Artis­tic Print­ing move­ment cap­i­talised on Vic­to­ri­an love of orna­ment, the new equip­ment and new capa­bil­i­ties of print­ing, and the expand­ing mar­kets open­ing up ordi­nary print­ing to more peo­ple.

At first glance the style has no obvi­ous rules, one com­men­ta­tor say­ing ​‘The char­ac­ter­is­tics of artis­tic print­ing can be sim­ply sum­ma­rized: an absence of any rules or obvi­ous log­ic the dis­po­si­tion of visu­al ele­ments…‘¹. In his arti­cle for the Jour­nal of the Print­ing His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, Gra­ham Hud­son remarks that this is prob­a­bly linked to the fact that artis­tic print­ing was a phe­nom­e­non in the world of job­bing print­ing, but hard­ly impact­ed book work; and that there were in fact lots of sub­tle rules that make up the style².

Where ear­li­er job­bing would would have been black, cen­tred and a small num­ber of types, artis­tic print­ing includ­ed ban­ners, rib­bons, 3D shad­ing, curved rules and lines of high­ly dec­o­rat­ed types. As well as this vari­ety of print­ing mate­r­i­al, many colours were used.

The end results, even from local job­bing offices would be as below.

Sharing Ideas

While crit­ics were not pleased with the gaudy-ness of artis­tic print­ing, the pub­lic enjoyed this dar­ing relief from the print­ing they had become used to.

…these qual­i­ties of sen­sa­tion, of dar­ing and crude and uncon­ven­tion­al design, of acro­bat­ic per­for­mances in the way of rule-twist­ing, and myr­i­ad tints and gilt printings—awoke enthu­si­asms in many a young man of that day.

Harold Hood in The British Print­er, Sep­tem­ber 1920

A key dri­ver in adopt­ing the style was Harpel’s Typo­graph or book of spec­i­mens, by Oscar Harpel of Cincin­nati. This 1870 book act­ed as the best prac­tice man­u­al for artis­tic print­ers and was acknowl­edged in the 1890s as hav­ing done most to advance the craft of the artis­tic print­er.

The fol­low-on from this US-pro­duced man­u­al was the more col­lab­o­ra­tive Print­ers’ Inter­na­tion­al Spec­i­men Exchange, led by Lon­don print­ers Field & Tuer who respond­ed to a Chel­tenham print­er’s request to share spec­i­mens.

The full books are avail­able online through Hathi Trust and show off the wide appeal of the style, and the vary­ing approach­es to artis­tic print­ing.

Tuer’s edi­tor, Robert Hilton, acquired the rights to the Exchange on dis­missal in 1887 and was lat­er instru­men­tal in the launch of the British Print­er mag­a­zine.

Artistic Printing Luminaries

Some names come up more than once when going over artis­tic print­ing papers, and just as Bert E. Smith cre­at­ed a new style of using bor­ders at the Cur­wen Press in the 20th Cen­tu­ry, some names to look for are –

• Mr George. W. Jones: regard­ed by Harold Hood as ‘…the great­est typo­graph­ic artist in this coun­try [Britain].’
• C. H Fair­banks and Mor­timer Read, Harpel’s design­er-com­pos­i­tors.
• William Kel­ly, cred­it­ed as Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing artis­tic print­er, with M. O. McCoy rep­re­sent­ing the US at the Paris exhi­bi­tion of 1878.
• Thomas Hail­ing, the Chel­tenham print­er sug­gest­ing the spec­i­men exchange, and Robert Hilton, an artis­tic print­ing advo­cate who facil­i­tat­ed the exchange.
• Robert Grayson, who lec­tured on artis­tic print­ing to the Leices­ter Typo­graph­i­cal Tech­ni­cal class.

My favourite con­tem­po­rary rule-ben­der is Nao­mi Kent, as inksquash­er.

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Skills and Equipment

With the advent of artis­tic print­ing, com­pos­i­tors need­ed to be expert in the art, includ­ing new skills like rule-bend­ing, assem­bling many dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als in the same forme, and the art of ​‘break­ing’ formes for colour — that is split­ting the one page in to mul­ti­ple formes, one for each colour to be print­ed.

As well as the new types more orna­men­tal mate­r­i­al was need­ed. Some of these — like stock illus­tra­tions and bor­der units — could sim­ply be bought from founder, but to make a real­ly unique lay­out the print­er need­ed to be able to bend their own rules. Rule bend­ing machines would at one time have been near-uni­ver­sal in job­bing offices — sur­pris­ing­ly very few remain.

Star­shaped Press offer a won­der­ful look at the tools of this trade. It does­n’t make lock­up any eas­i­er when it has to accom­mo­date dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als at dif­fer­ent angles and spread­ing across the page!

Rule-Curving or Rule Bending Machine

The curv­ing machine acts as a vice in which to bend rule. The top is flipped open, and rule insert­ed in to one of the chan­nels on the left, these rang­ing from ¼″ to 8″ in diam­e­ter. As the vice clos­es using the han­dle on the right the rule is bent to the curve need­ed.

Printers’ Rule Curver

Slight­ly more expen­sive and more fine­ly-tuned was the print­ers’ rule curv­er. The thread­ed screw on the left adjusts the low­er pair of rollers on the right up or down. Rule is fed between upper and low­er rollers and the han­dle on the right used to feed rule through. The dif­fer­ent height of the small­er two rollers caus­es the rule to be bent as it leaves the machine. An advan­tage here is that by adjust­ing the screw while in progress it’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate a spi­ral of rule.

In 1962 the firm Not­ting launched a whol­ly re-designed rule ben­der han­dling steel rule up to 8pt. My assump­tion this was bet­ter used for cre­at­ing cut­ting formes with cut­ting rule rather than for artis­tic print­ing, being just six­ty years late for the craze.

The Wrinkler

A thread from St Bride, includ­ing ​‘The Wrin­kler’.

In the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry there was a craze among print­ers for brass rule bend­ing. Amer­i­can print­er John Franklin Earhart devised The Wrin­kler to facil­i­tate this process. The print­ed results rarely jus­ti­fied the fid­dly work involved. pic.twitter.com/f3AYQB8o8Y

— St Bride Foun­da­tion (@stbridefdn) March 31, 2021

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References

1. Kin­ross, Robin, Mod­ern Typog­ra­phy: an essay in crit­i­cal his­to­ry, 1992
2. Hud­son, Gra­ham, Artis­tic Print­ing: a re-eval­u­a­tion in the Jour­nal of the Print­ing His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, 2006 or New Series No. 9

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Location

Address used is Raith­by, Lawrence & Co’s De Mont­ford Press, as a key pro­po­nent of artis­tic print­ing. Anoth­er option would have been Field & Tuer, as facil­i­ta­tors of the first Print­ers’ Inter­na­tion­al Spec­i­men Exchange, assum­ing too that they had rule ben­ders in their own works.

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Head­er image: from the ATF cat­a­log, 1897 host­ed by archive.org