Nine Solaces

Nine Solaces’ is hand-set and printed in rare Stempel Foundry types: 12 point Optima and 28 point Didot Sabon. The piece is printed in black and red on Zerkall mould-made papers and hand-sewn into an eight page cover printed with black woodletter (9 | S). The fnished size is 30 picas by 36 picas. It consists of a 12 page text exploring the historical printing house custom of collecting solaces (fnes) imposed on workmen who break working practice rules. The text is extracted from William Savage’s Dictionary of the Art of Printing, London, 1841. These rules for those who breach the laws of the ‘chapel’ are arranged in sequential order and denoted through a progression of solid pica squares printed in the red. Each rule is accompanied by a short text describing the nature of each law or rule, fnes imposed and subsequent punishment for those who ‘break the laws of the chapel’. A listing of the monetary value (circa. 1800) is given on the colophon page for each class of workman. The text was also used as the basis for a student letterpress project exploring the historical nature of traditional printing trade practices and customs. At their own instigation, the students re-installed some of these solaces in a contemporary setting during their time in the letterpress workshop sessions.