The Dedicated Type
Many might say Erik Voss is completely impractical. Bankers and accountants in particular.
“It’s very difficult to talk finance if you can’t replace any of your equipment and the primary material you work with is classified as a toxic substance,” Voss says.
Voss is a printer, a master craftsman who works with hand-set lead type and hand-fed presses, methods generally abandoned by the industry long ago. His work is part of collections at the U.S. Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, the British Museum, USC, UCLA and Yale, among other locations, and is prized by private collectors.
Yet by his own description, at 46, he is part of the last generation of fine press printers.
“I could make a lot more money as a programmer, or designing type on computers, but that’s not what I care to do,” Voss says. He and his wife, Carmen, who live in Fullerton, call their home-based company Bella Fortuni (“good fortune” in Italian) and also run a book-printing operation, Lyceum Press.
In an era of desktop publishing and the worship of speed, a beautifully printed page is a rarity. But to those who appreciate such things, a page’s appeal is to the eye as well as the mind.
There are differences between letterpress (in which the press forces paper against inked type) and modern offset printing (inked impressions are made on a rubber-covered roller and then transferred to paper) that go far beyond just the process. Metal type pressed directly into fine-quality paper leaves an impression. It feels different to the touch.
“There are times I could walk away because I’m wondering if people really appreciate it,” says Erik Voss. “But then there are times when it’s an absolute joy--when I pull that first piece off the press and it’s printing right, it’s sharp and clear, and it’s beautiful paper.”
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, which has been building its collection of letterpress books and archival materials since the ‘30s, has several examples of the Vosses’ work.
“I think highly of their press work and design,” says head librarian Bruce Whiteman. “Erik has a keen eye for design, and he has something that not every letterpress printer has, which is a quirky sense of humor. And the books where Carmen has had a role in illustrating or coloring have an added unusual feature, which is really very nice.”
Stuart Robinson, an Orange County physician, is a book lover who sees fine press printing as “the outgrowth of one person’s idea and craft.” As such, it “tends to bear the stamp of the printer.”
Because Erik Voss is one of the few active letterpress printers, his work is of particular interest to Robinson, who has collected the Vosses’ work for more than a decade.
“In Erik I see a craftsmanship that I don’t see always in other printers--a care in the design of the page, in the spacing of the letters, in the composition of the type, in the choice of type. The clarity of that page, the beauty of the page attracts me very much.”
The walls of the Vosses’ shop are crowded with tall wooden cases filled with pieces of type in various designs, some cast more than 100 years ago. Two presses, each about the size of a big kitchen table--simple, straightforward, dependable machines, the Model Ts of the printing world--stand to the side. Erik bought one, a 1961 Bauer, and scrounged the other, a 1923 Chandler and Price, from a Long Beach alley.
The Vosses acquired much of their equipment from printers going out of business or simply dumping old stuff. The last company to make such presses closed more than 20 years ago. The great type foundries are also gone and the type now being cast, though of high quality, wears faster and must be replaced more often.
There also are other difficulties. The couple cannot hire employees because some of the materials used in the trade, such as lead type and oil-based solvents, are toxic. Only owners can run the old presses.
Neither can they afford commercial space, so they run the business from their garage. In the summer, Erik gets up at 3 a.m. to start printing because it’s 115 degrees inside by late afternoon. Winter “has its own adventurous qualities,” he says.
Like many self-employed artists, the couple and their 14-year-old daughter, Kristin, make sacrifices. The family’s vacations are short and infrequent, usually combined with business trips.
“Our daughter shares her bedroom with a large drafting board and many flat files and lots of paper in boxes,” says Carmen. “We have had clients arriving at the house at night, and there’s no one to pass the buck to when something goes wrong.” But they say they’re not complaining. “We chose it,” Erik says.
Although some of their paraphernalia can be spotted in antique stores, the Vosses say they don’t feel as if they work in a museum, particularly because some parts of the job are just plain hard work.
Carmen, who has a master’s degree in art, illustrates and hand-colors special jobs. Initially, Carmen was skeptical about her husband’s determination to work as a printer. Her concerns centered on their financial security, particularly after their daughter was born.
“I never thought it would work,” she says. “But [Erik] was so passionate that I accepted it. That’s when I started learning about the paper and the type and all.”
Erik does all the typesetting and printing. It was the hand-crafted element of the work that first attracted him to it.
He had been a successful graphic artist, designing advertisements and magazines, but he became disenchanted and began to research historic graphic design, trying to figure out why it was, in his mind, better. He studied calligraphy and illumination.
“I found it very satisfying,” he says of this art. “But there’s not a heck of a lot of call for [hand-written] manuscripts anymore. The next closest thing was letterpress printing.”
To make letterpress type, a craftsman carves a letter out of a punch--a soft piece of steel. The punch is used to make a mold, or matrix, that is used in casting lead letters. “There’s nothing but his hand and his eye and his experience that produce the letter form . . . but at the same time it’s reproducible,” Erik says.
Phototype and computer type, Erik says, are “removed another step away from the hand that produced it. And I wanted to get as closely back to the hand [as possible]--with the sensible realization that I also had to eat.”
In the late ‘70s the Vosses acquired a font--or set--of type, and printed their first book, a miniature, on a borrowed press. It was “The Passionate Shepherd,” a poem by Christopher Marlowe that was published posthumously in 1599.
Since that time they have printed about two dozen titles of their own concept and design and many other books for individuals and organizations. One of their largest projects, “Pilgrimage: Images From Manzanar,” is a boxed portfolio of original photos and essays by photographer Chris Landis on the Japanese internment camp in Inyo County, during World War II. Museums and university libraries bought most of the 150 copies for $3,500 each.
Because the work is labor intensive and the market relatively small, fine press books can range from $200 to $300 a copy and as much as $5,000 for special editions. Miniature books, which attract a group of dedicated collectors, start at $30 to $40 and can cost as much as $2,000 for special editions.
The bulk of the Vosses’ work, the part that pays the bills, are small projects: artful stationery, wedding invitations or broadsides (posters).
But the size of the job is not as important as the customer’s approach to it, Erik says. He relishes being allowed to design something that reflects the individual. “Those jobs reinvigorate you,” he says.
*
The Vosses’ e-mail address is Bella Fortuni@southland.net.
