I know it’s been a long time since I posted, but hey, quite a lot has been going on over the last few months ;)

I picked up a few editions of U&lc from Matt Lamont and he also had this 1957 Penrose Annual - Volume 51. It may be a little dog eared but I could not resist it. The cover was enough but then Matt shared some of the inside and I had to get it.

Being a Graphic Arts trade annual it’s an incredible blend of writing from the time, trade ads and technique examples. Best of all that means, stock variations, inserts, overlays, print variation and some wonderful ads.

Some here are some of the things that caught my eye. Also at the bottom I’ve added the contents pages for reference, incase there's something someone is looking for.

First up here are a few spreads:

Here’s a sampling of the wonderful illustrations and print techniques.

Then there are these great ads, like this for Linotype and then the two for type. Love seeing the Nebiolo ad.

This one is particularly close to my heart, for Penguin.

And finally a few more pages and details from the articles.

As promised here are the contents pages. If there’s something you see here and want, add a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

For the past few months I've been visiting and volunteering at the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. It's a collection of over 30,000 lettering, typographic, calligraphic and graphic design related items. From stone artefacts and illuminated manuscripts through to digital type files, it's a full on treasure trove for any graphic designer or type fan. I found out about the archive after seeing some wonderful posts on their Instagram account. It's an incredible resource, run by a wonderful group of very knowledgeable people.

So with that said, I've decided to break with Paperpost tradition. Up until now everything on PaperPosts has been from my 'archive', but since I'm getting to see so many great items I'm going to start posting the things I find at the Letterform Archive. It's full of amazing pieces, including original copies of both the Depero Bolted book and the Futurist Tin book. Every time I visit I find beautiful and inspiring things that I simply can't help grabbing a pic of. Expect Letterform Archive posts to become a regular thing.

My first volunteering session was mostly spent book plating historical type specimen and printers' books from the Jan Tholenaar collection (which the book Type. A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles by Taschen was based on). Here are a bunch of things that caught my eye. The dates and modernity of some of the type really shocked me as most of these are between 1760 and 1880. First up here are some pages from 1768:

Next up are these from 1855. The ink is so heavy on some of these that it's coming through on the reverse. And check out the massive E and the foldout - gorgeous.