Texas Highways - Hot off the Press
Imagine that the year is 1450. To create a page of type like this one, a printer would have to meticulously arrange hundreds of tiny metal letters on a wooden tray to form words and sentences, then ink them with blotters and press them to paper, one sheet at a time. In this day and age, when written communication happens so rapidly, often at the touch of a button, it is difficult to imagine the once laborious process of creating something as apparently simple as a printed page. At the Museum of Printing History in Houston, you don't have to use your imagination-.the vintage equipment is right there before your eyes.
Charles Criner, the museum's artist-in-residence, demonstrates early printing methods several times a week on a replica of a wooden press invented by Johann Gutenberg in the 15th Century. Inside a reproduction print shop of the day, complete with creaking floorboards, the nearly eight-foot-tall press takes up the better part of the room. Charles rolls ink across a sample plate of type and carefully covers it with a sheet of paper. Pulling a lever, he lowers the press, then lifts it, and peels back the paper to reveal the result: a perfect impression of a page from the Gutenberg Bible. Holding it up to the light, Charles marvels at how far technology has advanced: "A lot of people back then thought this was magic."
The Museum of Printing History offers many such moments of revelation. Located near downtown Houston, with the city's skyscrapers looming nearby like a page out of an oversize pop-up book, the museum's low, beige brick building is relatively inconspicuous. Inside, a honeycomb of intimate gallery spaces awaits visitors with a stunning collection of objects and artifacts devoted to the history, science, and art of printing.
Aside from the Gutenberg press, the museum also features a mid-19th-Century press, embellished with a golden eagle; a metal press reportedly owned by Texas' first printer, Samuel Bangs (ca. 1798-1854); and a hulking gray Linotype machine from the 1950sthe kind used by newspapers to speed production by setting an entire "line of type" at once. The museum's exhibits also draw from an eclectic collection of office equipment: manual typewriters and mimeograph machines, the first automatic Xerox copier (produced in 1959), and a Dictaphone. (Thomas Edison's similar sound-recording device is called an "Ediphone')
But the technology of printing is just part of the story. The museum's exhibits trace the history of printing all the way back to its roots. Glass cases highlight some of the earliest forms of writing and printing, including a fragment of papyrus with handwritten words scrawled in Greek, and Mesopotamian cylinder seals that date as far back as 3,000 B.C. One of the museum's most significant artifacts is a Japanese scroll bearing part of a Buddhist sutra (a collection of aphorisms and rules for behavior). One of the oldest surviving examples of printing on paper, this scroll was made from a single carved board in the 8th Century. In other cases nearby, visitors can view a reproduction of Gutenberg's Bible and an actual leaf from the King James Bible of 1611, plus the very first dictionary published in the Americas-a 1555 glossary of Spanish and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec empire.
In another gallery, the walls are lined with American newspapers, yellowed with time, that recount significant events of the developing nation, such as the Stamp Act Riots of 1765 and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Here also is a November 3, 1763, issue of Benjamin Franklin's own newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, in which citizens are warned that anyone caught selling gunpowder or arms to Indians will be punished with 39 lashes. More modern newspapers display bold-type historic headlines of the 20th-Century: "Amelia Earhart Putnam Trying Solo Flight Across Ocean; "President Dead,” “Man Walks on Moon.” The April 16, 1912, issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal gives a heart-wrenching account of the sinking of the Titanic the previous day, along with a list of survivors and an illustrated cutaway of the great ship.
Illustrations such as this one reveal yet another facet of the printing process, one that the museum does not neglect. For anyone who ever wondered about the difference between lithography and photogravure, the museum offers explanations of more than 24 methods used to reproduce images and create fine-art prints, examples of which abound here, Visitors may be surprised to find small-scale woodcuts and engravings from Old Masters such as Albrecht Durer gracing the museum's walls, and charmed to discover a display of miniature books, many of them less than three inches in height. Scrutinizing a diminutive, leather-bound folio of works by Italian painters and a set of petite dictionaries that require a magnifying glass to be read, you have to wonder, "How did they do that?"
In fact, the processes prove to be as fascinating as the products themselves. Museum staff not only give demonstrations of the various printing contraptions, they also regularly lead workshops in papermaking, printmaking, letterpress, and bookbinding in spaces designed to look like quaint artisan shops from centuries past.
In Houston, a city known for its museums, the Museum of Printing History might easily be overlooked, but in fact, it is one of the largest museums devoted to printing in the United States--and the only one of its kind in Texas. At 14,000 square feet, it encompasses a 65-seat theater, a gift shop, and about 15 gallery spaces, four of which are dedicated to temporary exhibits.
Each year, the museum showcases approximately six new exhibitions of fine-art prints, rare books, historical documents, and posters. Although there is always something new to see, this is not the only reason why the museum is worth the stop. Printing has come a long way over the past several centuries, and this seemingly simple invention has hastened the spread of information, literacy, education, and even freedom. Printed text may be taken for granted these days, but a visit to the Museum of Printing History somehow makes it seem magical once again.
