University of California • Berkeley
University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office
Robert Grabhorn
FINE PRINTING AND THE GRABHORN PRESS
An Interview Conducted by
Ruth Teiser
Berkel ey
1968
All uses of this manuscript are covered
by a legal agreement between the Regents of
the University of California and Robert Grabhorn,
dated 1968. The manuscript is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary
rights in the manuscript, including the right to
publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of
the University of California at Berkeley. No
part of the manuscript may be quoted for publica
tion without the written permission of the Direc
tor of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley
Requests for permission to quote for pub
lication should be addressed to the Regional
Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should
include identification of the specific passages
to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages,
and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with Robert Grabhorn requires that
he be notified of the request and allowed
thirty days in which to respond.
Ruth Teiser interviewing Robert Grabhorn.
January 1967 - Photograph by Ted Streshinsky.
Books and Printing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Interviews Completed by October, 1968
Brother Antoninus Brother Antoninus: Poet, Printer, and
Re ligious
Edwin Grabhorn Recollections of the Grabhorn Press
Jane Grabhorn The Colt Press
Robert Grabhorn Fine Printing and the Grabhorn Press
Warren R. Howell Two San Francisco Bookmen
Haywood Hunt Recollections of San Francisco Printers
Lawton Kennedy A Life In Printing
Oscar Lewis Literary San Francisco
Bernhard Schmidt, Herman Diedrichs, Max Schmidt, Or. The
Schmidt Lithograph Company 3 Vol . I
Albert Sperisen San Francisco Printers 1925-1965
Edward DeWitt Taylor, supplement to interview with Francis
Farquhar
Adrian Wilson Printing and Book Designing
INTRODUCTION
Robert Grabhorn was for nearly forty-six years an integral
part of the famed Grabhorn Press of San Francisco. Born in
1900 in Indianapolis, he was the -Fe<jr~Ci\ c+ seuen ch,i^r^n in his
family, eleven years younger than the eldest, Edwin Grabhorn.
By the time Robert was fourteen, Edwin had established the
Studio Press in Indianapolis and invited his younger brother
to work with during school vacations. There, as he related
in this interview, Robert Grabhorn learned "the case," the first
step in learning, as he did over the ensuing years, the re
finements of typography.
Late in 1919 the two brothers came to San Francisco, and
early in 1920 The Press of Edwin and Robert Grabhorn was
established. About five years later the name was changed to
The Grabhorn Press, a more manageable designation, the firm
continuing however to be the shared responsibility of the two
brothers. When at the end of 1965 The Grabhorn Press was
closed, many people who had known it well over the years were
surprised to learn that Edwin Grabhorn had been the sole owner,
while Robert was, as he stated in this interview, "a favored
empl oyee . "
The history of the Grabhorn Press has been the subject of
many articles and fully chronicled bibl iographi cal ly to 1956
ii
in two notable volumes which it printed: The Heller and Magee
Bibliography of the Grabhorn Press, 1915-1940 (it also in
cludes The Studio Press) and the Magee Bibliography of the
Grabhorn Press, 1940-1956. The press has also been discussed
by most of the others interviewed in the Regional Oral History
Office series on books and fine printing in the San Francisco
Bay Area. That series includes interviews with Edwin Grabhorn
and Jane (Mrs. Robert) Grabhorn.
The interview with Robert Grabhorn was held in three
sessions, on January 3, February 8, and March 3, 1967. All
took place in the Grabhorn-Hoyem press at 566 Commercial
Street, San Francisco, which Robert Grabhorn and Andrew Hoyem
established in 1966. Following the final session, Jane Grabhorn
added interpretive comments on the collaboration between the
two brothers .
Mr. Grabhorn spoke thoughtfully, with some hesitations,
clearly making an effort to be accurate in his statements and
assessments even while making amusing comments and recounting
anecdotes. Mrs. Grabhorn spoke with similar thoughtful ness .
Few changes were made in the transcript.
Ruth Teiser
Intervi ewer
25 September 1968
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California
1 1 1
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS 1
THE STUDIO PRESS 6
PRESSWORK, TYPOGRAPHY, AND TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGN 10
OUTSTANDING BOOKS AND TYPES 18
PRINTING BOOKS IN THE 1920'S and 1930'S 22
SOME GRABHORN PRESS EMPLOYEES 29
PRINTING FINE BOOKS AND PRINTING FOR PROFIT 33
THE AMERICANA SERIES 38
COMMISSIONED BOOKS AND EPHEMERA 42
ADVERTISING TYPOGRAPHY, WINE LABELS AND COMMERCIAL
PRINTING 50
ILLUSTRATIONS 54
PRINTING EQUIPMENT 59
BOOKBINDING 62
TYPE 68
THE GRABHORN PRESS CHARACTERIZED 75
BOOK COLLECTING AND PRINTERS OF THE PAST 88
PRESENT PRINTERS AND PAST EMPLOYEES 97
GRABHORN PRESS LOCATIONS 110
GRABHORN PRESS BIBLIOGRAPHIES 113
COMMENTS BY JANE GRABHORN ON THE GRABHORN BROTHERS 115
PARTIAL INDEX 123
BOOKS PRINTED BY THE STUDIO PRESS, THE GRABHORN
PRESS AND THE GRABHORN -HOYEM PRESS 128
INTERVIEW I
January 3, 1967
Fami 1y and Early Years
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When were you born?
May 17, 1900.
And where?
Indianapolis, Indiana.
Who were your parents?
My father was of a German family. His name was
Henry Grabhorn. He worked always in furniture
factories. My mother was of British ancestry-
mixed up as usual: Welsh and British.
Was your father born in Germany?
No. His father came to this country in, I think,
1848, when so many came to avoid military service.
He ended up by becoming a veteran of the Civil War
You had some family tradition of craftsmanship?
Oh, yes. I had artisans, craftsmen. My mother's
family were tailors mostly.
What sort of man was your father?
Well, I was always proud that he did Sunday after
noon painting. Not very good, but he did.
Do you have any of his paintings?
I have one at the old Grabhorn shop. I used to
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have another but it was lost. Only valued it because
he did it. He went around doing barns and things
1 i ke that ; gardens .
Did you live in Indianapolis?
Yes, but then my father was a traveler, too. You
see, Ed was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My father
was always going to change his condition by changing
his geographical location. So I lived in two small
towns in Indiana. When I was six or seven we lived
in a quaint little place called Orleans, Indiana.
I was reading about it in a guidebook, and they said
that nine-tenths of the inhabitants were descendants
of the original inhabitants. My father went there
to work in the furniture factory. Then he went to
Logansport, Indiana. Then back to Indianapolis,
where I spent the rest of my life until I came here
with my brother in the winter of 1919.
Who were your brothers and sisters?
Edwin, Walter, Lewis that survived; one that died
in infancy; and two sisters; and a younger brother,
Kenneth .
What has happened to your brothers and sisters?
My brother Walter died early; that is, what I call
early: 44. My brother Lewie is older than I am;
he was a plumber, a successful plumber.
What has your younger brother done?
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Not much besides being a nice human and raising
two nice sons and a daughter. He is still in
Indianapolis.
Are your sisters alive?
Yes. One sister is retarded mentally. She's had
to be taken care of. My other sister worked all her
life, from graduation from high school until she
retired, at the Eli Lilly plant in Indianapolis.
Did you have a happy childhood?
I had mi seri es .
What were you interested in as a child?
Various things. I went through all the normal
ambitions: being a detective, policeman, cowboy.
But early, when I was 14, I was working for my
brother Edwin. He had been away to Seattle. He
wasn't home very much in my youth.
How much older than you is he?
Eleven years older.
How did he happen to choose you to work with him?
That I don't know.
He had a lot of other kids to choose from.
But they were too close to him. There was a
necessary gap there. He worked in my uncle's--my
father's brother 's --pri nting office in Indianapolis.
Oh, there was a printing office in the family!
What was your uncle's name?
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Harry Grabhorn. His specialty was music printing.
That's how Ed journeyed to Seattle, because he
learned what is known as the music case, which is
a complicated thing. It has four hundred charac
ters in it. Now they don't print music that way
any more. By lithography.
He had gone into your uncle's shop early then?
Fairly early. It wasn't his first printing job
though. He worked around printing offices, then
graduated to my uncle's, then left for Seattle, where
he realized there was a music publisher. He wrote
and asked for a job. When he got there — this is
the story, how much is legend I don't know — he found
that this man had all of this expensive music type,
but no one in Seattle knew how to handle it. Then
he graduated from music to just general printing.
You had gone, then, to grammar school where?
Indianapolis. Oh, I went to grammar school in
Logansport. I was too young to go to school in
Orleans. Or, if I did, I've forgotten about it.
Did you like school?
Yes. Yes, I liked it.
You must have liked reading.
Yes, very much, and that was the connection with Ed
and me, because he became interested in books and
would take me with him on his book hunting expeditions
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Even as a youngster he was interested in
collecting books?
Well, he must have been--say I was ten--he would be
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Did your parents read much?
No. I have a story that I always like to tell about
my mother reading, picking up the sporting page of
the newspaper. The ball team in Indianapolis was
known as the Indians, and the St. Paul team was
known as the Saints. And she saw the headline one
day, and it said, "Saints Massacre the Indians."
She said, "Isn't that awful I"
Was she quite a serious person?
Anyone that had that many children, I think would have
to be serious.
Was your father quite a serious man?
He seemed to be. I went on fishing trips and paint
ing expeditions with him.
Was he a good companion?
Yes , quite so .
How far did your formal education go before you
started working?
I still lived in Indianapolis, graduated from
high school. Then during the war, in 1918, when
I was eighteen, I went to Butler College for a few
months. Because everyone that passed the physical
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examination was inducted into the Army, I belonged
to that thing--not many people remember it — called
the SATC, waggishly known as the Saturday Afternoon
Tea Club. It was really the Student Army Training
Camp. I think we were members of the Army. We
had uniforms. I have a discharge from the Army.
I'm always embarrassed where it says, "Battles,
Engagements, Wounds;" it says, "None."
Did you then serve in the Army at all?
After that, no. The war ended after I was in col
lege two months, sixty-six days. We all were dis
charged, that is if we were healthy.
You had been working for your brother while you
were going to school, then?
Yes. In summer vacations I worked in his shop,
from 1914 on.
But during the school year you devoted yourself to
school ?
Yes.
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The Studio Press
What shop did he have then?
It wasn't music. He had switched back. He had a
little shop in Indianpolis called The Studio Press
Fascinating to me because of the people that came
around.
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I don't think of Indianapolis as a great cultural
center, but I suppose there were many interesting
peopl e .
There were small groups. He was usually associated
with musicians and advertising men. At that time
they had a standing that they're losing now.
He did general commercial printing, would you say?
Of a superior kind. He was always interested in
superior work. I imagine he was the first printer
that ever used handmade paper in those parts to
any extent. When he was young, he was in communica'
tion with the big American printers. He wrote to
Goudy regularly. Goudy wrote to him. Updike wrote
to him. He would send his work to be criticized.
Isn't that wonderful that people could do that then,
Yes. I imagine they still do it. Any ambitious
youngster who commences to play with type usually
tries to do something good, or what he thinks is
good. It usually takes the place of setting up a
business card.
I guess you encouraged Andy Hoyem similarly, didn't
you?
Andy had quite a bit of experience before I knew
him. I never saw him when he went through the be
ginning .
What were your first jobs in the shop?
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You proceed to learn the case and distribute type.
Then in a place like that you would set up what we
call straight matter; that is, just follow your
copy under instructions. No attempt to create, as
we call it.
What were you doing then, brochures and things of
that sort?
Yes, and my brother was very early in what we call
advertisement composition, from advertising agen
cies, where you set up ads that are plated and sent
to newspapers and magazines.
Then I supposed you must have become interested in
the kind of typographic design that he was.
Yes. Books. All printers want to get into books.
I think all printers do. If they can.
Were any books done by the Studio Press?
Oh, yes. One of the local dilettantes [George
C. Calvert] wrote an essay called A Defense of the
Dilettante [published in 1919]. It is one of the
first books that we printed. Of course, he paid
for its publication. And we did a series of poems
for a man who was secretary to one of the Indiana
senators. He had invented a form of poetry he
called the "linnet," which is thirteen lines in
stead of fourteen for a sonnet. One of our books-
it wouldn't be called a book, it was a pamphlet--
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was called The Laugh, of Christ and Other Original
Linnets .
Is it linnet like the bird?
YesT
Did you have much of a part in printing it?
Oh no. I was too young. I just followed instruc
tions .
How long did the Studio Press last?
I don't remember the dates. You could find that in
the first bibliography.* It was sold by my brother
to an advertising man, and we came to San Francisco
together in the winter of 1919. I would say the
Studio Press lasted from about 1914 to '19. I'm
speaking from memory.
When you got out of the army training service, then,
did you go in the business with your brother full
time?
I worked elsewhere for a while. Some member of the
family got me a job in an electrical supply house.
I lasted about two or three months there, then I
went with my brother.
Doesn't sound like your kind of work.
*The a,uThcr-5 /><wue on the title page of the book, pub
lished in 1917, is St. Claire Jones.
*Heller, Elinor and Magee, David. Bibliography of
The Grabhorn Press, 1915-1940. San Francisco:
[David Magee], 1940. The Studio Press was owned by
Edwin Grabhorn from 1915 to 1919.
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No, it wasn't. I was pretty good when I started
as a receiving clerk, but I got pretty bad when
they promoted me. They had me checking invoices.
I didn't know what I was doing.
So almost all of your working life has been with
your brother?
Yes. Shortly before I went into the Army, I worked
for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company as a
student, so I could be taught to repair adding
machines. [Laughter] I went to school for three
months to learn all about adding machines. I've
forgotten everything now.
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Presswork, Typography, and
Typographi c Design
There's no relationship between any of that and
the mechanics of a press, is there?
No. I knew less than nothing about presswork. My
brother somehow didn't want me to work with the
presses. Oh, I did what you call feeding a press.
That means after the press is set up, you put the
sheets in and take them out. I know the theory
behind the presswork, but I'm no pressman.
I thought any printer who didn't have to be a
pressman felt he was lucky.
Oh no, that seems to be the big thrill, actually
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printing something that you've worked on. Take
Lew Allen. He's a devoted pressman, a very superior
one. I imagine the composition for him is painful
compared to printing. I imagine, now.
That's a point of view
Oh, and especially if you have a hand press. Just
as a child wants to set up his name and print it on
the little proof press. If you don't let him turn
the crank, he's disappointed. It's magic to see
this stuff that he can't read, really, and then he
can .
It always seemed to me that setting type and design
ing was so much more demanding and creative.
Well, I think this word "designing" is over
emphasized. I think if you work with copy, many
times it sets itself. Printers generally have an
advantage over "designers" who just sit down with a
paper and pencil. They can try something, and right
there reject it.
You mean set and run it off on a proof press, and
discard it?
Yes. Where the minute you try to "design" something,
especially if you haven't had a world of experience,
you're going to be too obviously "designing;" you're
going to try tricks that you shouldn't. If you just
do it straightforwardly, you have a better result
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than if you try to play with it.
It seems to me there's a kind of inspiration that
is in effective printing, that must come from the
typesetter.
Well, ... I was content to be a typesetter, and
nothing else. But I know that many of these young
fel 1 ows are not.
You liked what you were doing, and I presume your
brother liked what he was doing?
Yes, I think so.
Did he do any typesetting?
Oh, of course, of course! He taught me. He also
taught me to approach it right; in other words,
learn something about the history of what you are
doing. This kind of thing had been going on since
the fifteenth century, and there are various ways
of solving a problem, by the evidence.
Did you then read much about the history of print
ing?
Oh , yes .
You still do, I presume.
Well, not so much. But I did. I collected that
bunch of books because I was interested in that.
This is the one that went to the San Francisco
Public Library?
Yes.
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Haywood Hunt, in his interview in this series,
indicated that he prized his acquaintance with you
and your brother.
I worked for Haywood once for three months. I
became dissatisfied with the lack of varied exper
iences in printing in what you might call a specialty
shop. I thought I wanted more experience in other
kinds of work. So Haywood offered me a job there
[at the Kennedy-ten Bosch Company], which was a
much more commercial enterprise. It had all kinds
of work. So I worked three months. I evidently
learned enough, [laughter] Haywood was always a
little too finicky for me. He would labor over
correcting, even putting in tissue paper spaces.
I was too impatient.
Someone told me that at one time it was thought
that Haywood would inherit Nash's mantle. Did you
ever hear this?
No. He was a friend of Nash's, but I don't think
he had a chance. He didn't have a broad enough
outlook, I don't think. He liked to fiddle.
I remember. . .Brother Antoninus was speaking of press-
work rather than typesetting, but it can apply. He
once said he was trying to avoid the overpreci si on
of the Bremer Press. That's a fine excuse for bad
work. Not that I he's another superlative
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pressman. He does really good work, in the
tradition of the best paper, the best ink.
I think he said, or wrote, that he learned a good
deal from the Grabhorn Press.
He admired our work, our best work, quite a bit.
You speak of your best work.
We did a tremendous amount of inferior work,
compared to our standards.
Under what circumstances did you do that? For
advertising typography?
Oh no, advertising typography is easy. I don't
know why these advertising men thought they had
to have better than average printers, because
usually they were pretty sure exactly what they
wanted. No, it was a matter of money. If you
have to, in order to keep the place going, you
will accept a job and do it more economically than
you would otherwise. That's the economic outlook.
People mention Chickering Piano work. Did you do
some of the actual designing of the Chickering
ads in the Grabhorn Press?
We worked very closely sometimes with the art
directors, and experimented with them, and offered
Antoninus, Brother, Poet, Printer, and Religious,
a 1966 interview in this series.
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suggestions. But that was just a few times when
they asked us to.
Why do people keep mentioning these Chickering
Piano ads?
Because this man that supervised them was interested
in typography, and he was sort of an innovator in
a sense. He would come to the office and work
right with us, try something. He was the arbiter.
He had a scheme of full-page newspaper ads. Lots of
copy. You shaped them like a bowl. Sometimes it
got pretty wearisome, because he was saying, "Move
this a brass." (A brass means 1/72 of an inch.)
Ten o'clock at night, you could get pretty weary.
Sometimes you could just pull out a letter and put
it back in the same place, take another proof. You
know the old story of throwing dust in their eyes.
"Now, isn't that better?" you'd say.
Many of the things that I've seen that I've thought
were so wonderful were things that you've done for
fun .
For instance?
That little type specimen sheet....! guess Jane did
that, though. The one that's now in the Gleason
Li brary .
That's entirely Jane's. Jane was the fun printer.
We were a bit more serious.
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I'm trying to grope around in my mind for examples
of what I mean. It seems that so much of your
work had a lightness and an inspirational quality
that no one else's had.
I agree, but I can't remember instances.
Can you account for it?
All I can account for is that we enjoyed our work.
If we could be funny and not be solemn about it,
we enjoyed it.
Originality, I suppose, is the word I want. In
the best of your work, there has been so much of
it. How was the work divided in the shop? Was
there any formal division of duties between you
and your brother?
In the main, I did typesetting. Of course, my
brother did typesetting too. When I got more
experience, we would work together on details.
Actually, many things determine the page look:
what type is available; how long you want the book
to be; what type you have in your shop that you
can use, and how best to use it. To a printer the
fun [is the title page] , and most of the printers
I know save the title page to the last. First of
all, the general look of the book will condition
the title page quite a bit. And within the limit
ations of the type used in the rest of the book,
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that imposes some limitations on the title page.
But in general, the title page is truly an adver
tisement for the book. You've got to take it out of
just doing it. You love to play with it and put a
little fun into it if you can. Now that doesn't
always work. Sometimes it's inappropriate. Then
you do it the simplest way. The rules are hard to
enunciate. I've seen us work together anybody's
contribution is welcome if you're stymied. You
just ask them what they think. Someone might come
up with something. So, in that case, there is no
"designing." I've seen us take a hundred proofs
of a title page, and still be dissatisfied; we didn't
make it. That's when time was no object.
It wasn't because there were other things that you
thought were more important?
We liked to be successful. And sometimes you start
out with the idea that you have it, that this is
going to be an easy title page; it'll be effective
without much effort. Then you get to working on it,
and it doesn't come out that way, and you have to
alter and alter. Sometimes you get so despondent
because nothing looks good. Then you go back to
the beginning again.
Robert Grabhorn at a Book
Club of California reception,
1957. Reproduction rights
reserved by Ruth Teiser.
Robert Grabhorn setting type
at the Grabhorn Press, 1959.
Reproduction rights reserved
by Ruth Teiser and Catherine
Harroun.
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Outstanding Books and Types
It seems to me that Oscar Lewis mentioned that you'd
sometimes start a book and then just junk it because
it wasn't right, and start over again.*
This happened two or three times. We had a terrible
time on the Leaves of Grass. We had an artist
working with us [Valenti Angelo]. He didn't mind
dashing off an initial letter, or anything that was
required for an illustration. We bought especially
for it a type called Lutetia. This was a big folio
book, and Lutetia was too weak. We had bought
quite a bit of type when we had decided that
Lutetia would be the type for it. We printed about
twenty-five pages and junked them, and started
over with another type.
The book itself was a great success, was it not?
It's a success in terms of accomplishment. It
came out at a bad time as far as the sale of it
was concerned. They had rather a rough time selling
four hundred copies at $100 a copy. Well, it was
in 1930 that it was finished. There weren't 400
peopl e
It was a very notable book in those years.
Oh yes. Among American books, I think it is.
Lewis, Oscar, Literary San Francisco, a 1965
interview in this series.
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I just told you about two types on that. We set
up a few sample pages in three or four types
before we decided on this Goudy type. I can't
imagine anything we took more pains with than
that. We knew we were printing a book and the sale
price was going to be $100.
How did you happen to undertake that book?
Random House. We had already had a book practically
printed, and Bennett Cerf came out here and bought
the whole edition from us. Then he decided that
we ought to do a monument together. And he decided
that we should work on an American classic. It
was a mutual decision that we print the Leaves of
Grass .
It took some financing, didn't it?
It did, and they financed it.
What was the other book that Cerf had bought?
The travels of Sir John Mandeville.* That was
sort of an archaic exercise, and I'm still proud
of it, but it's still in the incunabula tradition.
Blackletter type. Valenti Angelo really made the
book with his initials. You see, every initial in
it was hand illuminated in the old illuminator's
tradition, with three colors. It was done with
Maundevile, Sir John, The Voiaya and Travailc of.
. 1928.
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tremendous labor on his part. But he was enthus
iastic.
Was a project like that inspired by your interest
in seeing if it could be done?
That happened, in my recollection, because we
got hold of this interesting type. Not simply a
copy of an existing type, but an interesting form
of black letter [Koch Bibel Gotisch]. It had just
been brought out by the Klingspor Foundry. At
that time, a young boy, the nephew of the founder
of the Klingspor Foundry, was working, getting his
international experience at our shop. He called
our attention to this type, and we liked it. That's
the case of finding a subject to fit the type.
This was in the rude days of the English language.
This was a rude, very interesting letter. I like
it. It's not for every book.
What was the type that was designed for your press?
Franciscan, designed by Fred Goudy. Now, we did not
say, "Mr. Goudy, you design this type," and "we want
this kind of type." We said, "We like that type,"
and if we could afford it, we'd like to have it.
And he said he had this type in design for another
printer. Something happened that the printer didn't
accept it. The details are very weak in my mind.
He was Karl Klingspor, nephew of the elder Karl
K 1 i n g s p o r .
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But at any rate, he offered it to us for what we
considered a low price. He changed a few of the
letters, had the matrices made. We liked it. There
again, type not for general use, probably inspired
by Ashendene Press Subiaco type. Subiaco is the mon
astery near Rome where the first Italian printing was
supposed to be done.
Did others use this Franciscan type then?
I really don't know whether this man in upper New
York. . . I've never seen it.
Did the Grabhorn Press use it much?
*
We used it on our bibliographies, both of them.
The first book that we used it on was one in the
Americana series. We only used it in two or three
lines at each chapter beginning. We've done a lot
of small things in it, memorials. The bibliographies
are the most important books it has been used in.
Probably some others, but I can't name them.
How did you happen to name it Franciscan?
San Francisco.
Not that you thought that it had any period
California feeling, or did you?
No. Naming a type is a tricky thing. Franciscan:
well, it's a special type for San Francisco printers,
and it's a romantic sounding name. It has nothing
See footnote, page 9, for the first bibliography.
The second was: Magee, Dorothy and David. Bib
liography of the Grabhorn Press, 1940-1956. San
Francisco: [David Magee], 1957.
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to do with its design, except that it looks old,
like black letter. I don't think I'm competent
to give you much information here, unless I go
home and bone up. [laughter] You see, I rarely
look at a book we've done after it's been done.
I don't think my brother does either.
Have you been pleased by the bibliographies, though?
Did you enjoy doing those?
Very much .
I should think it would be a unique experience
for anyone to sum up in his own medium the work
he's done in that medium.
We had nothing to do with the text.
No, but I mean the production of it.
Probably the first one was a little more interest
ing textually because we could remember details,
little stories connected with each item. There's
not so much of that in the second one.*
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Printing Books in the 1920's and 1930's
Did you have much to do with John Henry Nash?
No. We knew him, of course, and attended a few
formal lunches he organized, things like that. As
a matter of fact, we had very little sympathy for
See also chapter, "Grabhorn Press Bibliographies."
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his work. We knew it was amazingly well done, but
it wasn't our style, that's all.
Did the fact that he and a few others had created
a kind of interest in fine printing in San Fran
cisco have any influence on your decision to come
to San Francisco?
Well, I didn't have too much to do with that.
That was up to my brother. I think he liked the
idea of coming to San Francisco. He was still a
very young man then, in the thirties. He had
never been to San Francisco. He had been to
Seattle. It was a romantic place, and he knew
Nash was here and there was some support for that
kind of printing, because Nash was getting it.
And it might be well to muscle in on it. [laughter]
Although I don't suppose it would have been easy
for Nash to have felt threatened by a couple of
young men, I should think he still might have been
a little annoyed.
Printers are a little bit akin to actors. They're
prima donnas. They have the same jealousies,
belittling of competition.
It seems to me that there was some kind of funny
story about Nash and a man named Ray.
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Oh. That story. Let's see if I can get it. This
man came into our office with a book of poems that
he had illustrated with photographs of the Farallon
Islands. We had printed a few books of poetry.
I always say we printed the worst poetry in the
world, but we never made much money out of them,
and I was a little sick of dealing with poets.
The story goes that my brother sent him down to
Nash with his book, and the imaginary interview
with Nash and Ray was: Nash looked at it, and his
way of discouraging was to say, "Such a book would
cost you $10,000." And Ray countered with, "Fine.
Do you want a deposit?" [laughter] Well, who was
there?
How was the financing of most of the books that
you've done arranged?
When we first started to print books, we financed
them ourselves. We made our bread and butter from
the advertising agencies, and in fallow periods
we'd work on a book.
What was the first book that you printed out here
under that circumstance, do you remember?
I think the Mandeville was done under that. And
we did a little tiny book of Hawthorne's called,
The Golden Touch. Then the big things took financing
and Random House did that. We were always dissatis-
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R. Grabhorn: fied, of course, because there's a vast difference
between what you get and what the customer has to
pay in our modern distribution system. I remember
we got $16,000 for printing 400 copies of the
Leaves of Grass. That's $40 a copy. It's usually
three times that. Then they did give us $1000
extra when the book was finally finished. Of
course, we'd used up most of the $16,000 doing it.
With the Book Club, especially in later days, they
finance a book as they go along. Of course, that
wasn't always so. We financed the Book Club in a
fallow period. We printed books that they only
paid us for as they sold them. The great book
that we printed for the Book Club — it's got the
Book Club's imprint on \t--The Santa Fe Trail to
California, was done that way.
Teiser: So in effect, you financed it, and they paid you
back?
R. Grabhorn: We financed it.
Teiser: That was during the Depression, wasn't it?
R. Grabhorn: It came out in the Depression, '30, I think.*
That came from my brother's interest in collecting.
He had bought the manuscript. That book was entirely
our creation. We furnished the material, and we
*
Watson, Douglas S., Editor, The Santa Fe Trail
to California. San Francisco, 1931.
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set up and printed the book.
Were there others?
Oh yes. There were quite a few. Then we would
sell them to the Book Club, because we didn't want
to be bothered with the collection and bookkeeping
and all that stuff; keeping a mailing list.
You and Oscar Lewis had the Westgate Press, didn't
you?
Yes. A funny little thing. That's the time when
the signed limited editions were very popular. I
can remember Oscar--we were interested in publishing
We thought we'd like to be big publishers. We
started out by Oscar selecting magazine articles
by what we thought were collected authors. We
obviously offered these people too much money. We
sent off letters that said we would give them $250
for the right to print their article or short story
as a book. All they had to do was give us per
mission and sign 500 sheets. And they jumped at it.
I can remember we got a telegram from Sherwood
Anderson. We printed some little article of his.
He sent us a telegram after he accepted our prop
osition. He said, "When you know me better, you
will know that I always need money. Please send me
$100." [laughter]
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How did you come out of that on that basis?
We never knew how we came out, because our
printer was the Grabhorn Press, you see. And the
Grabhorn Press, being Edwin Grabhorn, would never
give us a price as to how much this book cost. He
would say to us, "Has the Westgate got any money
in its treasury?" Then we'd turn it over.
Has your brother always been formally the owner
of the Grabhorn Press?
Yes.
And your position has been ?
An employee. A favored employee, let's say.
Was this always satisfactory to you?
Yes. I was considered a partner in a loose sort
of way. This had nothing to do with business, in
a sense, but it was assumed that I was a paid
partner.
I presume the recent dissolution of the Grabhorn
Press also had nothing to do with business, but a
variety of other factors.
Yes.
Do you want to talk about that, or not?
No, I don't well, it had sort of outgrown its
usefulness. My brother is a very old man now, and
he's still working. He's interested in printing his
Japanese print catalogues. And I had to make money,
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frankly, and the books we were printing were solely
for my benefit. It was retarding his progress on
the Japanese print books. So he's printing his
catalogue, and I'm trying to make money. That's
about it.
Let me go back to your enterprise with Oscar Lewis,
the Westgate Press. How long did it last?
It lasted quite a few years, but then it became
just an imprint that we'd use for certain things,
the last two or three books. But it lasted five
or six years.
You didn't lose a lot?
No, we didn't lose a lot. We lost our time.
Then the name of the press was taken over with your
permission, was it?
Yes. By Lawton and Alfred Kennedy. That's the
first Alfred, Lawton's brother, who worked at our
shop at various times. He was a very good printer.
He was accurate and efficient. His contributions,
intellectually, weren't the greatest, but they
were adequate. He was above average, and he was
certainly interested in his craft. His idea of a
holiday was to come over to our shop and help us
distribute type, even after he had left us.
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Some Grabhorn Press Employees
I do want to ask you about the young men of talent
who worked with you.
There was always some anxious and ambitious young
man who loved books and wanted to get closer to
them, always bothering us. We couldn't possibly
accept all that we were offered. Some of them
would say, "You don't have to pay me a cent." But
we never liked to do that, completely that way.
We didn't pay them enough. But they really,
actually just wanted to learn and then go on.
They were students. They had no intention of
staying with us a lifetime.
They went out and did many things, didn't they?
Yes. Some of them forgot it altogether.
There must have been a point in the history of
the Grabhorn Press at which you discovered that
you were famous.
Yes. When that was, I don't know. But I think
sometimes that people were overemphasizing the
contribution. It's a nice thing to have done, and
to be doing, but it isn't that important. We were
proud of our books, naturally.
We had a young apprentice named Jack Gannon. He
died early. He worked for money, and he was making
printing his career. He was hired as an apprentice
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Helen Gentry, the same way. Those were the first.
And this young man from Germany, Klingspor. Well,
he'd heard of us, I suppose.
How did you happen to hire a woman?
She was the protege--or her husband was associated
with--Porter Garnett. I think he introduced us to
her. But she was hired as a printer. Of course,
women take lower salaries. We were interested in
that. After all, the way this kind of business is
operated, you can't pay top salaries.
You never paid union scale, did you?
No. Except in the things we had done outside the
shop. Among our employees, no. But they were,
strictly speaking, apprentices.
You probably never got union wages.
Ourselves, no. I don't think either my brother or
I ever got union wages.
Are you members of the union now?
No.
Neither of you?
Neither of us. My brother was, in Indianapolis at
various times. When I worked for Haywood Hunt, I had
an apprentice's card in the union. I had to have one
to work in that kind of a place. Short duration.
Who were your longest employees?
Sherwood Grover and Katharine, his wife. She worked
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for us before he did.
Was she a printer?
She was taught in our shop. Everybody in our shop
was expected to do everything that was needed,
folding paper, setting type, proofreading, anything
they can do.
I guess Jane was a long-time employee too. She
gave a good account of how she started working
with you. How did Sherwood Grover come to you?
From his wife. He worked as a sort of apprentice
at a commercial shop in Oakland, called the Good-
hue Printing Company. And after his wife got a
job from us, she kept trying to get us to give him
a job, which we finally did.
How long was he with you?
Twenty-six or seven years. This was a living to
him. He wasn't one of the rich boys who wanted to
smell printers ink. He was a faithful typesetter
and pressman. And he always did things himself,
on his own. He used to do things as a youngster
with John Dos Pasos. He'd take parts of John Dos
Pasos and make a Christmas book out of them. Then
he decided that Dos Pasos had sold out to the
Establishment and he was through with him. Now he
Grabhorn, Jane, The Colt Press, a 1966 interview
in this series.
32
R. Grabhorn: is printing his commonplace books, quotations he
likes. He likes to do them in all sorts of type.
He's got a printing office at home. Now he is a
successful book salesman. But he's just bought a
press and installed it in his house. He's doing
printing in odd hours.
*
For further discussion of people who worked at the
Grabhorn Press, see chapter, "Present Printers and
Past Em pi oyoes . "
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INTERVIEW II
February 8, 1967
Printing Fine Books and
Printing For Profit
When we were talking the other day (not on tape),
you told a story about some rare books and an
automobi 1 e .
Oh, yes. Well, you see, we were interested, when
we first commenced to get in the printing of fine
books, in other fine books that had been done and
were still current, like the Kelmscott Chaucer
and the Ashendene--any book of the Ashendene Press
and the Doves Bible. And we bought those books,
mainly from John Howell. We traded printing for
them, actually. That's the way I've got a great
many books, by trading printing for them to book
dealers. The amusing thing about this was we
suddenly decided we must have an automobile and
we sold the books and bought a $1200 automobile.
[1 aughter]
What kind of car was it?
A Stutz Bearcat, of all things. Secondhand of
course, [laughter] That was in 1922. We sold
three books.
Just three?
Just three. The Kelmscott Chaucer, the Ashendene
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Morte D'Arthur (that's not the most expensive of
the Ashendenes, but it's up there) and the Doves
Bible. Twelve hundred dollars wouldn't buy them
today .
Had you got all three of those from John Howell?
Yes.
Do you remember at all how much you paid for them
in printing?
I would say it was pretty close to the same price.
What books were you doing for him then?
Well, let's see if I can remember. I think we
did something of Robert Louis Stevenson's, not his
Baby Book . . .
The Best Thing in Edinburgh* or something of that
sort?
No, that wasn't it. That came along later. This
was a fragment of an unpublished manuscript. I
think it was called Diogenes at the Savile Club;
either that or Diogenes in London.. Later on a
man in Chicago had a part of the same manuscript and
we printed it the same way. One or the other — one
was Diogenes at the Savile} and the other was
Diogenes in London. Now that wouldn't be the only
thing [for Howell]. We did a number you know; it
was just commercial printing. No longer can I
remember. . . oh yes. We did a book about Abraham
Lincoln.
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Did you enjoy working with John Howell?
Yes, yes. Pretty much. Very little cash ever
exchanged hands. [laughter]
Was he pretty close fisted?
No, no. I don't think so. He was fair.
I guess everybody had so little money . . .
That's right. [laughter] However, that wasn't
exactly the Depression. The early twenties that
was, when we first came to San Francisco. I forget
who was the author of this life of Lincoln, but it
was more or less of a commercial type book.* It
was not a press book in our sense.
I see. I think Nash had done, previously, some
pri nti ng for Howel 1 .
Yes, he did a Stevenson's Baby Book, or something
like that. I think John Nash was a little too
expensive for Howell.*
How did the Grabhorn Press do its pricing? How
did it do its estimating?
Oh, God! laughter: That is tough. We made
several attempts to be business-like and have what
they call an hour cost and keep time on the time
Bissett, Clark Prescott, Abraham Lincoln, A
Universal Man. 1923.
**
See Howell, Warren, Two San Francisco Bookmen, a
1966 interview in this series.
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expended, but we couldn't keep it up. We'd guess
as to how much time we'd spent. Lots of times it
was how much money we needed, [laughter] There was
nothing efficient about the pricing, except with
the advertising agencies. That was the best pay,
of course — not the book pay--just doing composition
for the advertising agencies.
That you coul d keep track of your cost for?
Yes, and charge a legitimate price per hour.
What kind of charges were the legitimate prices
per hour in the twenties?
Oh, I have an idea that $7.50 an hour was about as
high as you could get. I endorse Eric Gill's
statement, you know, that the decline of the
crafts commenced with the invention of double entry
bookkeepi ng .
You certainly never had any intention of keeping
track of the time that you and your brother put in,
di d you?
On a book, no; on commercial work, yes. A book
generally ended up with what it would sell for.
That was the difficulty of trying to do a book for
the big publishers, for instance Random House.
Because the price the printer gets is so much less
than a book sells for, because they [the publishers]
have so many expenses of salesmen, salesmen's
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commissions, and discounts to book dealers that
often you find yourself printing a thirty-dollar
book for ten dollars, and it must look like a
thirty-dollar book, not ten dollars.
Did you do much publishing under your own imprint?
Uh, yes, we started little trifles, like the--oh,
let me think--T?ze Golden Touch of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and then the biggest thing was Oscar
Wilde's Salome about that time. Then we started
a really big book--I think we covered this before-
the travels of Sir John Mandeville, which Random
House took over. Then we did three or four books
for Random House.
And you didn't really come out on those?
We came out all right .
Your approach to the whole printing world has
never allowed you to do little Christmas books of
your own or many things of that sort, has it?
No. I only reluctantly print Christmas cards.
About once every ten years I do it, because after
you have the pressure of doing Christmas cards so
many years for people who are hurrying you up,
you don't feel too enthusiastic about it.
Maybe I wasn't making my point. Your printing for
pleasure was of a professional kind?
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That's right. Create a book, even if we had to
dig up the material, which my brother's collecting
helped out enormously.
But it was always a book to sell?
Yes.
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The Americana Series
What of the Americana series?
Well, now, that came in the Depression. That came
after we decided we didn't want to work with these
publishers that had to mark up a book so high.
And that came through my brother's collection of
Cal i forni ana , rare things that he decided would make
small-priced books. It was the reprinting of
rare books. There were no original works in it.
They were just books that were scarce and in demand
by the collectors. Cal i forni ana--we tried to make
it include other things besides Cal i forni ana , but
there weren't very many. You know, like an early
history of Kentucky, something like that.
Did they sell well?
The Americana series sold very well, after it got
started. It had difficulty getting started. I
think the story's been told so many times, or some
version of it. The first book in the first series
was the life of Joaquin Murieta, which got a big,
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enthusiastic review from Joseph Jackson. And
that sold. Of course, it was seriously underpriced
We said there were 500 printed and there were less
than 500 printed, so it became a rare book in no
time. And the price went up. And since we an
nounced a series of ten books, that helped sell the
rest of the ten. That appeared successful, so we
went into a second and third series, price going
up slightly all the time.
How were you pricing them?
As I remember, the Joaquin Murieta sold for $3.75.
Then on the last series, I think the usual price
was $7.50 for a book.
Was Douglas Watson involved in that series?
Yes, yes. He was sort of the editor and proof
reader. He wrote introductions to them, and kept
books at the shop. He was a great help to us.
What position did he occupy in your arrangement?
I don't know whether he got any salary or not. I
doubt it very much. I don't remember. But of
course he always got books. And he was looking
for something to do; he was occupied.
Had he been a journalist?
Joseph Henry Jackson, book editor for the r,an
P'rands'.ao Chronicle. The book was Joaquin Murinta,
'I'kc. Urif/and Chief of California, edited by Francis
P. Farquhar and published in 1932.
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No, not to my knowledge. He had been a real estate
dealer at one time in his life. He was an enthus
iastic Californian who knew his subject. Of course,
his prose style was a little rococo at times. He
could say, "Gold! Gold! Gold!" in an introduction.
[1 aughter]
Had he retired?
Yes, he'd retired from any sort of business.
When did you first know him?
Oh, I can only date it by where we were. I think
it's shortly after we moved to Commercial Street,
about 1933. Then he was around for three or four
years .
What did he look like?
I'm poor at that, "What did he look like?" He
looked like an American business man. [laughter]
Nothi ng else.
Was he an enthusiastic sort?
Yes, but of course he was elderly then. He was
probably seventy at that time. He wasn't any
young enthusiastist.
I see .
His wife took lessons in bookbinding from Belle
[McMurtrie] Young, who was well-known at that time.
She [Mrs. Watson] was one of the old San Francisco
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families, the Moodys, I think. It wasn't necessary
for him to work, even though he had been up and
down in the real estate business. He used to re
gale us with stories. I was always amused at his
statement about what a promoter was: a promoter
is a man that says, "You furnish the ships, I'll
furnish the ocean." [laughter]
Oscar Lewis wasn't involved in that Americana
seri es , then?
Oh, yes! Oscar wrote our letters and kept the
books, and he was there even before that time.
Oscar we first came in contact with when he was
the secretary for the Book Club. He was the house
clerk. He did all of our letter writing. A great
deal of that--i ntroducti ons . That was before
Watson's time. We didn't see so much of him after
Watson's time. However, we were always close.
I guess he got busy with his own writing.
Well, he was always busy with his own writing, but
his income did not depend on his writing at that
time, or anywhere near it. He was secretary of
the Book Club. Of course, I had gone into a little
partnership with him earlier in the Westgate
Press, as I mentioned.
So you had a little knowledge of publishing by the
time of the Americana series?
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Oh, yes. But we were nevei — you know we didn't
ever even keep an efficient mailing list, [laughter]
Surprisingly enough, book shops took a lot of the
Americana series. And of course we always had
access to the Book Club list because we were so
close to it.
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Commissioned Books and Ephemera
When did you start printing for the Book Club?
Oh, I think our first book might have been 1921,
'22.
How did that come about, do you remember?
I think Albert Bender, who, of course, no matter
who was secretary, was the mainspring of the Book
Club, gave us a book to print. Oh, what was that
book? I think the first book we did for them was
The Gracious Visitation, a book of short stories
by a California writer, Emma Frances Dawson. I
thi nk that was the first book. But whether Albert
was responsible for us getting that or not, I
don't remember. But he was responsible for other
books, the kind we liked to do, the more press book
types, not California, beginning with the parts of
the Bible, new translations, Song of Songs, the
Book of Eccl esiastes .
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You did those for the Book Club?
Yes .
Under Albert Bender's influence?
Yes. Of course, Oscar belonged in there all the
time. I think at that time he was secretary of
the Book Club, also sort of a ghost writer for
Bender . . . not exactly that. . . took care of
his correspondence, any official writing he had to
do.
We interviewed Oscar Lewis* and he indicated some
thing of that sort. When did you first meet Bender?
Just shortly after you came here?
Yes. We put out little things to give away, little
pamphlets. Gave them to book dealers and advertis
ing agencies. Bender got wind of us and looked us
up. He gave us commissions lots of times.
What was he like?
Well, ebullient, short, enthusiastic. He used to
give us Chinese brocade neckties and our wives
j ewel ry .
I guess he was responsible for a good deal of
tradition here.
He certainly was. I sometimes—everybody , I think--
got annoyed at him. [laughter]
Lewis, Oscar, Literary San Francisco, a 1965
interview in this series.
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Did he have good taste?
Oh, that's hard to say. He certainly didn't
have bad taste.
The things he was interested in, in general you
liked doing well enough?
Oh, yes.
So to that extent his taste corresponded with yours?
There was no doubt about it, he was of great benefit
to us. And to lots of artists in San Francisco.
Weren't there other wealthy people in San Francisco
who were interested enough in fine printing to
occasionally have you do something?
Oh, yes. They usually might have come through book
dealers. I remember very early we printed a book
for Mrs. Tobin Clark, a tribute to her sister or
someone .
Was that one that John Howell published?
He might have been the ostensible publisher. It
was hardly a book that could be published; it was
a f ami ly th i ng .
Sometimes, I suppose, Howell or Magee or others act
as publishers when it's just a nominal function?
Yes, that's right, just a nominal function. That's
always been true. Someone would ask them where
they could get such a book, and they would refer
it to whoever they thought could make it. Of course,
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Nash got the rich commissions, [laughter] We
got the leftovers, [laughter]
Did you ever do anything for Templeton Crocker?
No. We did several little things of Bender's
again. We did a George Sterl ing--sl ight poem. You
could hardly call it a book, except that it had
hard covers on it. About sixteen pages. A poem
called, "To A Girl Dancing." Now, most of those
Bender took, those copies that the author didn't
take .
As I remember, later you did a good deal for Tom
Morris, little keepsakes.
Yes, those were Christmas things. Well, naturally,
as my brother got interested in collecting Calif-
orniana, other people who were interested in Calif-
orniana too became habitue's of the shop, you see.
Some of them we printed things for, especially at
Christmas time—mostly trifles.
Was there a W. P. Fuller book?
Yes. That was later. We printed two books for the
Fuller Company. Sort of anniversary books, you know
Did you do many books like that?
No. Those were rather long books. We did lots of
memorials for people that died. Some would be
just a couple of pages, but printed on vellum and
bound. Those were usually resolutions by a board
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Teiser:
To present to the family?
R. Grabhorn: Well, usually there'd be one or two copies pre
sented to the widow. I always said in the hope
that the widow wouldn't dump her stock on the
market. [laughter]
Teiser: Were they set in type, or were they calligraphic?
R. Grabhorn: They were set in type. When Valenti Angelo was
around, or even later Mallette Dean, they would
hand illuminate and hand initial them. My brother
has lots of stories about those things. When he
was talking to a vice-president of Standard Oil
Company, he said he always imagined how his name
would look in type. I think he called himself a
mortician among printers. [laughter] We did
quite a few of them.
Teiser: Did you charge for those on a commercial rate?
R. Grabhorn: No, that was higher, usually. I think my brother
said he had two prices — of course he was joking--
$500 for a president and $300 for a vice-president.
Many years ago we printed a book that always amused
me. It was when one of the young--at that time
young--F1ei shhackers (he's probably a grandfather
now, if he's still alive) was a hero in a Stanford-
California football game. A friend of the family
had us print the newspaper account of his last-
Fleishhacker Jr.
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minute saving the game as a book. [laughter]
It's difficult to make a book out of a column of
newspaper material, but we could do it.
I think Oscar Lewis said that he used to occasion
ally bulk things out for you so theyti look like a
book [1 aughter] .
Sometimes the introduction was longer than the
book .
Then a fair amount of your work was thorough
luxury printing, wasn't it?
Oh, yes. Vanity printing was more like it.
Did you do much of the kind of vanity printing
where somebody wrote a little thing and wanted to
have it published as a literary effort?
Yes. We rarely undertook the sale of those
things. We printed some of the worst poetry in
the world. It's usually poetesses want their
little book. But they're difficult. They think
that if they could get a book of poetry for $2.50
from a book shop they should be able to get
twenty-five copies of their book for $2.50 each.
They didn't realize the matter of quantity.
Were they difficult to do as books?
No. We've done some very funny ones. I'll never
forget one book. It was called Poems and Philo
sophical Thoughts, by Maude Something. I don't
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think she'll ever hear about this. But one of her
thoughts was: "Sickness is like a window, some
have one big pane and others many little ones."
We didn't have much pride. [laughter]
This would have been all hand-set?
Usual ly , yes .
On the whole, though, you continued doing a regular
stream of books that were commercially reasonable,
didn't you?
Like the Americana series?
Yes.
We used to do sort of gift volumes for a local
attorney named Herbert Rothschild, who was also
the owner of some of the movie palaces in San
Francisco: the Granada and the California — if
you remember them. He was a book lover, you see.
And he would have us print books at Christmas time
to give to his friends. Those were usually small
editions. Fifty copies, something like that. Then,
of course, we got in the habit of doing for Ranso-
hoff's a Christmas book for them to sell. The first
one was King Edward's (I suppose VIII) abdication
speech, with an introduction by William Saroyan, who
was a friend of ours. I think we gave him a hundred
dol 1 ars .
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Did you then do the editorial suggesting for
these Christmas volumes sometimes?
Oh, yes. Then we printed two or three — two I
think-- that are very hard to get hold of and are
collected — Churchill's wartime speeches.
Were they for Ransohoff's?
Those were for Ransohoff's. They sold them for,
I think, about $10 apiece, usually.
What relationship did that bear to the actual
cost?
Well, we never got rich out of the printing
business, so it wasn't enough.
They took a profit?
Profit? Not much. Less than a book dealer would.
Most of the poetry and vanity volumes were an
adjunct to our main business, which was doing the
work for advertising agencies. As I say, the
serious books we tried to do were usually our own
efforts .
About how much of your time went into the advertis
ing work?
Oh, that was sporadic. There would be periods
when we did nothing else for three or four months.
Or maybe on Saturdays and Sundays do other things.
Did you work most Saturdays and Sundays anyway?
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Sundays, lots of times.
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Advertising Typography,
Wine Labels and Commercial Printing
Some one told me that those ads for Chickering and
others were really the first distinguished printing
for advertising in San Francisco.
Yes, I think so, because they were out of the
ordinary and they were usually full-page newspaper
ads and exclusively typographical. Little or no
illustration. For instance (I think I told you
this) the Chickering Piano ads were usually in the
shape of a bowl; it was fairly difficult to do.
The Zenith Radio ads: a bolt of lightening. They
were for the same advertising agent. For a man
named M. E. Harlan, who was original in that way.
We also did, through him, work for Schilling Coffee
Company.
There's a long story; it's been told before. I
don't remember whether it was through Harlan or
Douglas Watson, who was close to the Schilling
business, [that] we got the contract to print two
or three copies of a book celebrating Schilling's
birthday; maybe seventieth, seventy-fifth, or
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something like that. But he was so enamored of
it, he had us print a reproduction of the gift
volume in three or four, maybe five hundred copies.
And he sent those out. Naturally he got letters of
acknowledgment. Then he had us print a book re
producing all the letters, [laughter] Craziest
book. And then that thing was going on from
there, but I think his family stopped him.
[laughter] This was August Schilling?
Yes. But I think he was in his dotage. That was
how come they had to stop him.
They were very particular about their printing
in that company always, weren't they?
They were particular about their labels . I knew
a man that used to slave over the labels. But I
can't say that we'd be too proud of these repro
ductions of letters of acknowledgment.
Were there any other notable ads that you did?
We did lots of ads through McCann-Eri ckson for the
Standard Oil Company. We did those for years.
But then we stopped doing ads for them. Then they
came back to us, oh, perhaps around 1930, and we
did a little more than just follow instructions
there. We worked right with the art director,
Charles Stafford Duncan. He was a local artist of
some repute at the time. I think actually he was
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one of the executors of Bender's estate. But
we did the Standard Oil ads announcing Standard
Ethyl gasol i ne .
This is interesting because although your name
always appears in your books, these ads are anony
mous .
Oh, yes. Who would know?
Except maybe people would recognize your style.
That's right. But, of course, we can't assume any
credit for the design of the Checkering ads. Those
were conceived by Harlan; we just followed his lead
But in the Standard Oil ads you had a little more
free reign?
In that last group, we did. Of course, we weren't
commissioned to do a series of ads and do anything
we wanted. We always had to work with the art
di rector.
You yourself recently did some wine labels for the
New Almaden Winery?
We refurbished the Almaden labels, but those are
not creations. We just sort of snapped them up a
little bit, changed colors. But we always have
done a few wine labels for friends that were wine
makers. There we created the labels actually. We
created the ones you see around now on Ficklin Port.
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R. Grabhorn: And then the Hallcrest Wi nery--that ' s a small
winery. It's sort of a large plaything for an
attorney here in town, Chaffee Hall. Then before
Chaffee was in the commercial business, we did
some private wine labels for him that I liked
very much. I haven't seen one in years.
I worked for some months on the Almaden wines.
Did a couple of original labels. I remember one
for a brandy that I haven't seen around. I don't
know whether they're making a brandy or not.
Teiser: That was you alone, wasn't it, working on the Al
maden labels?
R. Grabhorn: Well, my brother helped in taking proofs, and the
color business.
Teiser: Were there any other kinds of fugitive work that
you created?
R. Grabhorn: Oh, we've done many business announcements. Of
course for years, when Jim Ransohoff was alive
(I suppose there's a younger Jim Ransohoff now)
we did the Ransohoff announcements each year of
their fashion openings. We did those in quantities
which were huge for us: 30,000.
Teiser: Could you handle that many of one thing in your
shop?
R. Grabhorn: Oh, yes, but that's about as many as we ever did.
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We very rarely had anything printed by other
printers. Now and then. Lawton Kennedy printed
one of the Fuller histories for us. And then we
did some pamphlets, large pamphlets, for Stanford
University in which the presswork was done by
somebody else. We did the design. That was very
seldom. We'd rather do it ourselves.
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II lustrations
What about illustrations? Didn't you use litho
graphed illustrations in certain books?
No, not until later. We were printing books before
offset printing was common, you see. So we would
have to depend on woodcuts and zinc etchings of
line drawi ngs .
Did you use many halftones?
No, no halftones. We could never print a halftone
properly. We tried but we never could, because
we didn't have the ideal kind of presses for half
tones, for one reason; and besides that, we weren't
good enough, [laughter] We always avoided them.
And so we always had halftones lithographed when we
got to the point of using them. Up until offset
became usual, why we were limited to line drawings,
woodcuts. When we had a good, hard workman like
Valenti Angelo, a lot of small editions were hand
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decorated — several of them. I mean things of
forty or fifty copies.
You mean the color was applied by hand?
Yes.
When you did later have illustrations lithographed,
who did them?
I think the first time we used an offset litho
grapher was when we printed those facsimilies of
the letters written to Schilling. You see, we'd
just take the whole letter, with the letterhead
and everything, and that was reproduced by offset.
I forget even the man's name. We've used A.
Carlisle for offset. And the local man here,
Waters .
We prefer collotype. We've had lots of our collo
type done at the Meriden Gravure Company. That to
us is better than offset.
They have finally stopped. I got word of that.
One of the men died, and the other three retired.
Is that right? They've stopped. I know they
threatened to stop doing collotype.
This is a recent development.
You can't get collotype then anywhere now?
In the United States, no.
You can get it in Europe.
Japan also.
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I think Jaffe, who used to operate in Europe,
operates in New York. I think he might still be
in business.
I think that man that was out here from Meriden
said they were the only ones [left].
Did you ever use gravure?
Yes, when we got it in Oakland [from Oakland
National Gravure]. I think the last book we used
any gravure on was . . .
Photographs .
Oh, yes. Photographs of the Grabhorn Press in
that catalogue of Magee ' s --Grabhorn books he had
for sale. About six, seven years ago.
Oakland National was the only place that did
gravure in this area,was'nt it?
Yes. The most elaborate book was a book we printed
for the Americana collector, Holliday. I think his
son is over at the Bancroft Library now.
He was--Jim Holliday. He's at San Francisco State
now .
Well, his father was a very important Americana
collector, and he had us print a book about a man
that had made elaborate illustrations--! forgot the
name of the book. The ostensible publisher was the
Arizona Historical Society. Those were gravure
illustrations.
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There's a book that I have that you did that was
edited by Eleanor Bancroft and Edith Coulter.
California Towns!
Yes .
That was probably offset. That was some local
[offset lithography] company. That wasn't collotype,
I 'm f ai rly sure .
It looks like very good offset. Were you fussy
about it?
Well, not too. Not the way some men are.
How about the maps . . .
The Disenos, you mean?
Yes. Who did those reproductions?
Well, the groundwork I think was done by Waters,
the black. We added the colors, you see, with
linoleum blocks, which we've done. The Japanese
print books, you see, the background was done by
collotype. We added the colors with linoleum
bl ocks .
That sounds harder to print than halftones.
It isn't nearly as hard as you think, thank good
ness. You see, we had nothing to do with the
groundwork. That's where the shading is.
I'm just thinking of the registration.
The registration is tough, especially on collo
types. Because on the Japanese print books, you
*Becker, Robert H. Disenos of California Ranohos.
San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1964.
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see, we would have to slice, with a razor blade,
the sheets with the illustrations in order to get
registration. There were guide marks printed;
[but] if we just used their press guides, the color
would wander all over the illustration.
What of the San Francisco Bay Area map book?
Maps of San Franaisoo Bay!
Yes.
I think those illustrations were collotype.
I see .
I think. We've used quite a bit of collotype.
That has its drawbacks. It's a matter of getting
the paper there, and back. Especially if you want
to use the same kind of paper the rest of the book
is on.
I saw some gravure work of Charles Wood's the
other day.
Wood did the illustrations by offset for the first
volume of Carl Wheat's Mapping the Trans-Mississippi
West. It's a six-volume thing. We printed the
first volume. The rest of them were pri nted--several
by Taylor and Taylor--and somebody else. We had
nothing to do with them, only the first volume.
Harlow, Neal . The Maps of San Franaisco Bay.
San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1950.
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Printing Equipment
This brings up the presses you used. Let me go
'way back. When you first came to San Francisco,
did you bring any equipment with you?
Type. That's all. No presses.
Did you have much type?
No, no. We had some English Caslon and Kennerly.
But we only had a couple of cases of English Caslon,
which we traded to Taylor and Taylor for some type
that we wanted. I forget what it was. But we
bought type regularly.
Then how did you set about getting the rest of your
equi pment?
We bought it here. Bought the press. I forget our
first press. It was a Colt's Armory. We've always
been partial to Colt's Armory presses.
Is that what you had in Indianapolis?
I do not remember the press ... I don't. . .
yes, we did. We had a form of a Colt's Armory
press. And also an old Chandler and Price.
Why have you always been partial to the Colt's
Armory?
Because of the heavy, the nice impression you get.
You get a heavier impression, usually, and better
ink distribution, than you could on a Chandler
and Price, at least. We never liked the idea of
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cylinder presses. Of course, they're ideal for
halftones. If you work with dampened handmade
paper, it's a little more troublesome on a cylinder
press .
Has much of your work been done on dampened paper?
Quite a bit. The whole Leaves of Grass was done
on dampened paper, which was a tremendous job. I
mean just dampening it.
I think I asked Albert Sperisen, whom I interviewed?
about why the Colt's Armory press was held in such
high esteem in general, and he said, "Oh, because
the Grabhorns use it," or something to that
effect. But I think he was indicating that it was
a difficult press to use.
Well, it's not a fast press. But you see, when we
were starting, the automatic feeders had just been
invented, and they were usually attached to an
inferior press. But we never did tremendous quanti
ties. We didn't need a fast press.
There is no automatic feeder possible with the
Colt's Armory?
Now there is on a form of Colt's Arfhory called the
Victoria. We have one upstairs [in the Grabhorn-
Hoyem press] that isn't as efficient as the modern
Sperisen, Albert. San Francisco Area Printers,
1925-1965, a 1966 interview in this series.
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presses like the Heidelbergs. But those are
cylinder presses. These are platen presses. The
Victoria's just another name for a Colt's Armory.
It has the same type of action.
Where is it made?
It was made in Germany. Now I think it's made in
Switzerland, if it's made at all anymore. Sherwood
Grover bought one recently for his home printing
office, in England. Rebuilt.
Do you remember how much you paid for your first
press when you came here?
No. I think about the second one, we paid $450
for.
Did you get first just one?
Oh, yes.
When did you get your second?
About 1924, I would say. One press in 1920 when
we started.
What else?
Just one press. One press and type.
I see.
Well, we did lots of curious work there. We did it
in quantities. And one of our richest jobs was a
political thing. After the fire in Berkeley, when
there was an attempt to pass a law that you couldn't
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use redwood shingles for roofing, we did a lot of
work for the Redwood Association, or its publicity
man, who was an amusing old character. He started
us printing postal cards, or things like a postal
card, about the size. Then he ordered a thousand
and we printed them one at a time, naturally. Then
he ordered 20,000. Then we would print them four
at a time. And he never asked for a reduction in
price. [Laughter] So it became very rich. I think
we must have printed 100,000 of those. As a matter
of fact, he tried to give us work we couldn't
handle. They spent a lot of money defeating that
[law] .
And were successful ?
That's right. I think after about six months of
doing work for the Redwood Association, I took a
trip to Europe.
How long were you gone?
A year.
Bookbinding
Were you just traveling?
No. I spent most of my time in Paris. I was supposed
to be studying bookbinding, but I took some lessons
in bookbinding from a woman in Paris, a Danish woman.
I shouldn't have any pride about it, but I wrote a
book on bookbinding, with my teacher.
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We wrote it in English, and it was never published
in English. But it was later published in France,
in a French translation. My French is not good
enough. "Lessons in Binding for the Amateur^ by
Madame Ingeborg Borgeson and Her Pupil." I was
her pupil, R. Grabhorn. [laughter] I doubt if it's
in print. She later had a Danish edition put out.
I don't think my name was on the Danish edition.
Did you continue bookbinding when you came back?
No. No. Everybody laughed at my attempts. As
a matter of fact, it was just fun. I did a few
bookbindings, but with my teacher looking over my
shoul der .
Did you study typography at all? Did you go
around. . . ?
Oh, I always hated to go around to printing offices.
I have gone to a few. Later on, in France, I went
to a few—years later. But not then.
Did you buy any books that trip?
Yes. I always bought books.
Did you buy some books on printing at that time?
Not at that time. I bought books to rebind, or I
thought I was going to rebind, and books with
illustrations. But on my second trip to Paris in
1936, I bought books on printing. I bought quite
a few. I always remember when the ship landed at
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Los Angeles, because of a dock strike here, I
had a couple of suitcases full of books and went
through the customs down there. And the man said,
"What are those books?" I said, "Books on
printing." He said, "Let's see." I had to go
through all those. He was bitterly disappointed,
because they were.
[laughter] Was your studying in Europe an attempt
to beat the bookbinding problem in San Francisco?
No, no. This was an attempt to find out something
about it. We were sel f -taught — there were some crude
bindings we put out at that time, that we concocted
oursel ves ,just from reading books on it.
You were actually doing binding, though, yourselves?
In a way.
What then did you do about having your books bound?
Well, unless the edition was pretty large, and if
it was a pretentious book, we nearly always sewed
them ourselves, folded them, and--you can't trust
a good book to a commercial folder, you see.
Did you have folding equipment?
We folded then by hand, gathered them, and sewed
them by hand — on small editions. Now, of course,
most of the books are sewn by machine. But if it's
possible we like to fold them and gather them on
the premi ses .
Did you do the folding yourselves?
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Oh, my wife, or whoever wasn't employed at some
thing else. That isn't so bad, especially if
it's a 200-copy thing. Sewing is much harder!
Who sewed?
Why, usually Jane, or Ed's wife. She'd even take
them home. She'd have a sewing bench at home.
She'd sew as many as possible; Jane would sew as
many as possible. Now, you understand, this would
be a comparatively expensive book, and then a small
number of copies. When it got up to be 500 and
over 100 pages, then we would have them sewn. We
bound our own books. Up until a few years ago, even,
we bound them. Unless it got up, like the Bohemian
Club play, to 2,000 copies. That's too much, you
see, and we'd send them to Cardoza.
Well, for a time did you employ a bookbinder?
Oh, yes. We had a very good bookbinder, Bill
Wheeler, who actually was sel f -taught--al most . But
he got better and better. He was a very neat work
man. And especially got better when we hired a
young man from England, who was a fairly good book
binder. Bill tried to emulate him — became very
successful at it. Now this fellow was hired by Hazel
Dreis. And then she couldn't keep him busy, so we
hired him.
Do you remember his name?
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He had a hyphenated name. . . Sanders-White, or
some such name. I can't remember. No. He went
to Los Angeles, never heard of him afterwards. He's
a younger man than I am, so I presume he's still-
it's peculiar you never hear from him. Maybe he
went back to England.
What was Wheeler's period with you?
Well, we used to give him things to do in his little
loft, or room, or wherever he worked. But that
wasn't too successful. And then I think about 1925
or '26 he came to work with us. And he lasted all
through the printing of the Leaves of Grass - -wh i ch
Hazel Ore is did a lot of work on. It was too big,
you see. And, I think it was around '33, no, pos
sibly '35 or '36, that he left us. He lasted a
long time.
Jane [Grabhorn] had studied bookbinding, had she?
No, she just graduated into it by being around the
shop, folding and proofreading, and then graduated.
When Wheeler left, she took over. But we've had
several bookbinders.
Who were the others?
Oh, there was an old Englishman. He was pretty
sloppy. I forget his name. And a young man that
joined the Army. He was taken prisoner in the
Philippines. He lasted a couple of years, but
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nothing especial. They're not bookbinders. I
mean, they're case-makers. A bookbinder, in the
strict parlance, is someone that does individual
volumes, and laces them in, laces the cords into
the sides, and usually works in leather, something
like that--in the Peter Fahey tradition. She's
bound a few books for us.
Has she?
Well, I mean, odd volumes—or I mean five or six,
maybe at a time, I remember.
Who bound those presentation pieces that you did?
Wheeler, usually. Very good at it. Because they're
very thin. It's very difficult to bind a very thin
book, and those were usually bound in full Morocco.
The economics of the binding part of the book
busi ness . . .
That's the ruination of ... or was for a long
time . . . general publishing in San Francisco.
I would say that's why there haven't been more
commercial publishers, because it cost more to
bind a book locally for many years than the whole
production in New York, or Chicago, or wherever the
book factories are. And that was because, of course,
they were not mechanized. They didn't have a case-
making machine. Now they have. Recently, I hear,
a place like Cardoza, that is a modern bindery,
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R. Grabhorn: isn't interested in doing binding for people like
us. Because they're too busy binding schoolbooks.
We asked them for a price, I think on a 2200
edition, and they didn't want it.
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Type
I wanted to ask about the amount of type that you
acquired over the years.
Oh, trememdous, I would say, for this kind of
printing. We bought type in old-fashioned quanti
ties. We bought that early American type called
Oxford. We bought over 1200 pounds of it, which is
a huge quantity in this day. We could set by hand,
in ordinary six by nine size, ninety -six pages-
something like that — if we had to. Now, the first
book we used any quantity of that on — that we
needed that quantity for, was Two Years Before The
Mast, that we did for Random House. See, that's
hand set. It's a nice book, too. I don't know
whether we bought that type deliberately for that
book or just wanted to buy 1200 pounds [laughter].
Well, it's a great relief to be able to get 'way
into a book without having to stop and distribute.
Because often you don't know what problems you're
going to get into, so the more paqes you can have
up the better it is. Our first huge quantity was
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when we thought we were going to use a type
called Lutetia on Leaves of Grass, and we bought
a thousand pounds of that--and a European type
too, and that was quite expensive. And, we de
cided it wouldn't do for . . .
This is it? [broadside on wall: Lutetia Type,
A Specimen, designed by the Grabhorn Press, 1948].
That's it. Well, we had the ei ghteen-poi nt size,
you see.
Di d you set this?
Yes. We set that for a paper company that issued
some years ago a series of broadsides they gave to
different printers, showing types. I thought it was
a very interesting series. They must have had
about thirty in the series. That one [broadside]
up there of Cheltenham is designed by Dwiggins.
That one over there is about the lost Goudy types.
And that's the one we pri nted--Luteti a .
What paper company was it?
The Eastern Paper Corporation, Bangor, Maine.
That's a beautiful broadside.
Yes. Now, we didn't print it, you see. It was
printed in the East. We set the type, and had the
plates made. They wanted a huge quantity --thirty
thousand .
Didn't you do something similar for Mackenzie and
Harris?
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No. That was a series of ads they called "From
Gutenburg to Grabhorn."
Oh, that's it.
They had Mallette Dean illustrations. But they
set the type. We did print about nine of the
advertisements, to be put out in a folder. But
those were all set in the same kind of type. I
concocted and printed a type specimen book that
Magee published, strictly on Victorian types.
I've always wanted to do a type specimen, and I
thought I wanted to do one different from any
one else's. This was a sort of a feeler, to see
what I could do. And so we had some Victorian
types in the shop, and I played with them and
concocted--i t was just about nineteen different
types, you know. I wish there was a copy here.
I thought it was amusing/ I was facetious about
the beauty of these types. You know, it doesn't
exist. For instance, I called one type — the type
had a name, but the heading of the specimen was
"Barnyard Elegance." [laughter]
This was an idea you generated?
Yes.
And Magee went along?
Yes. It was printed a little more elaborately
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than I wanted it to be, because the idea wasn't
such luxurious elegance. My brother did the press-
work; he used very good hand-made paper. That I
thought was gilding the lilly.
Did you have any other major type holdings?
Well, then we had a lot of the type we called Fran
ciscan that we owned the design for. That Goudy
made. You see, we could get that made locally, and
we'd get it made as we needed it, you see.
Who made it?
Mackenzie and Harris. And we must have made five
or six hundred pounds of that — it's still at the
Grabhorn Press. And we had quite a large font of
Goudy New Style, that we did print the Leaves of
Grass in. I forget exactly how many pounds we
had. We lent a large quantity of that to Brother
Antoninus when he was printing his Psalter, which
he never finished. I think Dawson issued it, when
he abandoned it, as much as he had printed.
We interviewed him. He thought that was very
generous of you to lend the type to him.
Inasmuch as he never gave me a copy of the book.
[1 aughter]
I think they gave him one, [laughter]
Well, let's see. We had quite a bit of what we'd
call Bible Gothic, that's now called Jessenschrift.
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We bought it when it was known as Bible Gothic
because it had been used to print in Germany
an edition of the New Testament. Well, the German
name was Bibel Gotisch. But as I told you, that
young Klingspor worked for us. He got the type for
us when it was virtually a private type. But later
they made it in all sizes, and they renamed it
Jessenschri f t after a German cal 1 igrapher .
I don't know whether I told you or not about the
time we ordered extra characters. I typed out the
order to this foundry: so many pounds of this
letter, so many pounds of that letter. And my
typing was pretty crude, and I got a little hyphen
over the top of the ru And when we got the type,
there was a little line above the ru We had to
take a file and file it off. [laughter] This
was a German type company, the Klingspor Foundry.
Were there other types, then, that you held in
major quantities?
When Nash dissolved his printing office up in
Portland, we bought types from Nash. We never got
exactly what we ordered, [laughter] We got a huge
quantity of this Italian type called Incunabula,
possibly five or six hundred pounds.
Did you use i t much?
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We never used that too much. We printed a
Shakespeare, one of the Shakespeare volumes, in
it, The Tempest. But that didn't take near all
of it. We experimented on several books with it,
which we never used. Of course, there are tons
of type at the Grabhorn Press that nobody can af
ford to hire printers to set up any more. I don't
know what's going to happen to all those big fonts.
This is the day of the machine. Nobody can afford
to hand set, really. Unless it's something so
short. Lew Allen manages to do it.
Well, he doesn't do it on a very strict economic
basis, does he?
No, no. No, he does it himself. I don't think he
has any very large fonts. I think he has to dis
tribute and reprint all the time, as everybody does
I'm going to stop now and come back again.
Well, I think we might've repeated ourselves.
You've discussed some of the same things, but in a
little different way, and you've added something to
what you said before.
I'm apt to be garrulous, I guess.
No, you're telling just the sort of things that I
think are important. So much has been written
about you, of course, but a lot of what you're
saying, I think, is not a matter of record. What
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I'm trying to do is supplement what's been written
Well, I know that a lot of my anecdotes are the
same as my brother's, but they'll probably be in
a little different form, [laughter]
Yes, everybody remembers things differently.
Well, I've been credited with things that I know
I never said.
I hope they were good things.
Sometimes too good, [laughter]
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INTERVIEW III
March 3, 1967
The Grabhorn Press Characterized
R. Grabhorn: I was trying to think about our position as crafts
men at the Grabhorn Press. It's sort of ambi
valent, you know. Sometimes we're good, but we're
not always thorough craftsmen in the sense of
Brother Antoninus, as far as presswork is concerned.
What I mean is, many of our books could be faulted
on the grounds of meticulous detail, you see. I
do think we did superb presswork in several books,
but not always. Our presswork is of variable
quality, according to the nature of the work. We
were never what you could call finicky, you know
like — I think I mentioned Haywood Hunt using tissue
paper, and Porter Garnett also used tissue spaces
between the letters of the same word. That, we
think, is over-meticulous. Always did. I think
our reputation depends more on the content of a
book. You see, we printed for collectors. Not
collectors necessarily of just fine books, but
collectors of subjects too. Cal iforni ana . In
other words, that probably saved our lives as
printers, printing for collectors. Now our books,
I think, are more widely collected than much finer
presses, that is, consistently finer presses,
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R. Grabhorn: because our books have increased in value greatly.
And that is because collectors wanted them. I
mean collectors of subject, not printing.
Teiser: Oh, but aren't you collected by collectors of
printing, too?
R. Grabhorn: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And many times it gets to be
like the stock and bond business. Our books have
gone up in price, many of them, so tremendously
that people think it's a good investment that are
not true collectors. And it's not true of all
books. They'll collect something and pay a high
price just because not many people have it. Some
thing privately printed for twenty-five people,
never designed for the general public — but if
somebody can get ahold of one, because he's making
a collection, he will pay a high price. But on the
other hand, some of these Californiana books have
increased tremendously, like Santa Fe Trail to
California, which is a pretty good book typograph
ically, and presswork and everything about it is
pretty good--not superl ati ve--pretty good. But
it's a new subject, an important book in its field.
That book was issued for $30 and you have to pay
$300 for it now. A great printer like Bruce Rogers,
who has a tremendous inf 1 uence--none of his books
have increased that much in price.
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Tenser: Does the size of the edition have any bearing on
this? Did he produce books in larger editions
than you?
R. Grabhorn: No. Not while he was at the Riverside Press, when
I think he had the greatest influence he ever had.
In fact, he's influenced lots of designers, influ
enced us. I think we were probably one of his best
students, you see. We didn't ever copy some one
thing he did, but we approached the problem of
printing many books the way he did. I think we
were pretty good at it. [Chuckle]
Teiser: How would you characterize that approach?
R. Grabhorn: Well, it's general ly--l ots of people called it
allusive printing. Not necessarily just period
printing because period printing would be this:
if you have an Elizabethan book to print, you do
it in the Elizabethan style, you see; typography.
That's obviously period work and it's a good
recipe. But also, if the nature of a book is
feminine, you can give it a feminine touch, you
see, a delicate piece of typography. Now, we
printed a book that I like very much in the Amer
icana series, called The Spanish Occupation of
California. We printed that in our Franciscan
type, which is a half black letter, half Roman kind
of type. But it had the Spanish look to it,
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Spanish California look, if there is such a thing.
It's got a great title page.
You said allusive printing?
Allusive either to the nature of the subject or
the period of the subject. Rogers did that in a
whole series of books when he worked at the
Riverside Press, oh, from around 1900 to 1911-12,
before he went to England. For instance, one of
his famous books is the Song of Roland, and it's
set in a French Lettre Batarde , or, you know, a
sort of current Gothic type. It was made in France
to reprint old texts. And he did this in a nice
tall folio, double columns, with hand-painted
illustrations like stained glass. Now that's
allusive to the period and the nature of the book,
you know, a French romance. That's what I call
allusive printing.
I think this perhaps was what Albert Sperisen was
alluding to when he said that you invented ways
to create effects that earlier printers had created,
but didn't use the same methods.
Modern methods. We used old type sometimes. Lots
of printers are contemptuous of that, but then it's
a matter of period. I know Updike liked many of our
books, but he was very contemptuous of a thing like
the Mandeville's Travels, which was printed in the
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15th Century manner. But he was an allusive printer,
too. But his period, his favorite period, was a
bit di f ferent .
What was your favorite period?
All periods. But the older were the better to us.
Old John Johnck said, "Those fellows are not
printers, they just produce old books." [laughter]
Who was he saying that about?
Us! [laughter]
Now a man like Rogers could print in almost any
period, even in a bad period typographically, and
make a fine book out of it. He would refine it so.
He made almost a creation. If he made an Eliza
bethan book, it'd be better than any Elizabethan
book .
What were the main influences on your work?
I would say, well, all the private presses. We
printed our bibliography; that was certainly in
fluenced by the Ashendene bibliography, which was
a private press. Because we have inserts of old
sample sheets, just as the Ashendene did, and used
an attractive type, our private type, which is
appropriate. He had a private type too.
Was Rogers your main general influence?
He certainly was mine, and I'm certain that my
brother was aware of it, but one time he sold his
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whole Rogers collection because he said he got
tired, when he was confronted with a problem, of
going to one of Rogers' books. Which he actually
didn't do. That was just a reason for getting rid
of it. [laughter] But Rogers rarely used a text
that was new and collectable, you see. That is, if
you bought his book you did it because you admired
his printing style. Subject, I think, still has a
tremendous influence on what a book's going to cost
the collector eventually.
How did you choose subjects, then?
We started out by choosing classics of literature.
You know, the English are always printing literary
masterpieces, and that's more or less correct,
because if people pay a high price for a book they
want something, sort of a monument to their favorite
author. They usually took the Canterbury Tales, or
Dante or Boccaccio, or big names.
The Mandeville was a fugitive piece wasn't it?
The Mandeville was — that's a one-book thing. That's
an early book of travels, you see. And we wanted
to use this new type we had on hand, that Koch Bible
Gothic. We were the first ones in this country to
have it and wanted an appropriate subject for the
type.
That sort of consi deration, though , could not have
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81
often influenced your choice of books to print?
Oh, no, not often, not often. Now, The Santa Fe
Trail, for instance is a journal of crossing the
plains. That is not period typography. That's in
Centaur type, which isn't anythi ng like the type
that would have been used in 1850. It's anything
but.
How did you happen to choose that type for it?
Well, it was available in a size large enough.
It is not what I call period typography in any
sense .
Nor even allusive?
Nor even allusive, no. It was an old journal that
had never been published. The nice thing about it;
it had nice drawings of the missions, you see. I
think one of them was a drawing of a mission that
is gone. It's probably more Italian in feeling
than any other but not so. It's just a good book.
I'm still trying to find out how you were smart
enough, lucky enough, or what , to choose things
which were collectable, as you say, and significant.
Well, I think they stemmed out of the fact that my
brother was a collector of Californiana himself.
And he knew that he had some tremendously rare books
that lots of collectors would want a reprint of.
And whereas these people wouldn't have bought the
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R. Grabhorn: book if it was one of the classics of literature,
they would buy it because they wanted that par
ticular text. When we first started to print books
we printed Mandeville; we printed as experimental
typography Oscar Wilde's Salome and The Golden
Touch of Hawthorne's. Then we got the idea, since
we are American printers, we'd better use American
classics. And while we were on that kick we
printed the Whitman, and Hawthorne's The Soar-let
Letter-. And that's not period typography. None
of these were. Maybe closer to period typography
would have been the Two Years Before the Mast , but
not exclusively. But then we're aware of the period,
you see, when we're doing this. That's why I say
if there was any influence besides all old books--
certainly old books influenced Rogers, for a long
time. Then he tried to be contemporary, and was
successful in a few books. But never, never did
he try to be freakish, to be "modern." We used to
all be concerned with modernity in the days of the
Bauhaus, you know. We used to have tremendous
arguments about what's modern typography. And some
people would say to use a sans serif type throughout
the book. Well that didn't work. Some would say,
"Change the margins." That worried me for a long
time. Instead of having the big margin on the outside
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of the page, some few experimentally printed a big
margin on the inside, just to change it. I asked
Jo Sinel, an industrial designer, about this once.
I said, "Now why is it, it's never successful to
fool with the margins of a book?" "Well," he said,
"don't you see, the book is functional the way it
is, without improving on it."
Still, much of your design is what one would call
contemporary .
Yes, with a background of the knowledge of other
typographic style. I can see a man like, oh,
William Morris, loved the medieval. And his books
were his concept of the medieval. He had two or
three heavy types, heavy incunabula type of decora
tion, and the books were all the same. Then you
have a man like Cobden-Sanderson who says, "That's
nonsense. The sole function of a book is to be
read." So he printed all his books the same way.
Very austere. But then, those presses all had a
personal style, strictly personal. They didn't go
to all the periods of typography, use all the types.
You find us using types that were popular in 1850 as
well as 1940 or 1490.
Still, I think that anyone who is acquainted with
your books can almost always tell them from any
other printer's books.
Grabhorn:
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Yes.
You have some imitators, but they don't, of
course . . .
I wasn't aware of any imitator.
You have a style . . .
Well, our title pages are usually strong, but we
print delicate books. I'm just trying to arrive
at why we did things the way we did. We did have
a devotion to good paper. But we also had to buy
paper cheaply. Sometimes we used paper we shouldn't
have because it was something we had and it was
good, but not suitable for a particular book. Of
course, any printer can, after a book is finished,
fault what he did. Afterward. If somebody else
doesn't do it for you. [laughter]
Some of the other people you were speaking of, such
as Garnett, perhaps, Rogers—were they in the same
position that you were, of having to make a living
by printing?
Well, no. Rogers, for instance, did his great work
when he was hired by the Riverside Press. That
was owned by Houghton Mifflin, I think, the pub
lisher. He was on salary. They supported him.
My brother was even offered a job to take his
place when he left. He had quite a free hand.
They indulged him. These Riverside Press books
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that he did, the good ones, took a lot of indul
gence. They bought types for him, and went to a
lot of expense. And they were not money makers.
You could buy them, years after he left the River
side Press, for the published price. They weren't
printed in large numbers, either.
If you did not print each book to be what you
felt perfect, it was not as if you had all circum
stances within your complete control.
Well, that's true. You have to calculate the market
for a book and what you can possibly charge. We did
our best on quite a few books. I mean money was no
object, you see.
Yes, I realize that.
But with quite a few, it was. [Chuckle]
I'm trying to figure out another word for "design."
Well, design's a hard thing. [laughter] I'm not
much in favor of the word "design." You take a
modern publisher. I think the word "design" is
more than anything being a bookkeeper. You have
to realize what the book's going to sell for and
how much you can afford to spend on its manufacture,
and work within those limits.
I'm thinking of it, as you know, in terms of simply
how the type is selected and how the book is put
together.
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Well, in the commercial books it's what the
company you're dealing with has available.
But so far as your work has been concerned, it's
come from your sense of rightness, has it not?
Yes. We often bought types deliberately for a
book, you see. Of course, we used them again.
Did you get tired of them and sell them?
No, no. Very seldom. We traded. We sold some
Caslon to Henry Taylor of Taylor and Taylor once.
He needed some. I think he sold us some of his
Oxford. I can't remember accurately.
Of the books that you have been speaking of, or
have in mind, which do you feel came closest to
satisfying you?
Ah, that's very difficult. Well, I liked The
Santa Fe Trail because it was a decent book as
far as materials and the effort that went into it,
the paper, presswork, and the subject. I like the
Leaves of Grass because it is one of our best pro
ductions as craftsmen. I like the book we printed
one time called, Cabeza de Vaea, around 1930*1 think
The presswork in that was exceptional for us, I
think.
Haywood Hunt said that when your brother was in
Seattle, he came to know Henry Anger, "art printer"
1929 was the publication date.
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Teiser: or whatever they called him, and that perhaps
your brother got something from Anger. Did he?
R. Grabhorn: I doubt it. I knew Anger. I doubt whether you
could. [laughter] They all liked Anger. But
I think they liked him because of his character.
He was aware of better things, but I don't think
he had much influence. My brother told me they
used to call him "The Rule Man of the Rockies."
[laughter] It always amused me.
I guess that was before Nash?
Well, Nash used rules, but Anger used them in a
different way, in the old-fashioned way.
You mentioned John Johnck. I never knew him, but
I gather he was a man who inspired many printers.
Not so many. I think [Harold] Seeger quite a bit.
He was a good printer of no particular style, I
think he first printed a very impressive book of
Colonel [C.E.S.] Wood's, a book of poetry, up at
Portland, before he came to San Francisco. I
forget the title.
Maial
That's it. Which was a deluxe book of the period.
I have heard him spoken of as if he had at least
a cultured outlook on the world?
R. Grabhorn: Yes, I think he did, more than many printers. More
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than a Henry Anger or a Haywood Hunt.
And of course, Harold Seeger was a very accomplished
man .
Yes he was. Never any definite style, I don't
think. He worked in the shadow of Johnck for so
many years. But he was a very careful typesetter.
There was really, in effect, no one here who in
fluenced you, was there?
No. Not that I'm aware of.
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Book Collecting and Printers
of the Past "
Let us then go on to your collection of books on
pri nti ng .
That's just something that grew out of buying
other printers' works. And then buying books on
the history of printing. And being influenced by
the books you read. I think it's a combination of
things. The books themselves, then books about
them, about the books, bibliographies, specimen
books. It was based mainly on Updike --kind of
extra-illustrating Updike.
Do you recall about what year you started this?
Really concentrating and spending what money I
could afford?
Yes.
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All the money I could afford. Why that would
be. . . Well, I had a little collection of
principally press books like Golden Cockerell, a
few Doves, and maybe a couple of Kelmscotts, things
like that, that I sold in 1932--the year I got
married. [laughter] And after that I naturally
started another collection. And I would say I was
hooked by 1936, when I made a trip to Europe and
bought — concentrated on — books that I had learned
about from reading the history of printing. I
made lots of nice buys on that trip.
Where?
Mainly Paris. And London. Then, of course, from
the local book dealers I bought lots of books, by
then. Magee and Howell. I bought the book that is
the most expensive in my collection from Howell.
What one is that?
That's a first edition of Euclid. Because Howell
had a lot of them I bought quite a few Euclids.
then. And I see the [San Francisco Public] Library
*
is more or less trying to keep it up — buying more.
I had the first edition and several very early
editions, like the first Arabic edition. And so
Robert Grabhorn's collection of books on printing
was acquired by the San Francisco Public Library
in 1965.
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people might get the idea that I'm a mathematician,
but I'm not. They are intriguing books by virtue
of the diagrams all through.
Was there anything else that you bought heavily?
No, no one author. But if there was a book existed
that several printers had printed, the same book--
I tried to get different printers handling the same
subject. I wasn't too successful at that. But that
was the main idea. I stuck to the Euclid after
I'd seen how the different printers approached the
problem.
This went in directly with your own approach to the
problem of a book, didn't it?
Yes. It's well to know how other people approach
the same thing.
When you printed, for instance, the Leaves of Grass.,
did you study earlier editions?
No. Except that Whitman himself was the printer
of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. And it
isn't what you'd call a private press book, but
it's a nice, straightforward book. Of course, he
was a Victorian printer, and some of his stuff, his
typography in some things, was strictly of its day,
and over-ornate. But this first edition of Leaves
of Grass is very simple, very direct, a very nice
book. And all we wanted to do was the same thing.
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We wanted a strong book; that's why we changed the
type. We bought Lutetia for it and then changed to
Goudy New Style because Lutetia was too weak for
this massive folio, you see, and not strong enough
for Whi tman .
Had it ever been done by a fine press?
Not that I'm aware of. That's strange; there were
a couple of American fine presses—not many. It's
strange Rogers never touched any of the American
subjects. He might've, but I'm not aware of it.
For instance, he was printing Song of Roland and
The Centaur. I think several presses have printed
The Centaur. That's strictly 1890. I had a col
lection from a little press that I liked very much.
It's probably collected now more, but it wasn't col-
v\
lected when I formed my col 1 ecti on--the Eragray Press
The printer was the son of Pissaro, the painter.
He had gone to London, got mixed up with the Vale
Press crowd and made woodblocks and printed a whole
series of little, very thin books, fragile books.
He was interesting. And he tried varieties of
treatment with i 1 lustrations — the matter of illus
trations in colors that printers had not tried. He
used other colors than the straight red and black.
He printed woodblock in colors, you see, in books
there. They're very nice little books. The chief
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attraction to me was they didn't cost very much.
I think the highest price I ever paid for one of
his must have been about. . .oh, well! No! Fin
ally I got into it. But on the paper copies the
highest price I ever paid was $25. But I bought
a couple printed on vellum I had to pay more for.
Albert Sperisen gave me two or three very rare
ones that he came by. He knew that I liked Eragfay.
And if he'd see one, on a birthday or Christmas he
would try to find one I didn't have. He gave me
a couple of the rarest. I ended up--stopped--havi ng
all the Eragmy books that are credited to him but
three. One, of course I'd never get. It was sort
of printed in about twenty-seven copies.
When you say that he used color in an unusual
fashion, did that suggest any technique to you that
you ever used?
I don't think so, I don't think so. Of course, we
used plenty of color in—well, now the illustrations
in the Scarlet Letter were colored woodblocks that
Valenti Angelo had made us. Square. But very nice
little things. Of course, we labored over that
book. Our original conception was to use as a
chapter head a large initial A--not too decorative--
in each chapter head, but starting out in a very
light pastel color and increasing in intensity till
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we got to the big scarlet A. [laughter] But we
gave it up. Well, the same with the Leaves of
Grass. Valenti worked terrifically hard on that.
We were going to use huge initials. We printed
a lot of the book, and the spaces were there, and
we decided it would look like an alphabet book,
[laughter] And then we had the spaces there and
we had to fill them up. We gave up the initial
idea. Valenti made those decorative things, wood
cuts .
Did you collect actively until the time you ac
tually turned over your books to the San Francisco
Public Library?
Yes. I sort of eased off when I knew I was going
to sell them. I bought a few after that, two or
three. When you're finished, you're finished.
As I recall, you sold them to the library, but
there was also a gift aspect to it, was there not?
Well, that's usual. Everybody knows about income
taxes. I got the price I demanded, you see. They
had them appraised. And it was a fair appraisal.
As a matter of fact, it was too fair, I imagine,
now. And the price I demanded was quite a bit
lower than their appraisal, so they said I gave
them the difference.
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Who appraises collections like that?
Warren Howell did this. Magee does a lot of apprais
ing .
I forget that we have these experts.
Oh, I'm an expert myself. I knew what I was doing
when I asked $50,000 [laughter] Actually, I
don't like to be credited as a benefactor. I'd
made up my mind that that was what I wanted for
the books. That's all. I'm still getting it,
of course. They didn't pay right at once.i
Are you still collecting?
You can't say that, no. If I see something that I
know is underpriced, and is appealing, I'll buy it.
But prices are generally too high now.
I imagine your collection had gone up in value
considerably since you purchased it, hadn't it?
Oh yes , every day .
Did you buy much through catalogues?
Quite a bit.
Just every way, then. You used every resource.
Every way. I didn't make big purchases, except
through the local book dealers, who gave me un
limited credit. [laughter]
How many volumes all together in the collection?
I've never counted them, actually--! imagine there
are about 1,500. A lot of them were strictly
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ordinary books in the field.
Did you ever trade some and get others, better
copi es?
In two or three cases. Not many like that. Not
many.
What you originally bought, you kept?
Yes. I was always more interested in getting
another book. I wasn't too meticulous about
condition.
Teiser: Were there any kinds of books you didn't collect
just because you didn't like them?
R. Grabhorn: No. I wanted an example of as many different
printers as I could get. I even had Elbert Hubbard,
that most people wouldn't touch, one or two that I
came by.
There was a much better printer, in fact — one that
could hold his head up and you don't hear much
about — in America of about that period, called the
Elston Press. It printed more or less like the
Vale Press. I never had a single book of theirs
for some reason. Then. . .let's see. I like a
lot of the trifling things that were printed in
America in the 'nineties, like the Stone and Kimball
for instance. They were primarily publishers, but
they printed some very interesting books typograph
ically, even popular novels. I often think that the
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American Institute of Graphic Arts hasn't done
much to raise the quality of the ordinary book,
when you look at some of those printed around
1910, 1912. They had some concern about the
quality of their books.
Of course Updike printed many books for publishers
They usually were gift volumes, a thin essay of
Stevenson's or something. For Scribners.
What would collectors do without Stevenson?
Why that's right. [laughter] We printed a
couple. We printed them for people that owned the
original manuscripts.
Two of them were for Howell, weren't they?
Yes. One that I thought was an interesting book,
one of our late books, was the Silverado Journal^
where we tried to indicate his corrections in the
manuscript by taking rule and putting it around
the word that was transposed, you know, and place
it in the place it was.
It must have been a terrible job.
It was. There were lines spaced very widely
apart so we could do that.
One thing I should ask is about the size of books.
It seems to me that back in 1910 books weren't so
big.
Left to Right: Glenn Todd, Robert Crabhorn, ,'ane Grabhorn,
,'ndrew Hoyem, at Orabhorn-Hovem Presa, January 1967..
Ph -•• igraph by Ted Streshingky.
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That's right. People have often objected to the
size of our books. Well, I don't know why.
Except that people might say they like little books
But they won't pay for little books. [laughter]
That is, not what they're worth. You see they take
just as much effort as a big book. They'd
rather buy an eight-page folio than a forty-page
duodecimo.
Don't you think it must mean they don't read them?
I'm sure they don't, [laughter] That never inter
ested me as a printer, whether they read them or
not. I always think, "Of course you're not going
to read Leaves of Grass. You can buy a pocket book,
But if Whitman's your favorite author, you like a
monument to him." That's the same for many books.
I think the most elaborate book that Rogers printed
at the Riverside Press was Montaigne's Essays, hand
set folio, in three volumes. Of course, they used
such heavy paper, they were almost like decks of
pi ayi ng cards .
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Present Printers and
Past Employees
I think I've asked you a good deal about printers
who preceded you or were contemporaries of yours.
But what about the young printers who are coming next?
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R. Grabhorn: Oh, I really don't know. They've all been at it
so long, like Lew Allen, whose work I like very
much. Brother Antoninus I always did [like].
Both those men are superb craftsmen. They're
not considered young printers coming up.
Teiser: Are they also good typographers? Does their
typography match their presswork do you think?
R. Grabhorn: Yes. There's no attempt with Antoninus other than
just straightforward typography. And good type,
well printed, and good paper. Lew tries things.
I think he's very successful sometimes. Sometimes
I don't think he's so successful. But this is not
a criticism at all. It's just a personal thing.
I think he prints type in these pastel shades lots
of tiroes. But it makes an interesting book. And
interest in a book is far more important to me
whether the printer is successful or not. If he
tries. Lew has quite a following.
Teiser: He's a remarkable man, isn't he, to have devoted
so much. . .
R. Grabhorn: To have done it, given his life to it actually. He
retired at an early age in order to be a printer.
Teiser: Of the younger men—your associate Andrew Hoyem
worked with the Grabhorn Press for a time, didn't
he?
R. Grabhorn: Yes. When Sherwood Grover left us we had to have
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a pressman and he was at the Auerhahn Press. And
someone suggested he might welcome a job part
time in addition to working at Auerhahn. We tried
him and he helped us out.
He is a pressman and a typographer too?
He's a very good typographer and a very good
pressman. I like to work with him because we
really work together very nicely. If I don't like
something he does, I say it; if I do something
he doesn't like [he says so] and then sometimes
we're both stubborn. But it's never offensively so.
No one getting mad. And it's very difficult to work
with someone in a matter of design, I think. That's
why we let a thing grow, rather than design it.
Did he work at the Grabhorn Press for a long time?
Oh, I would say a year, maybe a year and a half.
Then he bought out his partner, Dave Haselwood, at
the Auerhahn Press, and he was by himself. Then
he moved down here.* And he was here about a year
when I joined him. I took some of the equipment
from the Grabhorn Press.
What have you brought here?
Oh, some of the type and one press. And some other
equipment, like a stone and things like that. My
566 Commercial Street, San Francisco.
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brother doesn't need it. He's only printing
his own catalogue of Japanese prints now. If I
need a type every now and then, I go down and
get some that he's got.
Are there any other young men coming up?
Well, no. I like the work of the--of course it's
more commercial, more like the Grabhorn Press--
the Plantain Press of Los Angeles. If you want my
opinion, I think Ritchie used to be a very good
printer, but he's a big business man now. It's
like a factory, and it's a factory product. But
they ' re not young .
No, they're not. And even Adrian Wilson is not a
boy.
Not any more. No. Adrian is a designer prin
cipally now. He's probably very good as those
things go, because he has usually, I think, a lot
more personal contact than most designers have with
the [publishers]. For that matter, people level
their criticism at Bruce Rogers, and he was never
a printer. But that's sort of ridiculous because
he knew types and could print. He can letter a
line of type accurately, making a layout. You see,
a printer ought to know more than just type. He
ought to know paper, the ideal paper for a book.
That's very important.
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And he's got to know what a Linotype machine
can do, even if he doesn't operate one?
Yes, yes. Well, he very seldom went to Linotype.
He might've when he did some work for Harvard
University Press.
But, for instance, you have to know what Monotype
could do, even if you never operated a Monotype
machi ne?
Yes. Sometimes you have to know--a trick we learned
from Rogers—how you could work with a Monotype
and change the face, for instance. Like Rogers
created something called Riverside Caslon. What
he did was take the body type of a Caslon and, for
capitals, use another size of the same type, you
see. We've experimented even more than that. In
one of the Shakespeares we printed we used what's
called Goudy 30, but we used capitals from two
other Goudy types.
Oh, I'd forgotten the Shakespeares. We haven't
discussed those.
Those were principally issued, I don't know — it's
a combination of using my niece's drawings and
[being] sort of bored with Cal if orniana.
Have they too been successful in that their value
has increased?
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I don't think so, no. There again, the private
press concentrated on an idealistic approach to
the ideal type, the ideal paper, and so forth.
That's sort of past. The last great exploiter
of that was--his books dj^ command probably a
higher price than any of the presses, including
the Kelmscott--the Ashendene. A few of his books
were completely successful. I like them all be
cause they're in the old hand tradition. But
usually his illustrations did not come up to the
quality of the Kelmscott illustrations. I'm
thinking now principally of Burne-Jones and the
Chaucer.
Back to Adrian Wilson. I would say he had been
influenced by the Grabhorn Press, wouldn't you?
Possibly, but not noticeably so.
You don ' t see it?
I don't see it.
A number of the young men who worked with the
Grabhorn Press have gone on to become well known
in their own right, haven't they?
Bill Roth, who was an apprentice at the Grabhorn
Press. He hasn't gone on [in printing] but he was
influenced enough to go into partnership with Jane
Jane wanted to be a printer and he wanted to be a
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publisher. But he was one of our less serious
apprentices. He used to practice on the flute on
the noon hour, [laughter]
But they [the young men who worked for the Grabhorn
Press] were interested in books rather than printing
They wanted to be associated with someone--that goes
for my brother-in-law [William Bissell]. That's
how I met my wife. He was an apprentice. He only
worked about a year, and he didn't do much except
wash presses, run errands.
Well, you got some work out of him.
I got a wife out of it. Well, the printers, let's
see; I'm trying to remember. Of course, Gregg
Anderson was closely associated with Ward Ritchie.
He was an apprentice, or worked for us. He was a
little more than an apprentice.
He wrote of that, didn't he?
Yes. It was published in Connecticut, where he was
working at the Meriden Gravure Company. They had
a club. They put out a little book called Remi
niscences of the Grabhorn Press. And he also wrote
an article for one of the printing magazines. Then
there was Helen Gentry.
See Grabhorn, Jane, The Colt Press, a 1965
interview in this series.
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Did she just come to work as an apprentice?
Yes. She had had some experience. She was a
friend of Porter Garnett's and had done some print
ing. Very little. She was an apprentice. And
later she was a printer here in town for Goldberg
Bowen, who had a printing press. That was very
funny, in fact. Then she went in business for her
self, right here on Commercial Street. Then she
went to New York. There she's principally--! don't
know what she's doing now. She was a partner--!
don't know whether it still exists—in the Holiday
House, which concentrated on children's books.
I can't even remember all of the apprentices. Lots
of them didn't last very long. Lots of them, they
just had summer vacation jobs.
Did Wilder Bentley ever work with you?
No. We were close friends. Wilder is a peculiar
chap. He gave up printing suddenly. I don't know
why.
Apparently he was an accomplished printer?
Oh, I would say so. I don't think he was terrifically
so, but he knew his subject. He was more of a poet
than a printer, a writer. He was very much dis
gusted—he did very good work and none of his books
See also chapter, "Some Grabhorn Press Employees"
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were ever included in the Fifty Books Show. I
think that disappointed him. I don't know
whether it did, but I always had a hunch it did.
That's the terrific thing about those shows. They
discourage people as much as they encourage them
when they're not included.
That's a nasty one, too, isn't it, because of the
capital it takes to enter your book?
Oh, that's getting terrific. We thought we might
send this book. . . .
The Letter Sheets?*
Letter Sheets. Well if the book is accepted, they
want six copies, you see. Now it doesn't mean
anything for an ordinary five dollar trade book.
But you get a book that costs $60 a copy. . . of
course, it wouldn't cost us $60 a copy, but never
theless, I don't think the show is that important
anymore .
Valenti Angelo was only an illustrator with you?
Or did he do some printing?
He never did any actual printing. I think our
business with Angelo was: he got a salary of $25
a week, and he was to do anything we had to do, and
Baird, Joseph Armstrong, Jr., California Pictorial
Letter Sheets, 1849-1869. San Francisco: David
Magee, 1967.
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he was to do as a free lance artist anything he
could get, you see. And Valenti was not lazy.
He was tremendously industrious and he didn't mind
redoing things. That was a lovely thing about
him. We'd stand over him and make him redo them.
Of course, he was facile. A tremendous worker.
When you think of the labor of putting in all those
initials in the Mandeville by hand, that was tre
mendous. But he woul d fold and do other tasks about
the shop. I don't think he ever learned how to set
type. But he does now. He nas a little press at
home in New York.
Did he leave the Grabhorn Press after a row or
somethi ng?
Not a row with us. I think he was a little put
out at the direction the Grabhorn Press was taking
when Douglas Watson was around. There might have
been differences between him and Douglas. I can't
say for certain. But I think he wanted to get
away, go to new fields. Of course, I think Valenti
needed us to stand over him; I really do. He needed
a firm hand. But, as I say, he was willing. He
would try, and he would arrive at something finally.
Mallette Dean, I suppose, is one of your prize
past associates, is he not?
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Mallette Dean did some wonderful work for us,
but typographically he isn't in the league with
Allen and Brother Antoninus. There, again, he
must earn a living. He does a lot of things for
the wineries. A prize apprentice? No, I don't
think so. Because he's primarily an artist. He
learned to set type. I don't mean he doesn't do
good work, by any means.
It is a practical combination for him, isn't it,
being an artist and a printer?
Yes it is. He's developed some things. He can
make his wine labels and print them. It would be
a good idea for lots of printers to be artists or
artists to be printers, perhaps.
Did he come to you first as quite a young man?
Not qui te young. Around in the late Depression
era. I think he did a lot of work for the Federal
Art Project. I think the first book he illustrated
[for the Grabhorn Press] was one of the Americana
Series called Wah-To-Yah. It's a very famous book.
I think it was originally published about 1837,
about this man's experience in the Indian country.
Was Arlen Philpott working with you?
Arlen was what you might truly call an apprentice.
He was about 18 years old when he came to work with
us .
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Did he work with you long?
Let's see. He must have worked two or three years.
That's quite a while. Then he went into the Coast
Guard, traveled around, and ... I always think of
Arlen as 18 years old. [laughter] Now he has a
lot of children.
Is he not doing some Book Club work now?
Yes, he does the Book Club Quarterly [News Letter].
He hasn't done a book. I'm amazed that Arlen has
never done a book.
Who has among the younger men?
Printing's a hobby with most of them. You ask about
young men. I don't know any. I really don't.
Andy's the youngest, and Andy's thirty-one.
To go back to other people--did Jo Sinel work with
you?
Well, he spent an awful lot of time at our shop.
He was not on salary. He offered to be at one time,
but we decided he would cost us too much because he
was so meticulous. I remember we printed some trifle
where he was mixing the ink. There were some colors
on it. My God! There were more pieces of card
board around the shop! Trials of ink mixing. I
think no matter how cheap he would work, he would
cost a lot of money. But he was amusing. I had
a lot of fun with him. He did things. . .he made
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a font of initials for us that- we use to this day.
You see, at that day he was an artist at the
advertising agency that's now McCann-Eri ckson . It
was H. K. McCann. But he was not very happy there.
He had all sorts of theories. Then he became
interested in industrial design. He was one of
the first in the field. He went to New York, and
he had quite a success. But he's an eccentric.
Well, a lot of those artists used to come and play
around our shop. The commercial artists, like Don
Schmidt and Maynard Dixon, even. We printed some
books of Maynard Dixon's. He belonged to this
group of artists called Advertising Illustrators.
I don't think Maynard ever did much advertising work
We printed a book of Maynard's poems once with some
of his drawings in it. Those were characters.
There was an artist named McKay?
Donald McKay was another of the same group.
Did he work with you?
Well, he did some initials, a couple of decorations,
not a lot.
Was that in the same period that Saroyan was around?
No. Saroyan was much later. These were in the
'twenties. All these men were around in the 'twen
ties, when we were on Kearny Street. Before 1926.
110
Grabhorn Press Locations
Tenser: I'd like to go back to your early days in San
Francisco. What was your first impression of San
Francisco, when you first arrived here?
R. Grabhorn: I don't know. I can't remember. The only man
we knew was Haywood Hunt. Ed knew him in Seattle.
He found us an apartment at some foul place where
he lived, right near the tunnel on Stockton Street
[laughter]. My brother took a job at a commercial
printing office. This is an anecdote. We had
rented a couple of rooms in a little building on
Kearny Street. There was a candy store on the
bottom floor, a tall, thin building. There's a
barroom on the bottom now and nothing above. I
wonder why. I'd like to have that. And I set up
the shop while Ed was working. You see, he used
to come around noon, and we'd work nights. He had
sent samples to a trade magazine, a local trade
magazine called Pacific Printer, and they had been
reproduced and written up in this magazine. So
Ed went to work one day after this article on his
work had appeared and his fellow workmen said, "I
see we have an artist working for us." And he just
left at noon that day and never went back, [laughter]
Teiser: What was the shop where he was working?
Ill
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser :
R. Grabhorn
Tesier :
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser:
R. Grabhorn
It'll come back to me. I can't remember it.
Chris Beran, later associated with John Johnck,
was one of the partners of this place.
So you went first into the Kearny Street location?
Kearny Street. That was 1920. While I was in
Europe in 1923 to '24, Ed moved to Powell Street.
A new building, sort of an arty building. There
was an architect there. 526 Powell. It's right
up the side of the hill. I remember while we were
there they were tearing down the old temple before
they put up--what is it?--450 Sutter. And the
noise was tremendous. We were only there about
two or three years. Then we moved from there to
Pine Street.
Did you have more space than you did on Powell?
Yes. We had a whole floor there. I don't know
whether that's the reason we moved or not. That
was about 1926, I think. 510 Pine, that's where
Peter Fahey is now. We had one floor in that
building, the same place she's got.
The rent had gone up on Powell?
I think so. Or something like that. That's where
we printed Leaves of Grass [510 Pine].
Then, I think, my brother had some money, or his
father-in-law financed it. At any rate we decided
we might buy a building. And we bought this place
112
R. Grabhorn
Tenser:
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser :
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser :
on Commercial Street, where we were until the
war, 1942. You see, we bought this building from
A. Lietz (this amused me) who made the navigation
instruments. And they had built this building we
were in for their war contracts in World War I.
In 1942 they had another war contract, so they
wanted that building back!
So you sold it back to them?
We said, "You find us another building, or we'll
find a building." In other words, they paid for
the other building. That's the one out on Sutter
Street. Now there is some insurance company, all
prettied up, you know, in the place we had on
Commercial, in the next block up on Commercial
[from 566 Commercial]. We had two tremendous floors
and a tremendous basement. And the top was very
efficient. It was also uncomfortable in hot weather
because it was almost all skylight.
And every time you moved did everybody go through
terrible agonies?
Oh, yes, yes. Well, the last move was sort of
costly: we lost the matrices for our private type.
You did? Franciscan!
Yes.
How'd it happen?
113
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser:
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
The moving men were a bunch of winos, I think,
and they got everything mixed up.
And they really lost them?
Really lost them, yes. They were packed away in a
garbage can with lots of things, and then they
never got out.
Did you have insurance?
No.
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
Tei ser :
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
Grabhorn Press Bibliographies
I wanted to ask a little about the details of the
publication of the two bibliographies.*
David Magee had sold lots of our books to a collec
tor, Mrs. Heller. And he and she compiled this
bibliography. She financed the printing of it.
David handled the sale. And then when we printed
the second one, it was David's own project. Mrs.
Heller had nothing to do with it.
He financed it?
He financed it.
Well, they were both done with considerable co
operation from you, were they not? You and your
brother?
Oh , yes .
see also pages 21 and 22.
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
R. Grabhorn
Teiser :
R. Grabhorn
114
This amounted to a considerable investment of
time and effort?
Yes. Both--on all of our parts.
Did you feel they came out as they should have?
Yes. I like them. I like them.
Did you have control over the printing of them?
Oh, yes. Yes. We were left strictly alone.
I suppose there haven't been £p_ many occasions on
which you've been able to exert so much control
over anything that you printed?
Oh, I don't know. I think we really usually had
full control, except, well, work for advertising
agencies and things like that.
But in the bibliographies you could change the text
if you wanted, couldn't you? [laughter]
Yes! Yes, we certainly could. And did. [laughter]
115
Jane (Mrs. Robert) Grabhorn was asked to
comment upon the relationship between Edwin and
Robert Grabhorn as a factor in the character of
the Grabhorn Press .
Jane Grabhorn
March 3, 1967
Com ments by Jane Grabhorn on the Grabhorn Brothers
J. Grabhorn: Ed would remember perhaps the look of a page that
he'd seen, in the early years, when Bruce Rogers
was starting out, and so forth. Bob is a little
slower study and is more the studious type, I
think, and a lot more interested in the intellec
tual aspect. You have somebody else's judgment or
opinion, and you're circumscribed by the quality
of your own intelligence, your own knowledge. I
think that if I had to--oh, one of those Henry Luce
words, what is i t?--encapsu1 ate or encapsulize it,
[I'd say that] I've always felt that Ed was a good
deal more aggressive, a good deal more experimental,
a good deal more. . .whatever inspirational means.
Whereas Bob has, I would say, definitely contributed
to the Grabhorn books, from all points of view, the
things that I think Ed lacks—and I could be wrong-
taste and restraint, and intelligence, which Ed
116
J . Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
J. Grabhorn
has never felt were important especially. Ed
would be more likely to take a chance on something
or to take the plunge. More the female type — the
seeming quick, spontaneous. I know a lot of people
think, probably Ed himself, that Bob for many years,
although he was the younger, acted as more of a
restraint than anything else. But then of course
as you get older, that age gap gets lesser and
lesser. Whereas when somebody's ten and somebody
else is twenty-two there's a big difference; when
you get up in the thirties, forties and fifties,
then it becomes less and less of a difference.
But I think Bob has always felt himself more or less
an arbiter, a restraining influence, an organizer,
the intellectual member of the team. As far as I
can see, that's the way his mind works and that's
the kind of character he has.
Their relationship was, of course, to some extent
i nheri ted .
Ed was twelve years old when Bob was born. He
remembers wheeling Bob around in a baby carriage.
He had charge of him. Their mother was too busy.
And so that relationship persisted along. They
were apart for many years on and off. Bob spoke
to me about that the other day. He didn't know Ed
at all, as an adult. And, as I say, the person who
117
J. Grabhorn: is the more aggressive tends, whether rightly or
wrongly, to take the authority. Like the parent,
he has the authority. But I think that Bob feels
that Ed was genuinely interested in printing, both
as a craft and as a trade. He always had the
greatest respect and regard for him professionally.
Bob Grabhorn is one of those rare people. . . he
is no different with me at home alone than if you
were there or anyone else--he is polite if he feels
like it; if he doesn't, he isn't. There is abso
lutely none of the four-flusher about him, no pre
tenses whatever.
Whether or not there are any resentments I don't
know. It seems to me he's one of those rare people
that is an adult; he is mature. I don't mean by that
the weak word "tolerant," or anything like that.
But he's understanding, and he is interested. But
always in a detached sort of way. And Ed has some
of that. That seems to run through that whole
family. At least in the ones I've met — they have
that trait. Very rare. In my family, for instance,
we're all so close, so emotionally involved.
Building up that business--! think it's something
that grew. I don't think either one was more
dedicated than the other. It was just that each
one had his own department. But I think in the
118
J. Grabhorn
Tei ser :
J. Grabhorn
beginning probably they worked together a good
deal more closely because they had to. There
were only the two of them. They were poor, they
were unknown. But Ed would be the one always to
get the ideas. Not always , but by and large.
Always the one to go out and get the business.
I was surprised to hear Bob say he regretted not
operating a press. I always thought it was the
more mechanical aspect of printing. . . .
Of course it is more mechanical. Well, let's put
it this way: unless you're printing on the hand
press--if you're printing with a machine then
you've got to be able to fix that machine if some
thing goes wrong. You have to have a feeling for
machinery. Whereas a compositor, who is technically
known as a printer, can rectify his mistakes. He
can make changes. He has time, but if you've got
a machine going. . . .
Designing, well. . . .1 think there again they
always worked closely. I can't imagine either one
of them doing anything, like putting out a book,
that met with the specific and outspoken disapproval
of the other one. This would be impossible you see.
But in their work they're quite different people than
they are otherwise. They're infinitely, I would
say, painstaking and patient. I have seen them
119
J. Grabhorn: discuss something without raising their voices,
without ever quarreling, without ever getting angry
or emotionally involved. "Well, let's try this,"
or "Let's try that." And then of course there was
that end! ess--whi ch is s_o_ important — that endless
trial and error and the patience, and above all a
certain mutual respect. Sometimes I think that's
good, and sometimes it isn't.
I think in their case, their books improved as
they got older, which might not have been the case
with that kind of a relationship. But it seemed
to me that each one grew along with the other one.
As I say, they became closer and closer as far as
their ages went. I can't remember ever having
heard a harsh word or any really serious disagree
ment. Because if there were, each one would begin
to reassess, revalue his own judgment. Bob is no
hero worshipper, none of that at all. But he might
say, "Well, I think that cap's a little big, there,"
or "Let's try this." "Let's try that." Or Bob would
set a page, and Ed would look at it, seriously, and
he would say, "Well, I'll tell you what I don't
like, Bob, I don't like the such-and-such position
of the cut. Why don't you switch it around a bit.
Why don't we try that as a chapter beginning?" And
that's the way it always was. So then Bob goes
J. Grabhorn
T e i s e r :
J. Grabhorn
120
back to work and says, "What do you think of this?"
[Ed says,] "Well, yes, I think that's it; I think
that's it." Or, "I don't know. Maybe I was wrong.
Let's see the first one again."
This is why, I presume, Bob and others object to
using the word "design," which sounds as if you
conceive of the whole thing full-blown.
I think that's very pretentious, yes. They don't
like it. It's essentially still in the mind and
heart of a true printer, especially one with a
little background, forty or fifty years. In Ed's
case and Bob's case their uncle was a printer.
A job printer. He was a tradesman. He might as
well have been a plumber or a plasterer. All that
business about "design." I can't ever remember Ed
using that word.
You've got a challenge. You have a sheet of paper
with something written on it. You've got to trans
late that into type. Because type in itself, you
know, is a very rigid form. That's, I think, one
of the reasons a lot of printers don't like the
word "design." Because there is a limit to what
you can do with these hard little pieces of metal.
You can't end up drawing something. I think Bob's
contributed far more, however, in the artistic line
to the Grabhorn Press than he realizes. But this
121
J. Grabhorn: is true sometimes of just the fact of being a
restraining influence. It may be a negative
thing, which may lead him to believe that he
wasn't actually creating something. But after all,
somebody has to make the first move. And you're
still part of that if you say — I've heard him say
to Ed many times— "Oh, no, don't do that." I think
Ed would have been capable of a great many vulgar
ities and a great many errors on the side of
sensationalism if it had not been for Bob.
All I do is observe. Of course I actually stayed
out of it, you know. I was always appalled because
right from the start--Ed is the sort of person
that will ask anybody, "What do you think of this?
What do you think of that?" And far from my re
specting that, it irritated me. Bob does not give
a damn what you think of it unless you're a pro
fessional and somebody he respects. Whether Ed
really does or not, I don't know. But I think Ed
does. I think what people think to Ed- -it's true
of a great many people of that sort--the reality is
what people think you are: you are what people
think you are. That page isn't good unless every
body thinks it is. That's a difference in tempera
ment.
122
J. Grabhorn: One person, one man, seems so much more outgoing,
so much the extrovert, so much the driver, the
more dynamic, the more—well , the louder, noisier,
more ambitious personality. But I suspect that
Bob has been the stronger, the steadier influence
in that relationship. But there again, you see,
I'm biased. There is no limit to the strength of
a limitlessly ambitious person. Bob is not. Bob
will say, "So what?"
123
Partial Index
124
Allen, Lewis ("Lew"), 11 , 98, 107
Almaden winery, 52, 53
American Institute of Graphic Arts, 96, see also "Fifty
Books Show"
Anderson, Gregg, 103
Anderson, Sherwood, 26
Angelo, Valenti, 18, 19-20, 46, 54, 92, 93, 105-106
Anger, Henry, 86-87, 88
Antoninus, Brother (William Everson), 13-14, 71, 75, 98, 107
Ashendene Press, 21, 33-34, 79, 102
Auerhahn Press, 99
Bancroft, Eleanor A., 57
Bender, Albert, 42-44, 45, 52
Bentley, Wilder, 104-105
Beran, Chris, 111
Bissell , William, 103
Bissett, Clark P. , 35
Bohemian Club, 65
Book Club of California, 25-26, 41, 42, 108
Borgeson, Ingeborg, 63
Cal vert , George C . , 8
Cardoza Company, 65, 67-68
Carlisle, A. and Company, 55
Cerf, Bennett, 19
Chickering piano advertisements, 14-15, 50, 52
Clark, Mrs. Tobin, 44
Cobden-Sanderson , T. J., 83
Coulter, Edith M. , 57
Dawson, Emma Frances, 42
Dean, Mallette, 46, 70, 106-107
Dixon, Maynard, 109
Dreis , Hazel , 65,66
Duncan, Charles Stafford, 51-52
Eastern Paper Corporation, 69
Elston Press, 95
Eragmy Press, 91-92
Fahey, Peter (Mrs. Herbert), 67, 111
Farquhar, Francis P., 39
Ficklin winery, 52
"Fifty Books Show" 105
Fleishhacker, M«-rfe1mer Jr., 46
125
Gannon, Jack, 29-30
Garnett, Porter, 30, 75, 104
Gentry, Helen, 30, 103-104
Goldberg Bowen Company, 104
Golden Cockerel Press, 89
Goodhue Printing Company, 31
Goudy, Frederic W., 7, 19, 20-21, 69, 71
Grabhorn ,
Edwin ( "Ed") , passim
Grabhorn ,
(second) Mrs. Edwin (Marj
orie) ,
Grabhorn ,
Harry, 3-4
Grabhorn,
H e n ry , 1 - 2 , 5
Grabhorn ,
Mrs . Henry, 1 , 5
Grabhorn ,
Jane (Mrs . Robert) , 15 ,
31 , 65
122
Grabhorn ,
Kenneth, 2-3
Grabhorn ,
Lewis, 2
Grabhorn ,
Walter, 2
65
66, 102-103, 115-
Grabhorn-Hoyem Press, 99-100
Grover, Katharine, 30-31
Grover, Sherwood B. ("Bill"), 30-32, 98
Hall , Chaffee, 53
Hallcrest winery, 53
Harlan, M. E., 50, 52
Harlow, Neal , 58
Haselwood, David, 99
Heller, Elinor, 9, 113-114
Holiday House, 104
Holliday, James S., 56
Hoi li day, William J. , 56
Houghton Mifflin Company, 84
Howell , John, 33-35, 44, 96
Howel 1 , Warren R. , 89, 94
Hoyem, Andrew ("Andy"), 7, 55-56, 98-99, 108
Hubbard, Elbert, 95
Hunt, Haywood H., 13, 30, 75, 88, 110
Jackson, Joseph Henry, 39
Jaffe, , 56
Johnck, John, 79, 87-88, 111
Jones , St . Cl ai re , 9
Kelmscott Press, 3, 89, 102
Kennedy, Alfred Brooks, 28
Kennedy, Lawton, 28, 54
Kennedy-ten Bosch Company, 13
Klingspor Foundry, 20, 30, 72
Klingspor, Karl , 20, 30, 72
126
Lewis, Oscar, 18, 26-27, 28, 41, 47
McCann, H. J. Company, see McCann-Eri ckson , Inc.
McCann-Erickson, Inc., 51, 109
McKay, Donald, 109
Mackenzie and Harris, 69-70, 71
Magee, David, 9, 21, 44, 56, 70, 89, 94, 113-114
Magee, Dorothy, 21
Meriden Gravure Company, 55, 103
Morri s , Wi 1 1 i am , 83
Music printing, 4
Nash, John Henry, 13, 22-23, 35, 45, 72, 87
Norris , Thomas W. , 45
Oakland National Gravure, 56
Pacific Printer, 110
Philpott, Arlen, 107-108
Pissaro, , 91-92
Plantain Press, 100
Presswork, 10-11
Printing presses, 59-61
Random House, 24, 36, 37, 68, see also Cerf, Bennett
Ransohoff, James, 53
Ray, Milton, 23-24
Redwood Association, 61-62
Ritchie, Ward, 100, 103
Riverside Press, 77-78, 84-85, 97
Rogers, Bruce, 76-78, 79-80, 82, 84-85, 91, 97, 100-101, 115
Roth, William M. ("Bill"), 102-103
Rothschild, Herbert, 48
Saroyan, William, 48, 109
Schilling, A. and Company, 50-51, 55
Schmidt, Don, 109
Seeger, Harold, 87, 88
Sinel , Jo, 83, 108-109
Sperisen, Albert, 60, 78, 92
Standard Oil Company of California, 51-52
Stanford University, 54
Sterl i ng , George , 45
Stone and Kimball, 95
Studio Press, Indianapolis, 6-9
Taylor and Taylor, 58, 59, 86
Title pages , 16-17
127
Types
Caslon, 59, 86, 101
Centaur, 81
Franciscan, 19, 20-22, 71, 77, 112-113
Goudy New Style, 71 , 91
Goudy Thirty, 101
Incunabul a , 72-73
Jessenschrift, 71-72
Kennerley, 59
Koch Bibel Gotisch, 19-20, 71-72, 80, see also Jessen-
schri ft
Lutetia, 18, 69, 91
Oxford, 68, 86
S u b i a c o , 21
Typesetting, 11, 16 and passim
Updike, Daniel B., 7, 78-79, 88, 96
Vale Press, 95
Waters, George, 55, 57
Watson, Douglas, 25, 39-41, 50, 106
Watson, Mrs. Douglas, 40-41
Westgate Press, 26-27, 28, 41
Wheat, Carl , 58
Wheeler, William ("Bill"), 65-66, 67
Whitman, Walt, 90, see also Leaves of Grass in Books Printed
by the Studio Press, The Grabhorn Press, and Grabhorn-
Hoyem
Wilson, Adrian, 100, 102
Wood, Charles R., 58
Young, Belle McMurtrie, 40
Zenith radio advertisements, 50
128
Books Printed by the Studio Press, the Grabhorn Press, and the
Grabhorn-Hoyem Press
INDEX
Abraham Lincoln, A Universal Man, 35
Bibliography of the Grabhorn Press 1915-1940, 9, 21, 22, 113-
114
Bibliography of the Grabhorn Press, 1940-1956, 21, 22, 113-
114
Cabeza de Vaca, 86
California Pictorial Letter Sheets, 105
California Towns, 57
Defense of the Dilettante, A, 8
Diogenes at The Savile Club, 34
Diogenes in London, 34
Edward VIII, King, abdication speech, 48
Fuller, W. P. Company books, 45, 54, 55
Golden Touch, The, 24, 37, 82
Gracious Visitation, The, 42
Japanese print books, 27-28, 58, 100
Joaquin Murieta, The Brigand Chief of California, 38-39
Laugh of Christ and Other Original Linnets, The, 9
Leaves of Grass, 18-19, 25, 60, 66, 69, 71, 82, 86, 90-91,
93, 97, 111
Mandeville, Sir John, see Voiage and Travaile of Sir John
Maundevi le
Mapping the Trans-Mississippi West, 58
Maps of San Francisco Bay , 58
Poems and Philosophical Thoughts, 47
Ransohoff s, books for, 48-49, 53
Salome , 37,82
Santa Fe Trail to California, The, 25-26, 76, 81, 86
Scarlet Letter, The, 82, 92-93
Schilling, August, book for, 50-51, 55
Shakespeare plays, 101-102
Silverado Journal, 96
Spanish Occupation of California, The, 77
129
Tempest, The* 72
Two Years Before the Mast, 68, 82
Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile , 19-20, 24, 37,
78-79, 80, 82, 106
Wah-To-Yah, 107
allin io
O f)
far as the crest due to the doubling back of the rays upon themselves.
But why do they not liquefy by reason of that inborn fire, which acts
most mightily upon the summit? The force of the fire ends a little
below the highest point (otherwise it would come forth as in the case
of the mountains which blaze up), and it has earth and exceeding
thick rocks as though for a cover for itself; a cover which the apex of
the fire does not pierce, being now, as it were, at its extreme point too
13
io
thin and feeble, while the heavier and denser earth overpowers it.
Thus it comes to an end before the summit is reached. The snows
moreover are nourished, as it were, by the cold air and by the moist
and icy vapors and they endure.
Whence comes it that mountainous regions are rich in forests ?
Because they have an abundance of nourishment, that is to say a bub
bling source of waters, a copious supply of rain, and a great quantity
of snow. The snow indeed is of great advantage, since in gradually
dissolving it sinks into the soil and all the moisture is not lost by rush
ing down in one single flow. For thus also can the earth best be brok
en up, since the heat is hemmed in and enclosed on every side. In fact
by the outside packing and by confinement of the cold the interior
heat is increased (a fact which is evident in wells warmer during the
winter) ; this heat drawn in by the roots is distributed throughout the
entire shoot. Add to this that for the most part they are barren, or
at least are not so luxuriant in fruit-bearing as the cultivated sort, a
fact which contributes much to their shortness of life. Nor, on the
evidence of Theophrastus,are they like the others attacked by disease.
Whence do the mountains furnish so great a supply of water? The
indwelling fire stirs up many vapors, conceived in the hollow caves ;
when these seek an outlet, they are seized upon by the cold and are
condensed. This is a thing we experience also in our own bodies,
which when heated by exercise give off vapor which presently by the
comparatively cool air is changed into drops of sweat. Likewise it
happens in the case of those alembics contrived by the chemists, in
which through the action of fire, fluids are evaporated and drawn off.
There are full many other things on account of which I am capti
vated beyond measure by scenes afforded by the mountains. And
since in your home land they are most lofty, and above all, as I hear,
most fruitful in plant life, the desire has come over me to go to visit
them, whereto your friendship at the same time entices me. In order,
however, that I might not without some gift approach so dear a
friend, it has been my wish to gather together in some sort for your
pleasure whatever on the spur of the moment should present itself to
me, handed down from the ancients, on the subj ect of milk and of the
products thereof. For this theme seemed not unsuitable to your na
tion, a large part of whom are preparers of milk-food, adapting milk
to various victuals. Of this number that well-known smooth cheese
is deemed famous, which being seasoned with fragrant herbs wins
great favor with all foreigners among whom it is wont to be brought.
Moreover, you will pardon me if much has been brought together
without regard to order, bearing in mind that such
an assortment is commonly read
without weariness.
Farewell.
At Zurich, the month of June, in the year of
the salvation of mankind 1541.
DESCRIPTION OF
THE RIVEN MOUNTAIN, OR MOUNT PILATUS
; AS THEY COMMONLY CALL IT,
NEAR LUCERNE, IN SWITZERLAND,
BY CONRAD GESNER.
CONRAD GESNER,
PHYSICIAN, SENDS GREETINGS TO J. CHRYSOSTOME
HUBER, THE DISTINGUISHED
PHYSICIAN:
INCE it is my habit, in accordance with an old
custom of mine, both for mental recreation and
for my health, to undertake a journey, prefera
bly in the mountains, either annually or every
other year, it was recently my desire, my dear
Huber, to visit you at Lucerne, together with
our friends, Peter Hafner, the stone engraver,
Peter Boutinus of Avignon, the pharmacist,
and John Thomas, the painter and a relative of mine by marriage, all
young men skilled each in his own art. In that place you bestowed
upon us all the kind offices of courtesy; and there also we were enter
tained right honorably, both privately by several citizens, and even
publicly besides, wine being poured in abundance to do us honor. On
the following day, having procured from the governor, the eminent
Nicolas von Meggen, a most valorous knight, the privilege (as is cus
tomary) of ascending Mount Pilatus, we departed. Moreover what
ever we noted upon that journey I have determined to describe in the
following brief account and to dedicate to you; so that by that means
I may both present to you an evidence, such as it is, of our gratitude,
and at the same time request of you that whatever error or omission
has been made by me in this description you will correct and supply.
It may well be that you can do both, since in the very famous city of
19
Lucerne, close by the mountain which I am describing, you follow the
calling of a physician, rejoice in the friendships of numerous powerful
men of that place, excel in learning and judgment, and also have re
cently ascended the mountain yourself. But if not only concerning
this mountain but others also, especially of our Switzerland (in which
feature this country abounds beyond almost all regions), you either
see personally anything noteworthy in certain instances or get it
from men worthy of trust, you will at some time write me in full of
it. I myself (if I live) will also add my own observations, so that an
entire little book may be composed at last on mountains and their
wonders. But for the present, though in former times I have trav
ersed a great many and much higher mountains in various sections
of Switzerland, it has seemed good on account of my fresh memory
of it to write separately of yours only, which is called
The Broken Mountain.
Farewell.
Zurich, August the twenty-eighth,
in the year 1555.
Coolidge, W. A. B.:Josids Simler et I'origine de I'dlpinismejusqu'en
1600, Grenoble, 1904.
Gesner, Conrad: Epistola ad Jdcobum Avienum de Montium Ad-
miratione. In Gesner's Libellus de Ldcte et Operibus Ldctdriis, Ti-
guri (Zurich), 1 543 : and in Coolidge'sjosuzs Simler ', Grenoble, 1904.
The letter is dated 1541 but was not printed for two years.
Gesner, Conrad : Conradus Qesnerus. In Gesner's Bibliothecd Uni-
versdlis, sive Cdtdlogus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus in tri-
bus linguis, Ldtind, Qrdecd et Hebrdicd. Tiguri, 1545.
Gesner, Conrad : Descriptio Montis Frdcti, sive Montis Pilati ut
vulgo nomindnt,juxtd Lucerndm in Helvetid;in Gesner's Commen-
tdriolus de rdris et ddmirdndis herbis, qude Lundride nomindntur.
Tiguri, 1555. Also in Scheuchzer's Helvetide Stoicheiogrdphid Oro~
grdphid et Oreogrdphid;"Tigun, 1 7 1 6 ; in Cribble's Edrly Mountain-
eers( Appendix H,p.28o),and in Coolidge'sJositfsSim/er, Grenoble,
1904. In Coolidge, as in this translation, the commentary on Vadi-
anus is omitted; it is given in full by Gribble.
Gribble, P.: The Edrly Mountdineers. London, 1899.
Ley, Willy : Konrdd Qesner. Munich, 1929.
Morley, H.: Conrad Qesner. In Morley's Clement Mdrot, dnd other
Studies, ii, London, 1871.
Pollock, Sir F.: History of Mountdineering. In the Badminton Li
brary Mountdineering, London, 1892.
Simler, Josias : Vita cldrissimi Philosophi et Medici excellentissimi
Conrddi Qesneri. Tiguri (Zurich), 1566. W. D.
COF THEUERDANK & THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN
Bredt, E. W.:Die A/pen und IhreMdler. Leipzig, n. d. (circa 1910).
53
Busson, A.: Die Sage von Max aufder Martinswand undlhre Ent-
stehung.
Grand-Carteret, ].:La Montague a tr avers les ages. Grenoble, 1903-4.
Mayr, M. and Baillie-Grohman, W. A. :Das Jagdbuch Kaiser Max
imilians I. Innsbruck, 1901.
Holbein Society : Tewrdannckh. London, 1884.
Steinitzer, A.:Alpinismus in Bilder. Munich (and. edit.), 1924.
Treitsaurwein, M.:Der Weiss Kunig. Vienna, 1775.
Thieme-Becker : Kiinstler Lexicon.
The editions of Theuerdanfc are as follows : the first and second
appeared in 1517 and 1519; the third in 1537, the letter-press being
converted into modern type. In the fourth edition, 1553, with text
alterations by Burchhardt Waldis, there are new engravings in imi
tation of the old. This was reprinted in 1563, 1569 and 1596, these
editions containing minor variations. The eighth edition, by Schultes,
was brought out in 1679 (the writer's copy of this edition once be
longed to Longfellow), and the ninth edition, 1693, differs but little
from it. There are about forty known copies of the first edition print
ed on vellum. The Alpine plates are by the following artists: Beck- 1 5,
37, 53, 55, 59, 62, 66: Burgkmair-22, 66, 71; Schaiifelin-69 ; Un
known (B)-20.
Owing to the death of Maximilian I in 1519, and other vicis
situdes, the first printing of Weiss Kunig did not take place until
1775, the original engraved blocks still being preserved in the Vien
na Hofbibliothek. Plate 71 of Theuerdank. should be compared with
plate 75 of Weiss Kunig.
The discussion of "Ancient Crampons" is from American Alpine
Journal,ii,266. J.M.T.
54
CTHE ILLUSTRATIONS
page 7
Theuerdank's climbing-irons become wedged in the rocks, and he
would have perished had not assistance arrived.
page 10
Theuerdank, on the Martinswand, spears chamois before the assem
bled court.
1 3
Theuerdank slips when snow clogs his climbing-irons, and would
have fallen to his death had not God preserved him.
page. 22
Three avalanches shoot down from the mountain, but Theuerdank,
hearing the roar, saves himself by reining in his horse.
page 25
Theuerdank is endangered by a gale which lifts him into the air, but
he is able to catch himself in the rocks.
page 2 7
Theuerdank slips on a mossy slope, and his life is saved by a single
prong of the climbing-irons which holds although much bent.
Theuerdank, taken up a lofty mountain to cross a snow slope, sends
over a huntsman, who falls, and Theuerdank continues by another
route.
How a chamois, after being shot, would have thrown Theuerdank
from a precipice had it not caught on a projecting rock.
These illustrations are from plates 15, 20, 22, 36, 56, 62, 66, and 71
in the early editions of Thewrdanckji.
Ruth Telser
Grew up in Portland, Oregon; came to the Bay Area
in 1932 and has lived here ever since.
Stanford, B. A., M. A. in English, further graduate
work in Western history.
Newspaper and magazine writer in San Francisco since
1943, writing on local history and economic and
business life of the Bay Area.
Book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle
since 1943.
As correspondent for national and western graphic
arts magazines for more than a decade, came to
know the printing community.
10 Q/l t
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