Marian Miller ’13 holds up her book with pride. Each page represents hours of exacting work. As she talks about her book’s illustrations, she feels the paper’s rough edges.
Marian and the other 10 students in Professor Kitty Maryatt’s “Typography and the Book Arts” class at Scripps College Press are creating books for themselves, and for discerning collectors who purchase the limited edition books.
Scripps scholars create books of hand-crafted artistry.
“This was definitely different than anything I’ve ever done before,” says Samantha Plakun, a Pitzer College student who presented her image in Greek glyphs.
Students set each piece of metal type by hand before printing each book by letterpress, which involves locking movable type into the bed of a press, inking it, and rolling or pressing paper against it to form an impression. They then bind the books in wood covers. Together, they created 95 original works.
“You must have fortitude,” says Maryatt, director of the Scripps College Press and a Scripps alumna. “It’s always a challenge making these books.”
The class studied the various writing systems people have used to communicate with one another throughout history.
Students examined the evolution of the written word. They explored how humans wrote on clay tablets before using papyrus and wood until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and ushered in the era of the printed book in the 1450s.
After studying ancient writing systems, students selected one and studied how to write some of its characters for their book. Marian chose the Ethiopian language of Ge’ez, which is no longer widely spoken.
Nelda Kerr, a student at Claremont Graduate University, wrote her book using ancient Mayan symbols after viewing a documentary in class on how Spaniards attempted to eradicate the Mayan civilization by targeting their writings.
“Almost all their books were burned,” Nelda says.
History, however, speaks through the pages of these books.
Founded in 1941, Scripps College Press offers students from the Claremont Colleges an opportunity to design and print original books. Scripps College supports one of the longest-running collegiate book arts programs in the nation. It is one of few undergraduate programs where students publish, print by letterpress and bind their limited edition books by hand before they are sold to the 56 standing-order patrons and institutional collectors.
More information on Scripps College Press may be obtained by clicking here.