Alan Kitching’s A-Z of Letterpress, showcases the extensive wood-letter fount collection of The Typography Workshop.
Each page has been carefully created by Alan Kitching in collaboration with Angus Hyland, making this book a work of typographic art in its own right.
Presented as an A to Z, the individual letters are divided by full alphabets, giving the reader access to a large range of founts to reference in their own work.
The book is a collaboration between Kitching and Angus Hyland. In 2014, Hyland approached Kitching with the proposal of hand-setting letterpress alphabets to celebrate the Typographic Workshop’s 25th Anniversary. Together they devised a page layout and Kitching set the entire book, which is printed on letterpress and then reproduced at the same size.
The book contains 39 hand-printed letterpress alphabets, displayed letter by letter. The alphabets are from three sources, a collection of theatrical type from the Somerset village of Wrington – once home to G&M Organ, a company who printed posters up for circuses and pantomimes; a mid-century selection from an antique dealer called Rafferty, who turned up at Kitching’s studio with the cases in his van; and a range once owned by Typographica magazine founder, Herbert Spencer.
Single pages of full alphabets, using Playbill, Tuscan, Victorian Roman and French Antique, separate the letters. The book also includes an introduction by John L Walters of Eye Magazine.