Love of typography & letterforms & poetry

This book is inspired by an experiment in hot metal, hand-set type that I did forty-three years ago when I was a student of Anthony Froshaug, at the Central School of Art and Design, London, My typographic experiment became a pamphlet called Love Song Cycle, which consisted of a collection of four poems by the poet, Jessica d’Este. ‘Love’ is also based on four poems by the same poet,. I’ve chosen randomly from her body of work specifically for this follow-on experimental piece decades later. Whilst reading and re-reading these four works, it emerged they all contained the word ‘love’– hence the title of this book. Each poem has been typeset in three separate locations – the composing rooms of Winterbourne Press, Birmingham, Merrion Press at The Type Archive, London and the remaining two at Stonehouse Fine Press, Gloucestershire. Randomness is the underlining theme of this book, by design as well as by default and circumstance. Each composing room contains particular typefaces, in different point sizes and varying amounts of each font. What is available is completely random, yet specific toeach composing room. This places a constraint on what can be achieved in each location because you must work with what is available in that place, and that is an unknown until you begin typesetting