Writing | Poetry | Literary Letterpress Broadsides & Books | Curriculum Vitae
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Broadsides

This article was originally published in an edited version by Arts and Entertainment, Mendocino Art Center , Mendocino , California , September 1994

A broadside is a limited edition print with literary content. It is a poster with a poem in it, and usually, an image. This definition, however, changes depending on what century you're in. At one time it would have been hard to know anything about anything without broadsides. Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, they were the everything of communication - the radio drama, television news, billboard, CD ROM, public opinion poll, and tabloid all rolled into one.

Broadsides were sheets of paper printed on one or both sides. They were passed from hand to hand, posted on walls, or available at your bookseller down the street for a pittance. You learned the local news from them, as well as the neighbor's opinion on that news, the little song ditty composed over yonder, the recent papal bull, or the polemic of the revolution in the American colonies.

In 1913, when poet Blaise Cendrars and artist Sonia Delauney collaborated on their project, "La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France," they referred to it as "the first simultaneous book." This simultaneous book was printed on a sheet that unfolded to a length of two meters. An edition was planned of 150, which, when laid end to end, would equal the height of the Eiffel Tower . Only 60 copies were completed, due to interruption by World War I, a poor reception from the public, and the enormous amount of work Delaunay had to do to hand paint each broadside.

The thoughtfulness, collaboration, and humor which they brought to this project is typical of broadside work, as is the passion to present poetry in a form so related to the illustration that it becomes a new genre.

"We are introducing and inventing ourselves," local artist Sam Katz explained when discussing his own work on broadsides. His definition reminds me why I practice this art form myself.

In April of this year I took my nine-year-old daughter to the Huntington Library in Pasadena to visit their copy of the Gutenberg bible. It is a complete, bound copy, a rarity in the twentieth century. Many of the original bibles printed by Gutenberg have been unbound and sold off page by page to collectors. Although it was not the first use of moveable type (the Chinese were making clay type in the 11th century), it is the first entire book printed from individual pieces of type on a printing press. When we arrived at the museum, we found that the incunabula books (books printed during the fifteenth century, considered the incunabula, or cradle, of printing) had been moved to another room to make way for an exhibit on Abraham Lincoln. The smaller exhibit space included a wall of broadsides with the following descriptive label:

"BROADSIDES: Official announcements, news bulletins, the latest songs, lurid crime reports, and other information of short-lived or general (and often sensational)interest were available to the reading public in broadsides, single sheets of paper printed on one side only and sold, unbound, by local booksellers.

"These were the newspapers and magazines of their day, cheap, quickly produced, meant to be read and enjoyed for the moment, and easily tossed away. As a result few survive today; the Huntington 's collection is particularly strong."

Broadside is also a naval term which means the firing of all of a ship's cannons from one entire side directly at another ship, a most devastating blow. This definition comes to mind when describing the political tracts printed during the American Revolution and posted on town walls.

Only in the twentieth century, with the increase in communication technology and the fading of the use of hand set lead type, has the broadside become what it is today, a source of first edition printing of poetry and art. They can also be examples of fine printing, often on handmade papers. 

Rita Warnock, curator of the Broadsides Collection of the John Jay Library at Brown University , wrote that "Webster defines a broadside as 'a sheet of paper printed on one or both sides.' and indeed that is the basic criterion for anything in the Broadsides Collection. That sheet of printed paper can appear in many formats...Whatever form it takes, once flattened out it has to reassemble into one uncut sheet of paper."

The collection at Brown University focuses on broadsides printed in the United States . The collection in 1928 numbered 8000 items. Today there are over 44,000, the oldest piece dating from the year 1612. Major groups within the collection include poetry broadsides, printers' ephemera, those relating to the history of Rhode Island, war posters from the two World Wars, postcards, fine art prints, and bookplates. The collection is available for research in a range of disciplines, as broadsides cut across a wide variety of social and artistic subjects.

Broadsides also speak for themselves, as you will notice in the accompanying illustrations. Even in their more limited modern role they are an entire form of communication. What I like about the form is that the poem is not so much read, as viewed by the observer, and the impact this has on the viewer is different than simply reading a text. You live with a broadside the way you live with a painting. Through the layers of time I see a form intended for immediacy of impact, the unavoidable provoking of thought and discussion, and a sensual impression of words combined with the act of reading.

Jane Grabhorn was a San Francisco printer and bookmaker working during the mid-twentieth century. She married into a printing family in the thirties, and proceeded to practice her own brand of typography, irreverent, humorous and cranky, by all accounts. For a while she promoted the idea that hyphens at the ends of lines were ludicrous. A word that needed to be split should simply break and begin again on the next line. It seems that the day Judy Garland died, something stuck in Jane's craw. As it was aptly put by Glenn Todd, Editor of the Arion Press, (originally the Grabhorn/Hoyem Press):

"Judy had a cult following in San Francisco that was unequaled anywhere else, but the rows of young men swooning in unison or storming the aisles to fling roses to the quavery strains of "Over the Rainbow" but Jane's teeth on edge and sparked her malice. And there were Judy's headline-grabbing suicide attempts--how many? four, five, six?--after too much booze and pills. Jane had her own set of problems, some of which dovetailed with Judy's, and she grew tired of the singer's antics. When Judy finally dozed off into the Big Sleep in 1969, Jane rushed for her composing stick and whipped out a broadside:

"'This establishment is closed for the death of Judy Garland.
THOSE WHO DO NOT CARE, WALK IN.'

"She posted a copy on the door of the print shop at 566 Commercial Street ; others were placed on the doors of neighboring financial institutions."

And that is a broadside - interactive literature.

COLORED HORSE STUDIOS

My first broadsides came out of the Book Arts program at Mills College , where I learned letterpress printing and typesetting under Kathy Walkup from 1979 to 1981. I produced a window shade broadside, a scroll poem, a newspaper insert, a poem to fit in pockets, and developed ideas for a towel dispenser poem (I still need to find one of those circular towel dispensers so common in truck stop bathrooms), and poems that can be printed on tablecloths and curtains.

Moving to Mendocino county in 1985, after a trip to Greece, I began working for Zida Borcich at her letterpress shop in Fort Bragg, as well as heading the letterpress printing program at the Mendocino Art Center, "Gray's Trousers Press." The Art Center press lost its funding after a year, but I ended up working for Zida for eight years (minus another year spent back in Greece). I began my first day working for her by pieing (dropping) a brand new font of type and went on to become co-production manager.

Zida encouraged me to begin printing broadsides again after a holiday of six years. She set the example by producing her own broadside - "Pundits," a poem inspired by her father. We formed Dancing Fools Press for our collaborations, based on a hand tooled brass embossing die of some old boots I found while scavenging used type at a dealer in San Francisco. The boots are so detailed you can see the holes in the toes - real tramps' boots. "Whore's Shoes Press," I suggested. "Dancing Fools Press," she said, because of our habits at the Caspar Inn.

I split off and formed Colored Horse Studios in the fall of 1993, and now work at home with my husband, Paulo Ferreira, who is an artist and sculptor and very quickly becoming a designer and producer of broadsides. A big boost to my work came from taking Lolli Jacobson's class in fabric printing at the College of the Redwoods, applying what I learned to printing on paper. I spent my semester researching and testing water-based, non-toxic silkscreen inks. Nothing was simple. Nothing ever is with broadsides and me. I don't think it's supposed to be. We're inventing and introducing ourselves, a very delicate and honorable profession.

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To view the broadsides of Colored Horse Studios, visit our Broadside Portfolio

THERESA WHITEHILL
Colored Horse Studios
780 Waugh Lane
Ukiah , California 95432
707 462-4557
broadsides@coloredhorse.com
www.coloredhorse.com

CAPTIONS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL ARTICLE

1. "Causæ Veteris epitaphium in atecessum, ab anonymo autore scriptum, a Latin epitaph for the Puritan "Old Cause", a fragment of a larger braodside printed in 1682 in England. An example of political poetry, it is the oldest broadside in the Broadsides Collection of John Hay Library at Brown University; the whole piece is 4 pieces, each 29 x 18 cm) (reprinted by permission of Brown University, John Hay Library, Broadsides Collection)

2. "La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France," billed as the 'first simultaneous book' by collaborators poet Blaise Cendrars and artist Sonia Delauney, printed in 1913 in Paris, 2 meters long with brightly colored hand painting down the side, applied by Pochoir (Fine Print Magazine, San Francisco, reprinted by permission)

3. "An humble intercession for the distressed town of Boston, Now almost deserted by its former rightful inhabitants, . . . By a young lady, who was late a resident in that unhappy town . . .," and "A new liberty song, composed at the Camp on Prospect-Hill," printed in Salem in 1775 and meant to be separated into two broadsides, 43 x 21 cm (reprinted by permission of Brown University, John Hay Library, Broadsides Collection)

4. "A Typographic Discourse for the Distaff Side of Printing, a book by ladies," one part of the piece composed and printed by Jane Grabhorn, Jumbo Press, 1937, San Francisco, 6 3/4" x 9 1/2", printed on 2 sides & folded (Special Collections, San Francisco Public Library, reprinted by permission)

5. "Respond to Violence,"  ©1981 Burning Books, Oakland, California; contemporary political literature (poster in the author's collection, reprinted by permission)

6. "Never," silkscreen, ©1987 Colored Horse Studios, collaboration with artist Bob Ross at the artist's studio in Fort Bragg; art and hand cut silkscreen stencils by Bob Ross; concept & typography by Theresa Whitehill (reprinted by permission)

7. "Guernica," windowshade poem, silkscreen & letterpress; collaboration with poet Joe Smith, poem ©1990 Joe Smith, broadside ©1990 Colored Horse Studios, San Francisco (reprinted by permission)

8. "Late News!" silkscreen & letterpress, poem by Don Shanley, design & printing by Theresa Whitehill, commissioned by Rain Straight Down, collaboration with the Mendocino Art Center, poem © 1985 Don Shanley, broadside ©1985 Rain Straight Down  (reprinted by permission)

9. "Three To Get Ready," poetry & illustration by Theresa Whitehill, silkscreen & letterpress, collaboration with Dancing Fools Press, © 1993 Colored Horse Studios (reprinted by permission)

10. "Greek Song," poem by Joe Smith, silkscreen & letterpress, designed & printed by Theresa Whitehilll at the Gray's Trousers Press of the Mendocino Art Center, poem © 1985 Joe Smith, broadside ©1985 Colored Horse Studios (reprinted by permission)

SOURCES:

Cendrars/Delauney Broadside:

Monica Strauss, "The First Simultaneous Book," Fine Print, Volume 13, No.3, July 1987,

pages 139-140, followed by a fold-out reproduction in color of the full broadside, from the collection of the New York Public Library, as well as a translation of the poem from French into English.

Huntington Library Broadside Notice:

Alan Jutzi, Curator of the Huntington Library Rare Book Department, in a letter to the author dated June 8, 1994, provided the wording of a broadside notice from their exhibit hall

The Chinese and moveable type:

Michael Olmert, "The Smithsonian Book of Books," Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C., © 1992 Smithsonian Institution, pages 64-65 deal with the chinese making type of baked clay between the years 1041 and 1049, and the first Korean type foundry in 1392

Broadsides & Brown University :

Rita H. Warnock, "Broadsides, Yesterday and Today: The Broadside Collection at the John Hay Library," Rhode Island Library Association Bulletin, Volume 65, Number 6, June 1992, pages 1-3

Rita H. Warnock, Curator of the Broadsides Collection of the John Hay Library at Brown University, in a letter to the author dated June 8, 1994, provided additional information about the collection

Broadsides & Jane Grabhorn:

San Francisco Public Library - Information about broadsides in general and Jane Grabhorn in particular was provided by research at the San Francisco Public Library's Special Collections, under the kind direction and assistance of Andrea Grimes, Curator.

Glenn Todd, Editor of the Arion Press, in a letter to the author dated July 5, 1994 , provided the colorful account of Jane Grabhorn's notice of Judy Garland's death

See Colored Horse Broadsides & Books

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