Doves Type

Here at 99PI, we do stories about all kinds of things, stories about architecture,

“about transit, about history, even the occasional sports story.”

But one kind of story that always elicits a huge response from a very

vocal constituency, our stories about type. You guys love stories about fonts and type faces. So a couple months ago, I was having dinner with Helen Salzman and her husband and collaborator Martin Ostwick, and she told me about a story they developed for a live-stage show about an epic feud over a type face of all things.

And I knew I had to get that story on the show. We're talking about two people who set up an artisanal printing press, which was kind of unusual at the time. They were very groundbreaking in their way, and it was also not really something that people did if they didn't already have money.

You might recognize Homes Voice if you like me, our listener, to the illusionist,

or answer me this.

“But this piece is an adaptation of an illusionist live show that Helen and Martin”

did called souvenirs. Here it is. This is the story of the friendship of Thomas Copten-Sanderson and Emory Walker, and of the implosion of that friendship. We know the impact of what they said to each other,

but we don't know their exact words, so Thomas will be performed by the Glockenspiel. And Emory, by violin. Two friends brought together and driven apart by type. Yes, type has imprinted lettering. I'm the narrator, Helen Salzman, and this is our orchestra and chorus, Martin Orstwick.

We find Thomas and Emory in London, in the district of Hammersmith, where their houses were and their workplaces.

We don't know exactly how they first met in the late 1880s,

perhaps in your favourite local pubs, the doves. In a tightly packed bar, you could have bumped into each other. Sorry. That's all right. Maybe one of you bought the other a drink.

You shared a joke. Did all of the getting to know you chat? Where did you grow up?

“Where did you get a good price from the Star Swax these days?”

Who's your favourite Spice girl? The same one. However it happened, sometimes somewhere your friendship was born. Friendship never ends. The Spice girls taught us time.

We'll be each other's right or die until it's time to go. You two ran in the same circles because you shared two major interests, socialist politics and printing. A friend describes you Thomas as "a seeker" all his life. You dealt with depression and often life was hard for you because you really felt things so keenly.

You had been a lawyer, but you became a bookbinder after your wife and he complained that your interests were too abstract. You took to bookbinding very quickly Thomas and were brilliant at it the best in the biz. In 1893, you set up your own bookbinder. The Doves findry, named after your favourite pub, which was two doors along from the binary.

Emory, you had had a difficult childhood. You grew up in poverty and you'd had to leave school aged 13 after your father was blinded by an accident at work, so you needed to earn money for the family. You didn't have much, but you did have some books and you loved them. This led you to a career in typography and in 1886, Emory, you also founded a photo engraving company

capable of unprecedentedly good reproductions of photographs and illustrations, magical for the time, the cutting-est of cutting edges. Both of you Emory and Thomas would big deals in the art and craft of making books. And once you've found each other, you encourage each other in the best friendships you do amplify one another. Shiner light in the mirror, jubber the light.

Thomas once sent Emory a note written in a discarded bookbinding. It said, "Too a perfect friend and imperfect souvenir." These words transform a piece of rubbish into an object with value. Souvenier is French for memory and therefore all souvenirs must be imperfect.

We don't need reminders because you're always near.

“Really near, because Emory lived at number three Hammersmith's terrace,”

and in 1897, Thomas and his family moved into number seven down the street. And half a mile east along the river Thames, Emory rented his business premises from Thomas who worked at his binary next door. So, your work and domestic lives were very close. Even that wasn't close enough, you went on family holidays together at neighbouring cottages. And even that wasn't close enough, after at least a decade of friendship.

In 1899, you decided to take your relationship to the next level. You set up a printing press together. The Dubs press. ♪ The Spinescales taught us so. ♪

♪ We'll be each other's right or down till it's time to go. ♪

♪ We can have them in stone. ♪ ♪ We can cast them in steel. ♪ ♪ What lasts longer than the world. ♪ ♪ Is the way they make you feel. ♪ The Dubs press was born.

“Thomas, you had all this passion for tight design,”

what you called the book beautiful, but you didn't really know anything about printing. And for that, you needed Emory, who knew all about how to set up and run a printing press. A few years earlier, Emory, you'd set up a press with none other than William Morris,

and you helped him design his own tight faces.

William Morris asked you to be his business partner. And you actually turned him down, because you thought he would have been too controlling. But when Thomas asked you to be his partner, you said yes. Emory, you couldn't afford to contribute financially to the business, and Thomas, you didn't have any money of your own,

but your wife Annie was from a wealthy family, so she lent you money to start up the business. 1600 pounds equivalent in today's money to about 250,000 pounds. I know, Thomas, you were so excited. You wrote a letter to your teenage son Dickey about how you'd cleared out the attic at your binder,

to fill with print equipment, and you couldn't wait to sit on a high stool next to your great friend Emory, both printing your hearts out. Were you excited to Emory? Err, nobody had asked you if you wanted to sit on a high stool printing. It's okay though, the two of you have the jewel and the Dubs press's crown,

your own in-house tight face, Dubs tight. Dubs tight was based on a tight face designed by French printer Nicholas Jensen in Venice and the late 1400s, but Thomas and Emory wanted their type to look to the future, not to the past. The ornate printing styles of the time Thomas found unreadable. Dubs press books were to be beautiful in themselves, without illustrations,

without ornamentation. The letters should not be more beautiful than the literature they were forming. We can carve them in stone, we can cast them in steel. What lasts longer than the words is the way they make you feel. The Dubs tight was lorded at the time as Trimmed to a slim gray switch suggests a race horse at the top of its training, with no ounce of superfluous flesh,

but full of spring and life. Ah, people were really horny for tight back then. And the Dubs press began printing books that were received as aesthetically revelatory with their undecorated white margins and text in plain black 16-point Dubs type in live and with graceful but unauthentacious red letters and drawn by the calligrapher Edward Johnston, who went on later to design the iconic typeface

of the London transport system. The Dubs press was a huge influence on typography and book design. When the Dubs press printed Bibles critics said, "Oh, even if you've already got a Bible,

“you have to try these Dubs press Bibles! I don't know, man, they're just so much more,”

Bibles and the other Bibles." These Dubs press Bibles now sell for £45,000. Thomas and Demory brought complementary skills to the Dubs press, Thomas perfectionism, Emory pragmatism. Thomas is all about the art of printing and Emory is all about the business, so it should have been a great success, but Thomas is all about the art of printing and Emory is all

about the business. Things started to go sour almost immediately. Who knows exactly what they said, furious rouse or giving each other the cold shoulder.

Alright, Thomas, yes, you felt you were doing all the work of the printing, I'm the proofreading and Emory was hardly ever there, and didn't respond to your lengthy arguments about the best and in your opinion, only way to design the word of. Oh, yeah, Emory, you did care, but you had a whole other business to run because you had to earn money to live, and you needed to get things done quickly that Thomas liked to spend weeks or months

mumbling over. You were so busy, you never stopped to eat lunch, you'd keep going until dinner,

“which was wine and one large onion. Just a whole onion. Raw? Eat like an apple?”

Also, you were there at the printing press when you could be, and when you did express your opinions about what was being printed, Thomas would respond somewhere between unreceptive and furious. Thomas says Emory has onion breath, but here was the real point of contention. Emory, you always referred to Dahls' "our press", whereas Thomas, you would say, "my press". Ouch! It was only two years between the release of the Spice Girls' first single

wannabe and Jerry leaving the band. Did that feel like longer to you? It did to me, but in

reality it was just under two years, and that was about the amount of time that the Dahls' press had been going before Thomas wanted to break up with Emory, or Emory wanted to break up with Thomas. Have any of you experienced friendship breakups in adulthood? Mine have felt more acutely painful than romantic breakups, and there aren't even songs to soundtrack the predicament. I would the Spice Girls lie. I don't know if there is such a thing as a clean break, but there

is such a thing as a quick break, and this was not it. The Dahls' press officially opened in 1900.

By 1902, Thomas and Emory's friendship was in ruins, but the working partnership didn't officially

end for another seven years. Seven years is the length of time between the Spice Girls going on

“indefinite hiatus, and a reforming for a reunion tour, including Jerry. That's how long it took”

these two just to break up. And during that time, even though you had fallen out and were fighting a lot, you still went on holidays to the cottages that were next door to each other. Why? Why didn't you go somewhere else? Of course, you both didn't see why you should be the one to not go. Yeah, at least we've still got Dahls' right fellas. One of the reasons Thomas and Emory's breakup was so protracted, was because of a battle over who would get custody of the Dahls'

type, which legally belonged to both of them. But Thomas wanted to keep Dahls for his soul use. He didn't want Emory or anyone else to print anything in Dahls, but he didn't control.

“And remember, at this time, type was a physical object or rather thousands of physical objects,”

so you couldn't just make infinite digital copies, and if you didn't have the type, then you didn't have the time. So Thomas offered Emory a small amount of money to relinquish his claim on Dahls. Emory didn't accept. They battled back and forth, back and forth for years. Meanwhile, the Dahls press was financially failing. It was successful in making and selling its beautiful hand-printed books, but hand-printing is not where the big money is. Or where the

small money is. Private printing presses were a rich man's game, and neither Thomas nor Emory was a rich man. Emory wanted to cut the losses and shut down the Dahls press, Thomas disagreed, and banned Emory from the premises. To get some cash to keep the press going, Thomas and his wife and he rented out their home, and he went to stay with her sister, and Thomas moved into the attic of the Dahls press and bindery. Directly above where his

ex-business partner Emory was still working at his photo engraving business in the space he rented

But somehow, late in 1908, they did at last reach a compromise. Thomas, who was a decade older

than Emory, would continue to use the Dahls' tight for the rest of his life, and upon his death, it would become Emory's. So kind of a morbid deal, but it was a deal. In 1909, after seven years of wrangling, the Dahls press partnership was at last declared officially over. And here is where our story turns to, if I can't have you no one will, but make it type. Because the spy skills lied, I'll need you to know I hate you, even after I've died.

Because what did you do Thomas? What did you do? You threw the Dahls tight into the river.

Throwing something away into a body of water sounds spontaneous, doesn't it? Like in a film someone

rips up a photo of their ex and flushes it down the toilet, or they throw their engagement ring into a lake, whereas throwing away a whole tight face was a lot more time and effort.

“For once Thomas, you chose action over abstraction. You planned this. The How long?”

Seven years. Thomas, you were really excited about this, and you're really excited about eventually getting found out. But you waited, you waited long enough to write a 116 page Apple Loja about why you did it. Let's not forget the word Apple Loja does not mean an

apology. It's a defense argument. You were going to publish it too, work your Thomas in 1913,

but you realized it might be incriminating. So, you waited. You waited until you wanted to close down the Dahls press, and until you were printing the last ever Dahls book. And when you were ready, which was one night in August 1916, you waited till dusk. Then you walked the half mile from home to Hammersmith Bridge that spans the River Thames. You crossed towards the south side where the water was deepest, and you threw the tight into the river.

“And this wasn't just a one night thing, because Thomas, how much type can you carry in one go?”

10 or 15 pounds, and how much type was there altogether? At least 2,600 pounds. So, to get rid of 2,600 pounds of metal type, a maximum of 15 pounds at a time means you went to the Bridge how many types? You're a printer not a mathematician. Thank you, Emory. 173. It took Thomas, minimum of 173 trips to throw away all of the Dahls type. Each night you took the latest page of type that you'd finished printing with, and wrapped it up in white paper or put it in a bag or filled your pockets

with it, or your favourite put it into a wooden toolbox with a sliding lid so you could sprinkle it gently off the bridge. You didn't want to make a splash. You didn't want anyone to notice what you were doing. You were scared of being caught. It would be humiliating. It would be a crime because this type was legally promised to Emory, so you would wait until nobody else was around on foot. You would hope for a passing bus or car so the noise would cover any splashes and you

would tip the type into the water. Night to night, page after page. Sometimes Thomas, you messed up, once the boat appeared from under the bridge and you nearly threw the type right into it. Another time, your bundles of type dropped onto a ledge by the feet of the bridge and you were tormented by these two packages can spik your sea wrapped in bright white paper sitting there in full view. What if they gave you a way, someone passing by in a boat might think,

"Oh, what are these?" and open them up and find the famous doves type and all of them there would be the police and the newspapers and the courts and the shame-shown. Twice you started hiring a boat to go to retrieve the packages, but you decided that would be even more conspicuous people on the bridge or on the river. What if it's banks might think,

“"Hey, why is that guy in a boat picking up those packages?" Did he throw a type away?”

You justified your disposal of doves as making a request to the river. But this all took a toll on you. Late summer changed to autumn, changed to winter and night after night, you, a 76-year-old man. Walked a mile round trip through the bitter cold with as much metal as you could carry, metal that you loved so much you must destroy it rather than let it live without you.

you had drowned all the doves.

After closing the doves press, Thomas destroyed all of the records. He said he wanted no history of petty details, only the books themselves. I want the history of petty details, Thomas, and if you hadn't been such a petty details of Fischer Nado, if you hadn't thrown a whole typeface into the river, I wouldn't be talking about you now. I remember you not because of the art and thoughts you added to the world,

“but the thing you took away. Is that really what you wanted? Is that the impression you wanted to leave?”

Thomas, you were feeling your age and the fragility of your health, so you solved everything you could sell. You needed to prepare for the future, your wife Annie had lost so much of her money on the doves press, you wanted something for her to live on after you died and to deal with the legal cost of you having destroyed the doves type. On the 7th of September 1922, Thomas died peacefully in his bed in the attic of the doves binary. And after that, four things happened. What uncountable things happened?

Nearly a decade on, Gulpah is back. My skills have announced that they are reforming for a world tour. Okay, we did the Olympics. Now they're back back back back. But we're going to focus on four things. One, the doves type was of course supposed to become memories upon Thomas's death, so a few days

“after, not technically wrong Emory, but really too soon, you are Danny to hand it over.”

And of course she couldn't because she didn't have it, so you started legal proceedings. However, Annie and Emory didn't fight it out for any way near as long as Thomas had, they settled quite quickly out of court. But that doesn't bring back the doves, or patch up the emotional

damage for either of them. The second thing that happened, Thomas had kept very detailed journals

for his last four decades, and on the fourth anniversary of his death, Annie published them. And there was no mention of Emory. Plenty of detail about which lines of poetry had been printed in witch ink. But no Emory, nothing from all those years where you two hung out together at the socialist meetings and the

“printing scene parties, nothing from all those family holidays and the neighboring cottages,”

nothing from all your good years or all the bad. Emory had been edited out of Thomas's life. Yes, they made it look like you hadn't existed, but their final years were all about you, so they clearly didn't forget you. A whole where Emory used to be is still a memory shaped hole. You take the type away and you've still got the words I made, you take the words away, and you've still got the impression they made.

The third thing that happened, when Annie died four years after Thomas, her and Thomas' ashes were

placed in earns in a wall at the end of their garden, backing onto the river tents. Two years later, the river overflowed, and their ashes were gulped up by the water. Thomas and Annie were reunited with the dubs type that had consumed so much of the last third of their lives. Everything must end. The memories we made. Perhaps the real friends, with the ones we threw away. The fourth thing that happened, Emory, you tried to resurrect

the dubs type. You hired Edward Prince who had cut their original dubs to remake it, but it was too late. By then Edward Prince was in his late 70s, his eyes and hands could no longer do such small, fiddly work to such exact specifications. Or maybe the real problem was, you can't recreate a memory. So dubs type remained drowned and dead for close to a century, until in 2010, type designer Robert Green decided to try remaking it. I'm a freelance graphic designer. I was

in between jobs, and I had nothing to do. I might as well just redraw this typeface. How hard can it be, you know? Famous last words. He researched and drew and re-drew the letters, working off how they appeared on the pages printed by the dubs press. But from those, he couldn't reconstruct the type exactly, because every time the metal meets the page, the ink leaves a slightly different shape on the paper. It's like tracing around coastline. You've got the coastline of the land

when the tide is in and then the tide goes out slightly. After working on it for three years,

It's only going to be an impression of an impression your idealised version of something.

“Robert decided he needed to see the original dubs type for himself, and in 2014,”

he went looking for it in the river dance. And beneath Hammersmith Bridge, at low tide, after only 20 minutes of searching for these tiny pieces of metal, not much thicker than a matchstick, he found a lower case fee, and then an eye. And an e. When you're handling something that nobody's touched for, in this case it was nearly 100 years, it's like for a second time collapses. It did feel like I'd just literally reach

out and quarter as he dropped it. And that's a very strange feeling. Robert returned to the spot with a team of divers, and altogether they found 151 pieces of dubs type. Just a fraction of a full set, but there was enough for Robert to be able to see far more detail of the original letters

“and hone his designs. He added more characters like the outside, they hadn't needed yet in 1900,”

and he made an alternative version of the lower case why, because Emory had always found the

design of the original one, two aggressive. And Robert has released his updated version of dubs for public use, and anyone who buys it can use it for whatever they want. And this is exactly why Colin Sanderson threw it in the river. He didn't want it used for advertising and things that he didn't approve of. He only wanted the finest literature through his lanes of what the finest literature and poetry and philosophy was. He only ever wanted it used for that and nothing else.

And of course, you let it out into the world and people are going to use it for letters to their bank manager. But of course, you put something out into the world. It's not yours anymore. There's nothing you can do about it. Heavy on, even though it's the wrong factors. Passive aggressive signs, posters of live life love. T-shirts for my stack we can, our eternal life for those.

All those tiny monuments to letters dissipate. Impressions of your life. Imperfects to the news. Souvenirs was written performed and produced by Helen's Altzman and Martin Orstwick, with Adrian LeBell on Violin. It was a falling tree production for BBC Radio 4. After the break Helen and I talk about the inspiration behind her live shows.

So we're back with Helen's Altzman and I want to talk to you about this radio piece that's adapted from a live show of the illusionist. And I want you to tell me about the creation of the live show. How you tell stories with music and sound that evolved the audience and how do you think of it differently than when you're creating radio? I suppose because it's very different communicating with a bunch of people in a room versus via the internet. It could be a long time

period between me making something them listening to it, whereas stage is very immediate, but also you can get away with more like you don't have to have as many footnotes I've killed in the stage production. Although I did take care over the factual correctness of this because I hate to be corrected and someone did come to see the show a couple of years ago who works with Robert Green that found the typeface and he said that was very accurate. Nice. And I felt proud.

Yeah. But usually a stage show A starts with a musical idea in my head and B is only written within 36 hours of the first performance. Oh my goodness. Yeah it's horrible. It's really horrible right then. How do I fix myself? It's so bad. And then my husband Martin who plays the music is like

I hate you so much. You always do this and yet I know that he can put it out the bag because it always

“happens. And why was this the rate story to tell in the live context? I can't remember. I had pitched”

to an audio festival resonate in Richmond, Virginia that I wanted to do a stage performance where audience members played characters but using only a sound effect. And I had read about this story

but the more I learned about it the more fascinating I found it. Not really because of the type

but because of the the friendship breakdown they really were very very important friends to each other for more than a decade. And then it was quite a short period during everything fell apart like within two years. And then this immense fallout and the fact that you could hatch a revenge plan that took so many years to execute. I don't have the patience for that. My revenge plan would have to be within 36 or 36 hours. All creation and destruction has to happen within 36 hours.

“Right. I think that's enough time. I mean one of the things that strikes me when you're thinking”

about creating musical accompaniment to a piece is the tantalizing aspect of having these two

different characters who can be personified music kind of like Peter and the Wolf. You know.

That was what I was thinking I had pitched Peter and the Wolf but it's about Edwardian type design. But when I say it starts with a musical idea it's literally me in the shower walking around thinking, oh suddenly a little four line chorus has popped into my head and then if I tweak the words that's where the emotional progression of the piece starts to form so I'm like okay so it starts here and then it gets sadder and then it gets angry and then it gets very weird and that's all just tweaking

a very silly little refrain. Yeah. You know one of the things that struck me most right when I heard it is when you bring in interview tape which happens very late in the piece which normally

for a video piece that happens very early to establish this one's dead in this. Yeah but that's

true. There's some certain fact pattern of the story itself in this us states that it may be the interview tape happens later but you know normally you would interview some historian and their voice would be up top and they would be helping you tell it or something like this like it would be unusual for like 75% of the piece to be your voice in music and then somebody comes in you know and it's really striking itself as almost a piece of music to have the voice come in to me like

I was I was like into it when it found this new gear kind of cool it is I suppose now you explained

“it to me a really strange thing to do and I wonder why I did it but I think partly because documentaries”

have been made about this before yeah with the type designer Robert Green and doing it in that way where it is coming at it from the history of the type and and also these guys have remembered for two things one of which is being friends with William Morris and the other is this type face going in the river but they're not really remembered for other things that they did and for the emotions that I found so compelling yeah so I think for me that was the root rod

than just this happened then and these were the people that they were running around with and blah blah blah yeah not those things aren't important but someone else had already done it right right this is a different level of investigation talk about their emotions on this process but then we only have these sources that have survived so we have a lot of letters and diary entries from Thomas Cobbton's Anderson we have some letters from M-Ray but Thomas has

had typically more control of the narrative because he was just much more prolific and expressing himself and so for a lot of decades people thought M-Ray was the jerk because he hadn't complained as much got it got it there's just a very weird little incidental detail yeah please and something that I found very funny that I would like to investigate further is this is not

“the only typeface disposed of in the river terms there have been several and I think there has”

got to be a better way of disposing of two plus tons of metal it's a lead it seems like that's not where it should go is there a short story of other typeface that ended up in the temps that you know of there was a contemporary of Cobbton's Anderson and Walker called Charles Ricketts who was an illustrator and he had a printing press call the veil press from 1896 to 1904 where upon a fire destroyed all their woodcuts and he and his business colleagues decided to shut it down

and through the type in the river so I don't know if that's where Thomas got the idea from and thought well this would be a nice benediction to the river terms what are my going to do leave it on the curb I can't do that it's it's a good point I mean like throwing things in river is a as a long history of the way in which you dispose things you know you know I mean that's not it's not unusual it's just I think it's unusual it feels unusual when it comes to typeface

it's hard to really understand because the pieces of type of tiny they're like a matchstick thick

“and less long but each of those is two grams sorry don't know what that is in old money and”

and then there's hundreds of thousands of those yeah which really adds up real effort but then again

like where where else could you put it if you really were trying to get rid of it you know like it's

“not like the garbage man comes along it takes it yeah what do you do with two tons of lead”

is just a question that in the 21st century we still struggle to own can you melt it down

and do something else with it do you do Etsy stuff you probably do a lot of Etsy stuff yeah

“well Helen it's all spent some fun to talk to you thank you very much for having me”

our interview with Helen's Ultimate was produced by Jacob Medina Cleason mixed by Martín Gonzalez music by Swan Rial Kathy two is our executive producer Kirk Colstead is the digital director Delaney home was our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube Jason Delion Emmett Fitzgerald Chris for Johnson Vivienne Leigh Lashma Dawn Joe Rosenberg Kelly Prime talent and rain stradley and me Roman Mars the 99% visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence

we are part of the Sirius XM podcast family now headquarters six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland California you can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as around discord server this link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI dot org