A show of hands

The printer’s fist is more properly called a pointer, and to call it a fist is the cant or slang of the printshop, nothing more. It has recently gained a little attention because some academics have confused it with what they call the manicule, a manuscript mark added by readers to supplement understanding, drawn in the margin to point the reader to a pertinent text. The fist though, is a printed piece of type, inserted by the printer at the behest of the author or the publisher, so quite different in application and intent.

Fredric Brewer wrote this piece for the Amalgamated Printers Association back in the 1950s, and we reprinted it to accompany a talk at the Exhibition A Show of Hands curated by Tim Jollands at Bath Spa University, which went on to York University. It is typeset in Poliphilus, an unusual and handsome face originating in the 1490s. It is printed on ledger paper handmade in 1962 and sewn into a newly handmade paper cover from Papeterie St Armand in Canada.

It’s a tiny piece, barely 115 by 90mm, and comes with some ephemeral printing from us to make the weight up to the 100 gram mark.