Good-bye Website(s)

I have just found out that during October Geocities on which our test-bed website Lyons La Foret, a small town in Normandy is hosted will be withdrawing its service. if anybody is intersted, now is the time to have a look.

At the same time the hosting of our other site Garden's of Sussex is looking increasingly problemmatic. The link works for the moment but....

Nothing in this world is constant, but it does seem disappointing that services we were happy to use and in which we invested our time should be withdrawn

Cambridge

Just back from a day in Cambridge where I visited three teams of crack conservators, based at the Colleges Conservation Consortium, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library. All were very generous with their time. It was interesting to see the studios and the fabulous books on which the teams are working. Rather salutary to learn how much work is required to correct poor binding done in the past, some from as recently as the 1950s; books with spines so rigid they will scarcely open wide enough to slip in a finger, let alone read; edges ruthlessly trimmed and so on.

Learning to read

Beautiful and evocative they may be, but old documents are often very difficult to read. Scripts have changed markedly over the years, from the clear elegant capitals of the Romans, to Carolingian miniscule, Blackletter, uncial and so on; eventually arriving at today's seemingly universal scrawl. On top of these changes, clerks used various abbreviations and short-hand forms and of course, many documents are written in medieval latin or french.

An excellent guide to reading such difficult documents is "The Handwriting of English Documents" by L.G. Hector

Old Friends

Over the years the Libre Livre team has built up an amazing network of friends and advisers, and we are enormously grateful for all the help they have given us. We recently heard from one of our oldest letterpress friends, Sharon, who moved to California a couple of years ago where she is doing brilliant work - we hope to bring you details of Sharon's business, website etc in coming days.

It is sad to say that although so many have been helpful and constructive one or two folks of whom we had high expectations have proved disappointing and downright mean. One, for example, with whom we spent hours on the 'phone earlier this year helping sort out various problems has'nt bothered to drop so much as a "thank you". Let's hope their cheeks burn a moment if they read this - I know mine would.

Vandalism at LLL

Over the weekend somebody smashed one of the windows in our workshop. Actually, they didn't just smash it, they must have belted it one, as broken glass stretched 10 feet across the carpet. (Incidentally, one of the first pieces of advice I was given when I started printing was always have a soft flooring in your workshop.)

We would like to record our thanks to Terry, the premises manager of the Star Brewery, who had already replaced the window before we ever saw the damage, then cleared away the shards of glass and re-frosted the new pane. All for a coffee - an interesting contrast to some others to whom we have done good turns in the past who've struggled - and failed - to send so much as a postcard in acknowledgment of our contribution. There are times when you learn who your friends are!