Under flickering fluorescent lights are cabinets with many
thin drawers. The labels on them read “Helvetica” and “Garamond.” Here,
in the dank bowels of a building on Granville Street, the Dawson
collection is housed in more than a thousand of these drawers. Each
holds various type—little metal or wood letters that have to be
arranged on a press, ink rolled over them and pressed onto paper. This
is how printing was done before the digital era. Dawson’s unique
collection of type is one of the largest in Canada, and perhaps North
America.
Above, on street level, is the Dawson Printshop, which used to be
one of the only commercial letterpress print shops in Halifax. Many
large old printing presses litter the shop. Some are very rare, like
the Vandercook Universal II proof press sitting behind the counter in
the main area.
However, due to cost cutting by NSCAD University, the Dawson ceased
operations as a commercial enterprise on April 30.
The Dawson was closed after only 10 months. Not nearly long enough
for a small business to prove itself, says former co-manager Vincent
Perez. “We experienced quite a bit of growth within those 10
months…In our last month of operations, we must have been making 10
times what we were in our first month.”
After the closure, Perez moved back home to Ontario.
Perez admits the Dawson wasn’t yet profitable, but he says they were
well on the way. “I did some finished projections that saw us as
profitable within, not this year, but perhaps the year after this
one.”
You might have seen some of Dawson’s work around the city. They
printed a lot of posters, and the cover of local arts magazine, Her
Royal Majesty.
Harriet Lye, the editor of Her Royal Majesty, says that
despite letterpress printing being more costly and time-consuming than
digital printing—500 covers took 10 hours of labour—the quality of
the work is worth it.
“Each [cover was] done by hand and… [Perez] had such a particular
and really meticulous attention to detail. Watching him work, he would
make sure everything was absolutely perfect, to the hair’s
breadth.”
The Dawson will continue to be used by NSCAD as a classroom, but
Perez is unsure of how well that will work, considering there is no
technician to take care of the Dawson collection and to train people to
use the presses. The closure resulted in the staff of three being let
go.
Several concerned NSCAD faculty wrote a letter telling the
administration that the Dawson Printshop and type collection needs a
technician.
Paul Maher, a NSCAD design faculty member, says, “It’s a library,
but it’s a library with no staff…People come and take and borrow and
return, so the onus is really on the user to put things back in a way
that other people can find it, which obviously would be untenable in a
library, but we just don’t have any other option at this stage.”
Perez says a technician is mandatory to “take care of this
collection that was generously donated to them, that’s rare, completely
unique and that needs maintenance and guardianship… The school has to
recognize that it’s a resource that needs care.”
Linda Hutchison, director of university relations, alumni &
development, confirms that the Dawson was closed as a cost-cutting
measure. When asked if NSCAD would hire a technician, she says she
doesn’t know. “We’re not sure when we can reopen the Dawson. We
certainly hope to, when the economic climate improves. It’s a wonderful
opportunity to show and display the letterpress work that’s created in
the Dawson. I personally love it.”
When asked about NSCAD’s current debt and whether it’s related to
the building of the school’s waterfront Port Campus, which opened two
years ago, Hutchison says, “That’s not a question I’m prepared to
answer.”
But still the Dawson continues to kick, over a month after its
death. Former technician Niko Silvester says she’s still taking on the
odd job. “Most of them at the moment are jobs that people had inquired
about before the shop closed, and I don’t want to just say, ‘Sorry, go
away, we’re closed now.'”
She’s frustrated, “because we were just starting to get things
going…our client list was starting to build up…and each month we
were doing a little bit better.”
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2009.
This is such a shame! I’m a type-nerd who thinks letterpress is AWESOME. It sounds like this printshop really had some charm and history. Is there any way that we can protest this? Or show our support?
i volunteered at the Dawson Print Shop for a while and I gotta say it’s a real gem. this is one of the unknown treasures of Halifax and the type collection is not only vast but full of some really interesting typefaces. in a digital world such rarities should be embraced, not closed down.
This is a pathetic move by NSCAD. I was very frustrated by the school while attending and it’s situations like this that on reconfirm my concern about the modernity and relevance this school has to the rest of the word. I think is was a very bad move on NSCAD’s part and they are loosing the support and the confidence of many people involved with the school and it’s community. What state is this school in if it can’t even support a productive and potentially profitable venture like the Dawson Printshop? How much money was spent on transporting the materials and building the shop up just for it to be shut down 10 months later?
Not only that but they have a responsibility to machines and type they house. They are a part of history and must be maintained. The thought that there might not be a technician for the printshop and it will still be used for classes (ie. student access) is appalling.
It is interesting to read of the lament for the loss of a fiscally unsuccessful commercial enterprise. It’s not GMC, but perhaps it’s just a matter of scale considering it happened in Halifax. It seems to me that the facility is still
there, and available for use by registered students as part of their tuition, and by general public for a fee. But if I may lament some of the good old days of the Dawson Printshop, read on.
For the few years before NSCAD absorbed the collection of presses, type and sundry equipment, I worked in the “old” Dawson printshop (back in the bowels of Dalhousie University’s Killam Library–as a volunteer. Everyone working in the printshop or bindery was volunteering their time, knowledge, skill and chocolate. We frequently learned from each other, new book binding structures and techniques, rediscovered cases of printing ornaments, hell boxes and printer’s devils, and even esoteric arts like performing the kettle stitch and the making of superior paste.
My own path during these late halcyon days took me through several courses of bookbinding into the ink-and-solvent permeated atmosphere of the printshop proper to which I took readily. Synthesizing the skills acquired in the bindery and the printshop, I managed to design, produce and publish two limited letterpress editions; one of which has done surprisingly well.
As implied by current correspondents, I too felt a kind of reverence–not too strong a word at all–for the printshop, its own history as well as the history it represents regarding getting the word out to the people. It is not an uncommon malaise; onset is rapid and the only certain cure is permanent removal of the subject from the afflicting environment. I spent entire days down there, sometimes 10-12 hours, particularly when I was working on a book project. It helped that I had been awarded a key to the room, of well-patinated brass, appreciation for which was demonstrated by assisting with the maintenance of the
facility. I certainly was not alone in that; indeed, I know I have never met the entire cast of characters that played upon that inky stage, and I hope some of these others will also offer up their concerns and snippets of history.
With regards to the present printshop predicament, maybe it would be prudent to re-vision the intent and spirit from which it arose over 40 years ago, one based not on return-on-investment strategies, but simply in outreach, sharing knowledge and volunteerism. How to accommodate that faced with current financial trials? There are flourishing, functioning models of success in many places in North America and Europe that may suggest how to go. Meanwhile, it seems a reasonable notion now to invite the “old” Dawson people back–things kept going for 5 decades, so something was done right. I would welcome the opportunity to participate in discussing a realizable future of this excellent facility. And if the art college feels it needs to downsize the collection, I’d like dibs on that vandercook uni II!
Ron Fritz
peregrino press
Dartmouth
There is no other place in Halifax that offers the type of work that the Dawson did. I wonder is there are any entrepreneurial spirits working in NSCAD’s head offices nowadays. They are so worried about losing more money that they won’t take any chances. This is not how one goes about becoming a cutting edge art school.