Typewriters

Typewriters: Print On Demand, curated by Angie and Simon Butler, opens at Gallery Space, Bath School of Art & Design this week. To celebrate the typewriter, here's a brief homage to the machines I have typed on in Denmark, Iceland and the UK this year. 

Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck's Mother's Adler (1960?)

Doverodde, Denmark

The Adler at Ord Kraft Festival, Aalborg, April 2013

(note the Danish keys)

The book that Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck and I typed on the Adler - 

which appears in Typewriters: Print On Demand.

Interlude - an Icelandic pencil sharpener

Underwood, Síldarminjasafn, Siglufjörður, Iceland

Not strictly a typewriter...

 but a World Famous 10 Key Calculator

to compile herring tallies.

There's a short history of these calculators here.

And finally, a typewriter from Angie and Simon Butler's own collection ...

the Olympia Splendid 33 (1968)

Angie and Simon brought the Olympia along to World Book Night Dinner in Oxford last spring,

where it was used to make collaborative bookwork, The Secrets of Metahemeralism 

(pictured below). 

The film of the event even includes a typing soundtrack.

Typewriters: Print On Demand

UDKANT, produced in collaboration with the book artist Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck during the Ord Kraft Festival in Aalborg, Denmark last year, has been selected by curators Angie and Simon Butler for inclusion in the exhibition Typewriter: Print On Demand in the Gallery Space at Bath School of Art & Design, UK. There will be lots of exciting typewriter activities to take part in during the exhibition, which runs from 6th to 22nd February.

The Right Tools

I’ve come north equipped with pencils and pens, an assortment of notebooks from many kind friends, and - at the other extreme - a laptop. Between scribbling and typing, I have almost everything I need to work. I could pretend petulance about the frugal internet access, but in truth the isolation is welcome.

So I was amused to read Frederica de Laguna’s account of her sea voyage to Upernavik in 1929 as a young anthropology student accompanying Therkel Mathiassen on the first archaeological survey of Greenland. The excursion has more than a slight flavour of Swallows and Amazons about it, as when ‘Freddy’ describes trying to translate Mathiassen’s article ‘The Question of the Origin of Eskimo Culture’ for American Anthropologist during a heavy swell:

Mathiassen dictates to me, and holds down the typewriter with one hand. The rolling of the ship has made the machine seasick. If it is set crosswise to the roll, every time the boat heaves over, the carriage flies up and shifts into capitals. If the machine is set parallel to the rolling, the carriage sometimes has to go up so steep a hill that it balks. So I have to wait until the ship is leaning over to starboard and then type furiously to make up for lost time, before she begins to swing over onto her other side. And with one hand I grab the typewriter and the edge of the table. It has been interesting work.