THE OLD SCHOOL PRESS

Moments in the making of The Colours of Rome.

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A pile of pristine paper

Having chosen the paper some time back, I can place the order from John Purcell: I know how many copies there will be in the edition and I add some for wastage, end-papers, etc. (In fact I had also made a dummy of the entire book on my PC using a digital Dante so I was confident of how many pages the book would make, to the nearest four pages.) The paper has to come from the Magnani mill in Italy, just 800 sheets. I don’t have a guillotine so Purcell cut it for me: the paper is halved and then the two facing deckle edges are removed – this allows me to get the registration right when the sheets go on the press. I decided that I wouldn’t keep the deckle edges. Sometimes they can be nice but on a soft paper they can get grubby and tatty very quickly so when the book comes to be bound I shall have all the edges trimmed. 1,600 cut sheets arrive on a pallet and are stored next to the press.