The machines are great to look at. Imagine Thunderbird 2 meets iPad and you’ve got the idea. I’m told a minder could look after three machines from her smartphone whilst sitting in the café upstairs mulling over a latte and sharing her views on sales and management (only the last part happens now).

Essentially, the process is similar to ink-jet but the ink particles are considerably smaller. The image (in up to eight colours) is sprayed onto a hot moving blanket, the water (which carries the pigments) evaporates and the incredibly thin image is transferred, dry, to the substrate. It can print onto anything (paper, plastic, metal etc) and in a sheet fed press will run at speeds of up to 10,000 sheets per hour. Well that’s fighting talk alright and, if they deliver, it could well become the dominant process. So far, Komori, Roland and Heidelberg have signed up to make presses. Pay over a $10,000 deposit and a machine arrives mid-2013.

No set-off, no rub, no dot gain, vibrant colour, any paper, variable data and two B1 sheets a second. Exciting times.

[Of all the Westerham Press 'regulars', Charles was a favourite. He remains an inspiration to me today with his astonishing ability to create image and colour from nothing. I saw him clamber onto multi-colour offset presses and smear new inks across the rollers that somehow managed to create just the right colour, I watched as he drew in crayon onto four blank offset plates which, when run on the press, made one of his typical illustrations in perfect registration and perfect colour – who could do that now? and, perhaps more importantly, who knows you can even do it at all? FA]

DCC, Dinner 148

For some forty years Charles Mozley strode into printers demanding, in his deep gravel voice, they stop whatever they happened to be doing and concentrate on his latest project. In passing through the factory he would look over any work that happened to catch his eye and make appropriate informed suggestions. For example, ‘change the paper’, ‘rubbish’ (if work by Barnett Freedman, or Francis Bacon or others to whom he had taken a quite irrational dislike), ‘let me do it – move over’ – ‘get out of the way!’ A man of enormous talent, his contribution to the graphic arts was immense. He was a fund of original thinking. Book jackets, book illustrations, posters and all kinds of follies would be perfected and improved by Charles using anything from a cigarette end to a felt pen for his work. Stories about him are legendary. Painting, was particularly dear to his heart, and he was talented and prolific at it. His contribution to the Westerham Press was enormous, from the Limited Editions Club of New York and the City Music Society to witty but savage cartoons of his eminent contemporaries. But he towered as a book illustrator, particularly his portrayal, or rather betrayal of Noel Streatfeild in various autobiographies! Ellic Howe, George Rainbird, Berthold Wolpe, Lord Goodman, Ted Gowin, Cyril Sweett, Max Rayne, Will Carter and many others were his constant characters in menus and other jobbing work. Charles had a very short fuse: there was a memorable occasion when somebody at Faber’s had the audacity to suggest that his book jacket pictured an episode that could not be found in the book, to which he replied that he was not paid enough money to read the book as well.An early work of interest was the reproduction of a painting by Charles Mozley of Palace House, the residence of Lord Montague of Beaulieu, in full colour. Printed by Len Turley on the Heidelberg [cylinder letterpress] in fine style, this rather splendid reproduction some 12” x 18” and, on instructions from Charles, was delivered to New York. A great row ensued as the prints were required in the UK and not in the USA, but in the meantime Lord Montague had other things on his mind, so we had a year to get them back. This was not to be the last of Charles’ ‘misunderstandings’.

Illustration for 'Gran Nannie' by Noel Streatfeild

Perhaps the most impressive and technically advanced book we produced was the volume Elles – Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, for Leonard Russell of the Sunday Times with a specially written introduction by Michael Melot. This was to be a limited edition of 1250 copies, mainly facsimile reproductions of the work of Toulouse Lautrec. Eleven plates were reproduced. The reproductions were to be the same size as the originals. Duncan MacIntyre was responsible for the then advanced technology used in the reproduction of the illustrations [they were printed ‘screenless’ by exposing a continuous tone negative directly onto the grain of a litho plate]. Charles Mozley, as a most gifted autolithographer, moved in on the act and made a major contribution to the virtual perfection that was achieved. Even the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris were impressed but faintly irritated by such a British achievement. The book was designed in the Press under the eye of Leonard Russell.

Cover of 'Elles'

The choice of paper was critical and it was decided to get the paper from the mill that had, at the time, made paper for Toulouse Lautrec himself – Papeteries de Lana at Docelles. Sandy Jackson, another great and knowledgeable character of the time, working for the Hale Paper Company, located the paper mill and said he would take us there to choose the paper. Charles Mozley insisted on driving us in his car, with Sandy Jackson and me as passengers. When we got to Dover, Sandy said that he had reserved three cabins and, on boarding the vessel, he demanded to be taken them. There were no beds made up and we were told that they were surprised by the reservation as the vessel having unloaded its passengers would return to Dover at midnight. Charles Mozley then addressed the ship’s officer, who was guiding us, and said ‘I want to see the Purser’, adding sotto voce, ‘you can always bribe the purser on British Rail ferries’, to which the officer replied ‘I am the Purser’. So 1.15am saw us on the quayside in Calais, very cold as it was February, with nowhere to stay. After some heated argument, we decided to drive on to the paper mill at Docelles, some 370 miles away.

On arrival at Docelles we then discovered another difficulty. The mill manager refused to speak English (he had been sunk at Oran) and would speak to us only in Russian. Charles spoke German, which only increased the tension. Eventually a retired English family nanny was produced as interpreter and this compromise got us admitted to the mill, which offered a wide selection of suitable and interesting papers. This having been settled and orders placed, we returned to a café for accommodation and dinner and planned to return to the UK the next morning. The proprietor of the café had a most attractive young wife and Charles insisted on producing some very fine and lurid sketches of her. A great row ensued over this and I retired to my room and locked the door and passed a peaceful night. The next morning we set off for home. There was a dispute as to the amount of petrol in the tank of Charles’ car and inevitably, in due course, we ran out of petrol on a lonely road in northern France. I had bought a special bottle of Marc de Bourgogne and Charles insisted on pouring this into the petrol tank of the car and surprisingly, to my irritation, this got us to a petrol station. It also irreparably damaged the engine. In due course we arrived back at Silversted, my house, and Charles, still in a rage, engaged the wrong gear and ran full tilt into the house and so damaged the car that it was a write-off. The car was a Humber Snipe and thereafter he became a devoted Jaguar driver.

Duncan MacIntyre printed the plates on a single colour Harris offset press and the book was bound by Bob Moody at the Wigmore Bindery. Copies are very rare today and the technology used in the colour printing was never matched again.

Robert Harling

Robert Harling for a long period has had an outstanding and innovative influence on design and typography. He created the types Playbill, Chisel, Tea Chest, Key Board and others for Stephenson Blake. He edited without doubt probably the most important typographic magazines of this century, Typography, Alphabet & Image and then Image. His series of books published by Art and Technics, his collaboration with that most distinguished of printers James Shand, has exerted a profound influence over the industry for many years. He was responsible for re-designing The Sunday Times and subsequently guided its layout. His experience with design, printing and the Royal Navy enabled him to write a series of successful novels with accurate and informed backgrounds. His influence on the graphic arts is only matched by his grasp of essentials of design and his modesty.

Alphabet & Image – postwar

He was a distinguished art director of a London agency when advertising agencies had distinguished art directors. He was editor of House and Garden for many years.

He refused to have anything to do with the Double Crown Club because he would not go anywhere where there were no women and when finally women were admitted to the DCC complained that he was not masochistic enough to attend let alone read a paper. His book Trio, an essay on Stanley Morison, Francis Meynell and Oliver Simon, remains unpublished while he re-writes it for the fourth time. His book on Eric Gill is still the definitive work on Gill’s alphabets. Critical of Johnston’s Sans, he is preparing a text on Sans faces in general and examining with a critical eye Johnston’s original allegedly flawed design and its recent revival. He was a constant visitor and most weekends he and his wife Phoebe gave lunch or dinner parties at their home, The Glebe House, where wide-ranging discussions with his visitors were much enjoyed.

Letter Forms and Type Designs of Eric Gill title page

He has been a major influence in the graphic arts all of his life.