The composing stick, made up of bed, rail, knee and clamp, is a true extension of the human hand, allowing individual letters of type to be held in place and to measure as the compositor forms words, sentences, paragraphs. Nineteenth-century printing giant Theodore Low De Vinne, known for his advances in productivity and cost efficiency, conceded that ‘Expert compositors own their own sticks and rules, and will use no other. They get used to their size, weight and feeling, and say that they can do more work with them than with other sticks and rules apparently as good.’ This loyalty is in the pursuit of craft, an implicit partnership between man and stick in service of the work.

Which is why it’s so galling that none of my sticks have matching knees, or that the micrometer (‘probably the greatest single advance in stick history’) seems faulty, or that my favourite stick was inadvertently left behind in Cleveland. A good craftsman never lends nor blames her tools, but it’s impossible for me not to look longingly at page 943 of the 1923 ATF Specimen Book and Catalogue, wishing I could order a stick brand-new.

Instead, I make do with a Rouse Standard Job Stick (serial number E5522.) The sound of type dropping into the stick is of rhythmic, small, quiet clicks; there is pleasure in spacing out a line evenly, thinking about the space between a final w and a beginning v. My hand reaches for a letter, feels for the nick, places it next to the letter that came before. My fingers know the difference between 10 and 12 point, the thickness of a brass as compared to a copper. The stick lies in my palm, my thumb resting on the lines as they grow. I am lucky in this instance to be right-handed; left-handed sticks being as elusive as unicorns. Sometimes, at this speed, I’ll see something in my writing that I want to change. Printers call this ‘writing in the stick’.

I have another favourite stick, though it remains ornamental. A Buckeye Stick, made by Chandler & Price and named after Ohio’s state tree, it was a gift from Eric May when I first established Idlewild Press in Cleveland in 2000. (It sits on display next to Eric’s old Ohio licence plate—LTRPRES.) Noel Riefel gave me my copy of Martin K. Speckter’s Disquisition on the Composing Stick (The Typophiles, Inc., New York, 1971.) In it, Speckter writes that the relationship between a printer and his composing stick is,

an intimacy transcending that of almost any other graphic arts implement. The printer’s press, no matter how small, is too large, too heavy, too ponderous to evoke personal sentiment. Pieces of type, although they may be admired for the beauty of their forms and the perfection with which they perform their intended functions, exist in too huge abundance to be loved; one may derive pleasure from the beach, but who can cherish each grain of sand?