How the world’s old printing presses are being brought back to life

A FEW YEARS ago Russell Maret, a New York artist, found himself puzzling over a question. In the 1920s and 1930s some preindustrial fonts were revived by Stanley Morison, a great British typographer. They transformed the quality of book-printing. But in the process of reviving them, Morison changed them. When he created the Poliphilus font from the great printer Aldus Manutius’s edition of “The Dream of Poliphilus” (1499), for instance, he corrected the alignment.

Mr Maret is critical of these corrections. “Aldus’s types weren’t misaligned because he was some old-timey printer. He was getting exactly what he wanted.” Was it, Mr Maret wondered, the inherent technological limitations of the early 20th century that led the revivalists to want to standardise old typefaces? Or some broader mechanical mindset?