[ilds] Vivian Ridler (1913-2009)

[Marc Piel]

Thank you Charles for this very rich post.
I get a shiver up my spine when I read of people 
who have done so much to make better.
Best regards,
Marc Piel
Paris, France.

Charles Sligh a écrit :
> Lest we forget. . . .
> 
> ****
> Vivian Ridler, CBE, printer and typographer, was born on October 2, 
> 1913. He died on January 11, 2009, aged 95
> ***
> 
>  From The Times
> January 14, 2009
> Vivian Ridler: printer and typographer*
> 
> Vivian Ridler brought to the post of Printer to Oxford University a 
> combination of technical knowledge, design ability and managerial 
> competence unique in the long traditions of university printing. He, 
> more than any other, fulfilled Archbishop Laud’s vision of the 
> University’s Printing House being led by an architypographus (as 
> Chancellor of Oxford, Laud founded the Press in 1633).
> 
> Vivian Hughes Ridler was born in 1913 in Cardiff, but his family moved 
> to Bristol in 1918 when his father became superintendent of Avonmouth 
> Docks. He was brought up there and attended Bristol Grammar School, 
> developing a precocious interest in printing with David Bland (who later 
> became production director at Faber & Faber).
> 
> Together, as a hobby, Ridler and Bland started printing the parish 
> magazine, and then founded the Perpetua Press, named after Eric Gill’s 
> typeface. They were soon undertaking commissions for ephemera for the 
> bookseller and radio producer Douglas Cleverdon, but also for sausage 
> labels. In 1935 their Fifteen Old Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Biddy 
> Darlow, was chosen as one of the 50 best books of the year — a 
> remarkable achievement for such young men. With typical modesty Ridler 
> later said that in its first five years Perpetua “produced several 
> interesting books and a wallpaper which never reached a wall”.
> 
> Meanwhile, he had been apprenticed in 1931 to the company of E. S. & A. 
> Robinson, the packaging printer, but was tempted away to Oxford to be 
> assistant to John Johnson, then the University Printer, who recognised 
> his developing talent as a typographer. Unfortunately, Johnson, though 
> brilliant, was a difficult and eccentric employer. Relations between the 
> two men were not improved when in 1938 Ridler was married to Anne 
> Bradby, secretary to T. S. Eliot at Faber, and niece of Oxford’s London 
> publisher, Humphrey Milford, whom Johnson considered something of a rival.
> 
> Accordingly, Ridler went to manage the Bunhill Press for the Voltaire 
> scholar Theodore Basterman. Ridler then served with the RAF in West 
> Africa and Germany, becoming a squadron leader. On demobilisation he 
> worked as a freelance designer, notably for the Cresset Press, Lund 
> Humphries and Faber (for which he designed two children’s alphabets in 
> 1941). He also redesigned The Burlington Magazine and lectured at the 
> Royal College of Art.
> 
> He subsequently became an examiner in typographic design for the City & 
> Guilds of London Institute, and chaired the printing advisory committee 
> at the College of Art and Technology, now Oxford Brookes University.
> 
> Charles Batey succeeded Johnson as Oxford’s Printer in 1946, and he 
> persuaded Ridler to return to help to reorganise the Press, after its 
> wartime security work, for new challenges of educational printing. One 
> of Ridler’s first responsibilities was to increase productivity in a 
> traditional house based on the highest standards. Simultaneously, he saw 
> the potential of litho printing, and he was the first British printer to 
> use the fine screens for litho reproduction that had been developed in 
> America during the Second World War. He was responsible for the 1951 
> exhibition Printing at Oxford since 1478.
> 
> He became assistant printer in 1949, and succeeded Batey in 1958. His 
> technical competence, impeccable typography and witty turn of phrase, 
> together with a knack of losing his temper only on purpose, had earned 
> everyone’s respect. With a staff of 700, he kept a close eye on the 
> people as well as the books. Usually at his desk by 7.30am, he dealt 
> with much of the post personally, made tours of the factory and was 
> available to staff and customers.
> 
> His typography, in the tradition of the typographer and historian 
> Stanley Morison, showed a mastery of Oxford’s unrivalled resources, and 
> he brought a puckish wit to his work. It was Ridler who designed 
> Morison’s great book on John Fell, the University Press, and the Fell 
> Types. This was a large 275-page folio about 17th-century typography 
> that Ridler agreed to have set at the press in the 17thcentury types 
> themselves, “for the greater honour of Fell and the greater pleasure of 
> the reader”. This meant setting the entire book by hand — a more 
> extensive use of the types than any before in their long history — which 
> produced a book of almost unrivalled typographical beauty and a 
> permanent glory of the Press. As Morison puts it in his preface, Ridler 
> also “lighted upon” a neglected portrait of Fell by John Lely, found in 
> Bristol, which was handsomely reproduced (for the first time) as the 
> frontispiece.
> 
> The Rotz Atlas facsimile for Lord Eccles was one of many fine Roxburghe 
> Club volumes he also printed. The Great Tournament Roll of the College 
> of Arms, completed in 1968, was Oxford’s last use of collotype. The gold 
> was not simulated: it was gold leaf laid by hand.
> 
> However, the main work at Walton Street was the production of academic 
> reference books, schoolbooks and the Bible. Standards were impeccable in 
> those days, with the Printer responsible for layout, copy preparation 
> and proofreading. The printing house record of 15 books in the National 
> Book League annual book production awards is perhaps untouchable. Ridler 
> also designed the Coronation Bible on which the Queen swore her Oath in 
> 1953.
> 
> Mass production fascinated Ridler, whether it was popular dictionaries, 
> Bibles for the British and Foreign Bible Society, or the launch of The 
> New English Bible. He oversaw the change from Monotype hot-metal setting 
> to filmsetting, from letterpress to offset litho, and from sheetfed 
> printing to web offset.
> 
> To accommodate all the new machinery — which was producing ever-larger 
> quantities of books — new factory space was needed. Successive 
> secretaries to the delegates of the Press wisely involved Ridler in 
> appointing architects to work in Walton Street. This led to the arrival 
> of John Fryman. His 100,000 sq ft extension to the printing factory in 
> 1968 was of the greatest integrity, and released a great deal of space 
> around the quad for publishing offices. Fryman said he had never been 
> given a clearer brief than Ridler’s, nor had a more constructive and 
> inspiring client.
> 
> Ridler’s retirement in 1978, the quincentenary year of Oxford printing 
> (which was brilliantly marked, partly through his work) coincided with 
> that of the academic publisher, Dan Davin. The period marked the Press 
> as a whole change from being, in military terms, a crack regiment, to 
> being the equivalent of a competent corps. Ridler left the Printing 
> House profitable but on too narrow a base. He had hinted at a step 
> towards more integration with publishing, as happened successfully at 
> Cambridge, ensuring the survival of the printing house there, but this 
> initiative failed at Oxford.
> 
> The closure of the factory in 1989 — leaving the great publishing house 
> to contract out all of its printing — came as a sad blow to Ridler in 
> his retirement, but he was realistic about the issues. Oxford was by the 
> 1980s a worldwide publisher with astonishingly varied printing needs, 
> and able to resource these worldwide.
> 
> But the closure of the printing business after 400 years should not 
> detract from Ridler’s achievements. A former apprentice had become one 
> of the leading British master printers of the century.
> 
> Despite a hectic working life, Ridler found time for trade associations, 
> being an outstanding president of the British Federation of Master 
> Printers, 1968-69. He was the only university printer to hold this post, 
> and it was unusual for it to be held by a former trade unionist. He was 
> president of the Double Crown Club in 1963. St Edmund Hall elected him a 
> Fellow in 1966. He was appointed CBE in 1971.
> 
> He revived the Perpetua Press imprint in his retirement, partly to print 
> his wife’s poetry. Theirs was a fine pairing of literary, musical, 
> devotional and practical interests. (It surprised some people to realise 
> that, despite their many talents, neither husband nor wife had taken an 
> undergraduate degree.) Perhaps the outstanding Perpetua book was an 
> edition of the 17th-century Poems of William Austin (1983), which had 
> been identified and edited by Anne, and were finely printed by Vivian. 
> There was also a handsome book of the Oxford college graces, and in 1994 
> the press published a volume of verses by Rowan Williams, then the 
> Bishop of Monmouth. The last book published by the Perpetua Press was 
> Anne Ridler’s Memoirs (2004).
> 
> An exhibition of Ridler’s work was mounted on his retirement in the 
> Divinity School at the Bodleian Library. The Ruskin School of Art 
> mounted another to mark his 80th birthday in 1993.
> 
> In December 2008 an exhibition was held in the Bodleian of Christmas 
> cards he had received down the years to honour his 96th Christmas, and 
> the library is establishing an archive called Poet and Printer in honour 
> of Anne and Vivian Ridler.
> 
> Anne Ridler died in 2001. Ridler is survived by their two sons and two 
> daughters.
> 
> Vivian Ridler, CBE, printer and typographer, was born on October 2, 
> 1913. He died on January 11, 2009, aged 95
> 
> 
>