[ilds] Vivian Ridler (1913-2009)

[richardpin at eircom.net]

As many will be aware, Anne Ridler, in addition to being LD's editor at Faber for some time, was also the recipient of his (unpublished) novela 'Magnetic ISland', purchased (I think) before her death by SUIC and written up in Deus Loci (and sicussed at OMG Cincinati) by the then Special Collections librarian, Shelley Cox.
RP
----- "Charles Sligh" <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu> wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
> 
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