The Bieler Press

Contact information

2007-11-21T18:32:00.000-08:00

Gerald Lange
The Bieler Press
4216-1/4 Glencoe Avenue
Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Typographic and production services

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The Bieler Press specializes in exploratory project-based services and techniques for print production. We provide fine typographic composition, high quality letterpress printing, and precise restoration of printed images and letterforms.

Letterpress digital services and materials

2007-11-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

Photopolymer platemaking: The Bieler Press has provided photopolymer platemaking service to the contemporary studio letterpress community since 1995. We offer professionally processed premium-grade plates for today’s popular bases (Bunting, Patmag, Boxcar, Eluminum) with fast SAME DAY turn-around at competitive pricing. For further details go to Photopolymer Platemaking Service.

Bunting magnetic bases: The Bieler Press is a manufacturing representative and distributor of the industry standard Bunting Magnetic Cerface™ Flat Base for Bunting Magnetics Co. The crème de la crème.

Monograph on photopolymer platemaking and letterpress printing with digital type: The Bieler Press is the publisher of Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press, the definitive manual on letterpress printing with the photopolymer plate process. First published in 1998, it is currently in its fourth edition.

Letterpress Instruction [ Spring / Summer 2012 ]

2007-11-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

Contemporary Studio Letterpress
Art Center College of Design, Archetype Press,
South Campus. Sponsored by Art Center at Night.
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena
14 weeks. Tuesday night, 7–10.
January 17 – April 17, 2012 / Summer schedule not yet available.

Digital Letterpress
Otis College of Art and Design, Otis Lab Press,
Goldsmith Campus. Sponsored by Otis Continuing Education.
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles (Westchester)
10 weeks. Saturday afternoon, 1:30–4:30.
February 4 – April 7, 2012 / June 2 – August 4, 2012.

Introduction to Letterpress
Otis College of Art and Design, Otis Lab Press,
Goldsmith Campus. Sponsored by Otis Continuing Education.
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles (Westchester)
10 weeks. Thursday night, 7–10.
February 9 – April 12, 2012 / June 7 – August 9, 2012.

Project-Based Studio Letterpress
Otis College of Art and Design, Otis Lab Press,
Goldsmith Campus. Sponsored by Otis Continuing Education.
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles (Westchester)
10 weeks. Sunday afternoon, 1:30–4:30.
February 5 – April 8, 2012 / Not scheduled for the Summer session.

An online group site Subiaco serves as a referential component to these instructional venues. Currently enrolled students should sign up for membership as the site contains syllabi, handouts, recommended textbook listings, posted announcements, and other resources, including equipment and materials for sale.

Bieler Press Publications & Production

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Descriptions of selected titles can be found on the separately linked pages at Fine Press Limited Editions. Current activity and recent work includes:

The Nefertiti-Tut Express: A Story in Screenplay by Ray Bradbury, illustrations by Gary Gianni. The RAS Press, 2012 [forthcoming].

Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press. Gerald Lange. E-book edition [forthcoming, 2012]. Bieler Press Monographs.

Aaron Horkey Retrospective Letterpress Series: Suites 1–2, 2010–11. Dead Arts Publishing.

Press proofs of herbal woodcuts from Pierandrea Mattioli’s Commentaires on the Six Books of Dioscorides [1563/1565]. 2010. The Bieler Press.

Claudius Fraktur. Typeface specimen. 2010. The Bieler Press.

Dead Man. Aaron Horkey. 2009. Dead Arts Publishing.

the new god. Gerald Lange. 2009. Ophelia Press.

Non Libri Sed Liberi. Kenneth Grahame. 2009. The Bieler Press.

Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press. Gerald Lange. 2009 [4th edition]. Bieler Press Monographs.

Biographical sketch

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Gerald Lange is the proprietor and founder (1975) of The Bieler Press, a small printing and publishing firm specializing in studio letterpress, typographic design, and the publication of finely-printed limited edition books and related matter.

In 2005, Lange was chosen to present the Eighth Annual Stephen A. Kanter Lecture on California Fine Printing at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. In 1991, he was selected as the first recipient of the prestigious Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. His publications have also won awards from the Type Directors Club, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Chicago Book Clinic.

In 1985, the University of Minnesota established The Bieler Press Archival Materials Collection to provide and maintain historical documentation of the Press. In support of his early endeavors, Lange was awarded five assistance grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation.

Lange has written extensively on typography and the book arts, contributing articles for publications such as Parenthesis (FPBA), book art object (CODEX), Ampersand (PCBA), Printing History (APHA), Guild of Book Workers Newsletter, Counter, Serif, Bookways, and The Typographer. In 2007, he was selected to present a paper on contemporary typography for the 32nd Annual Conference of the American Printing History Association. Lange's self-published monograph, Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press, is in its fourth edition.

Lange provides instruction at Art Center College of Design (since 2000) and Otis College of Art and Design (since 1997). From 1986 to 1993, he was Master Printer at the USC Fine Arts Press. While at the University of Southern California, he was also editor of the scholarly journal Coranto. Lange has also taught workshops/coursework for California Institute of the Arts, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Master classes), Scripps College (Frederic W. Goudy Workshops), Kent State University (Blossom Visual Communication Design Workshop), University of Minnesota, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

From 1990 to 1996, Lange was editor of AbraCadaBrA, the Journal of the Alliance for Contemporary Book Arts, an organization he co-founded in 1987. He was Chairman of the Fine Press Book Association (NA) from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, he founded PPLetterpress, an online forum on investigative, exploratory, and alternative printing and typographic techniques.

Exhibitions of Bieler Press work include California Printers in the Fine Press Tradition, 1975–2006, Stanford University, 2007; Master Printers, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery/Barnsdall Park, 2006; Books & Books, Otis College of Art + Design, 2005; Matter & Spirit: The Genesis and Evolution of the Book, Wells College Book Arts Center, 2004; Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing, New York Public Library, 2003.

Institutional collections of Bieler Press work include The British Library, University of California, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, New York Public Library, Princeton University, Stanford University, Victoria and Albert Museum, Yale University.

Notices & miscellany

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A book review by Gerald Lange of the Ninja Press publication The Persephones was published in the Autumn 2010 “California” issue of Parenthesis: The Journal of the Fine Press Book Association.

During the TypeCon2010: Babel conference in Los Angeles (August, 2010), Gerald Lange conducted a workshop on digital letterpress at the Otis Laboratory Press.

“Gerald Lange, typographer & printer” was the first interview for Three Questions, May, 2010.

An article, “My Ten Favorite Fine Press Books” by Richard Goodman, that references The Bieler Press production of Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, appeared in Fine Books & Collections: 2009 Compendium. Goodman’s previous writing on the work of the Press can be found in the May/June, 2006, issue of Fine Books & Collections Magazine.

Gerald Lange's essay “The Key to the Survival of the Book” was published in book art object, The Codex Foundation, Berkeley, 2008.

A paper, “Aldus is, after all, the Prevailing Model—the Beginning and the End: Fine Press Book Printing in the Twenty-First Century,” was presented by Lange at the 32nd Annual Conference of the American Printing History Association Conference, October 2007. A synopsis of the talk, by Jennifer Schaffner, can be found in the Winter, 2008 issue of the APHA Newsletter (Number 165).

In September, 2007, “Letterpress: A New Era? An Interview With Gerald Lange,” was published in Galley Gab: A Monthly Online Publication Devoted to Letterpress Printing; in May, Lange's article “Letterpress Mon Amour” appeared.

An article by Lange, “Cristal Reconstructed: A Digital Letterform Remade for Letterpress Printing” was published in Parenthesis: The Journal of the Fine Press Book Association, August, 2007.

An essay, “Thinking in solid air,” by Steve Rigley, that references Lange’s concern for contemporary letterpress and the photopolymer plate process was published in eye: the international review of graphic design in Autumn of 2005.

The Aldine Press Special Offer

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The Aldine Press: Catalogue of the Ahmanson-Murphy Collection of books by or relating to the Press in the Library of the University of California, Los Angeles; incorporating works recorded elsewhere.

This massive tome is the culmination of a four-year project; containing some 1,370 quasi-facsimile bibliographic descriptions of the printed work (1495–1589) of Aldus Manutius, his heirs, and related material. It includes a lengthy introductory essay (by editor Nicolas Barker), illustrative matter (378 typefaces, printer’s devices, and reconstructed watermarks), and referential information (tables, concordance, and indexes).

The typographic design and composition for The Aldine Press were provided by Gerald Lange of The Bieler Press. The book was digitally composed in Manutius – a singularly unique typeface containing an unprecedented set of roman and Greek letterforms common to printing and orthographic practices of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – specially designed for the project by Matthew Carter.

The typographic considerations involved in the production of this book were detailed in an article by Gerald Lange in Printing History: the Journal of the American Printing History Association, 2001.

Published by the University of California Press in 2001. Printed on Mohawk Superfine, an acid-free paper, in an edition consisting of 425 copies. The book measures 9 by 12 inches (with cloth covered slipcase). 673 pages. ISBN 0-520-22993-2. LC 00-064851.

Out-of-print from publisher; retailed at $495. We have a limited number of these available in unopened box discounted to $450 with free domestic shipping.