A Printer’s Apprentice
A Typographic Memoir by Juan Pascoe
Juan Pascoe’s story begins in the nineteenth century like a novel:
“My English great-grandfather, James Pascoe, was born in Cornwall...” But this is a true, unique story of an American-Mexican fine printer with English ancestry grafted onto a sturdy, Quixotically Protestant Mexican lineage, leaving Juan with two languages and not much other capital. Through the luck of becoming apprenticed to Harry Duncan, one of America’s greatest handpress printers, Juan found his way as a man of books, and of his making of beautiful books (and posters, broadsheets, catalogues, cards, etc.) and jarocho music (as a founding member of Grupo Mono Blanco) there is no end. Great printers were active in Mexico in the sixteenth century long before Anglo-European printing presses had arrived in New England, and Juan’s work continues in that great tradition. Juan’s narrative quickly establishes him as a master prose stylist, like Duncan, and as printers they are also equals, in my opinion, having worked with both. His dual identity as American and Mexican gives this compelling memoir a topical appeal beyond that of hand-press printing or poetry. —John Ridland
The lithograph used here and on the front cover is from Los niños
pintados por ellos mismos, by Don Manuel Benito Aguirre, Mexico City, published by Vicente García Torres in 1843.
208 pages, 6 × 9 inches, hardcover, set in Espinosa Nova and printed digitally in black and red throughout. $55
Inquiries to bradley@letterpress.com