Doves Type

A legendary typeface, a spectacular friendship breakup, and one extremely committed act of revenge.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built-in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds, because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love,

• 0:43Roman Mars?

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• 1:03Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible is presented by Acura. Curating and designing the perfect experience takes meticulous craft, an obsession with detail, and a love for innovation. Just like museum designers, Acura carefully considers every detail to curate the most engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers. That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel, that flutter in your heart, the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

• 1:49Roman Mars?

  Here at 99PI, we do stories about all kinds of things. Stories about architecture, about transit, about history, even the occasional sports story. But one kind of story that always elicits a huge response from a very vocal constituency are stories about type. You guys love stories about fonts and typefaces. So a couple of months ago, I was having dinner with Helen Zaltman and her husband and collaborator, Martin Ostwick. And she told me about a story they developed for a live stage show about an epic feud over a typeface, of all things. And I knew I had to get that story on the show.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  We're talking about two people who set up an artisanal printing press, which was kind of unusual at the time. They were very groundbreaking in their way. And it was also not really something that people did if they didn't already have money.

• 2:43Roman Mars?

  You might recognize Helen's voice if you, like me, are a listener to The Illusionist or answer me this. But this piece is an adaptation of an Illusionist live show that Helen and Martin did called Souvenirs. Here it is.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  This is the story of the friendship of Thomas Cobden Sanderson and Emery Walker, and of the implosion of that friendship. We know the impact of what they said to each other, but we don't know their exact words. So Thomas will be performed by the Glock and Spiel.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And Emery by violin.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Two friends brought together and driven apart by type. Yes, type as in printed lettering. I'm the narrator Helen Zaltman, and this is our orchestra and chorus, Martin Ostwick.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Type means the design, the way that letters look, and the little bits of metal that print words in a book.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  We find Thomas and Emery in London, in the district of Hammersmith, where their houses were and their workplaces. We don't know exactly how they first met in the late 1880s. Perhaps in your favorite local pub, The Dove's. In a tightly-packed bar, you could have bumped into each other. Sorry. That's all right.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Maybe one of you bought the other a drink.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  You shared a joke.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Did all the getting-to-know-you chat. Where did you grow up? Where'd you get a good price on moustache wax these days? Who's your favorite Spice Girl?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  The same one. However it happened, sometime, somewhere, your friendship was born.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Friendship never ends. The Spice Girls taught us so. We'll be each other's ride or die until it's time to go.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  You two ran in the same circles because you shared two major interests: socialist politics and printing. A friend describes you, Thomas, as "a seeker all his life." You dealt with depression, and often life was hard for you because you really felt things so keenly. You had been a lawyer, but you became a bookbinder after your wife, Annie, complained that your interests were too abstract. You took to bookbinding very quickly, Thomas, and were brilliant at it, the best in the biz. In 1893, you set up your own bookbinding, The Dove's Binding, named after your favorite pub, which was two doors along from the binding. Emery, you had had a difficult childhood. You grew up in poverty,

• 5:43Speaker 01

  and you'd had to leave school aged 13 after your father was blinded by an accident at work, so you needed to earn money for the family. You didn't have much, but you did have some books, and you loved them. This led you to a career in typography. And in 1886, Emery, you also founded a photo-engraving company capable of unprecedentedly good reproductions of photographs and illustrations, magical for the time, the cuttingest of cutting edges. Both of you, Emery and Thomas, were big deals in the art and craft of making books. And once you found each other, you encouraged each other. In the best friendships, you do amplify one another. Shine a light in the mirror, double the light.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Thomas once sent Emery a note written in a discarded bookbinding. It said, "To a perfect friend, an imperfect souvenir." These words transform a piece of rubbish into an object with value. Souvenir is French for memory. And therefore, all souvenirs must be imperfect.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  To a perfect friend, an imperfect souvenir. We don't need reminders because you're always near.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Really near, because Emery lived at number three Hammersmith Terrace. And in 1897, Thomas and his family moved into number seven down the street. And half a mile east along the River Thames, Emery rented his business premises from Thomas, who worked at his binding next door. So your work and domestic lives were very close. Even that wasn't close enough. You went on family holidays together at neighboring cottages. And even that wasn't close enough. After at least a decade of friendship, in 1899, you decided to take your relationship to the next level. You set up a printing press together. The Dove's Press.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Friendship never ends. The Spice Girls taught us so. We'll be each other's ride or die until it's time to go. We can carve them in stone. We can cast them in steel. What lasts longer than the words is the way they make you feel.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  The Dove's Press was born. Thomas, you had all this passion for type design, what you called "the book beautiful", but you didn't really know anything about printing. And for that, you needed Emery, who knew all about how to set up and run a printing press. A few years earlier, Emery, you'd set up a press with none other than William Morris, and you helped him design his own typefaces. William Morris asked you to be his business partner, and you actually turned him down because you thought he would have been too controlling.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  But when Thomas asked you to be his partner, you said yes. Emery, you couldn't afford to contribute financially to the business. And Thomas, you didn't have any money of your own, but your wife, Annie, was from a wealthy family, so she lent you money to start up the business. 1,600 pounds, equivalent in today's money to about 250,000 pounds.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  I know, Thomas, you were so excited. You wrote a letter to your teenage son, Dicky, about how you'd cleared out the attic at your bindery to fill with print equipment, and you couldn't wait to sit on a high stool next to your great friend, Emery, both printing your hearts out. Were you excited too, Emery? Ah, nobody had asked you if you wanted to sit on a high stool, printing. It's okay, though. The two of you had the jewel in the Dove's presses crown, your own in-house typeface, Dove's Type. Dove's Type was based on a typeface designed by French printer Nicholas Jensen in Venice in the late 1400s. But Thomas and Emery wanted their type to look to the future, not to the past.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  The ornate printing styles of the time, Thomas found unreadable. Dove's Press books were to be beautiful in themselves, without illustrations, without ornamentation. The letters should not be more beautiful than the literature they were forming.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  We can carve them in stone. We can cast them in steel. What lasts longer than the words is the way they make you feel.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  The Dove's Type was lauded at the time as "trimmed to a slim grace which suggests a racehorse at the top of its training, with no ounce of superfluous flesh, but full of spring and life." Wow, people were really horny for type back then. And the Dove's Press began printing books that were received as aesthetically revelatory, with their undecorated white margins and text in plain black 16-point Dove's Type, enlivened with graceful but unostentatious red letters, hand-drawn by the calligrapher Edward Johnston, who went on later to design the iconic typeface of the London transport system. The Dove's Press was a huge influence on typography and book design. When the Dove's Press printed bibles,

• 11:06Speaker 01

  critics said, "Ooh, even if you've already got a Bible, you have to try these Dove's Press bibles. I don't know, man, they're just so much more bibly than the other bibles." These Dove's Press bibles now sell for £45,000. Thomas and Emery brought complementary skills to the Dove's Press. Thomas, perfectionism; Emery, pragmatism. Thomas is all about the art of printing, and Emery is all about the business. So it should have been a great success. But Thomas is all about the art of printing, and Emery is all about the business. Things started to go sour almost immediately. Who knows exactly what they said?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Furious rows, or... giving each other the cold shoulder? Thomas and Emery, you were not on the same page. All right, Thomas, yes, you felt you were doing all the work of the printing and the proofreading, and Emery was hardly ever there and didn't respond to your lengthy arguments about the best and, in your opinion, only way to design the word "of".

• 12:20Speaker 02

  You were a perfect friend, but now I despair. Of still looks all wrong to me, and you still don't care.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Emery, you did care, but you had a whole other business to run because you had to earn money to live, and you needed to get things done quickly that Thomas liked to spend weeks or months mulling over. You were so busy, you'd never stop to eat lunch. You'd keep going until dinner, which was wine and one large onion. Just a whole onion? Raw? Eaten like an apple? Also, you were there at the printing press when you could be, and when you did express your opinions about what was being printed, Thomas would respond somewhere between unreceptive and furious. Thomas says, "Emery has onion breath." But here was the real point of contention.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Emery, you always referred to Dove's as "our press", whereas Thomas, you would say "my press". Ouch. It was only two years between the release of The Spice Girls' first single, "Wannabe", and Jerry leaving the band. Did that feel like longer to you? It did to me, but in reality, it was just under two years. And that was about the amount of time that the Dove's Press had been going before Thomas wanted to break up with Emery or Emery wanted to break up with Thomas. Have any of you experienced friendship breakups in adulthood? Mine have felt more acutely painful than romantic breakups, and there aren't even songs to soundtrack the predicament.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Friendship never ends.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Why would The Spice Girls lie?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  We thought we'd be each other's pal until one of us dies.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I don't know if there is such a thing as a clean break, but there is such a thing as a quick break, and this was not it. The Dove's Press officially opened in 1900. By 1902, Thomas and Emery's friendship was in ruins, but the working partnership didn't officially end for another seven years. Seven years is the length of time between The Spice Girls going on indefinite hiatus and reforming for a reunion tour, including Jerry. That's how long it took these two just to break up. And during that time, even though you had fallen out and were fighting a lot, you still went on holidays to the cottages that were next door to each other. Why? Why didn't you go somewhere else? Of course, you both didn't see

• 15:06Speaker 01

  why you should be the one to not go.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Friendship never ends, except for when it does. It hurts worse than gallstones, but at least we've still got Dove's.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, at least we've still got Dove's, right, fellas? One of the reasons Thomas and Emery's breakup was so protracted was because of a battle over who would get custody of the Dove's Type, which legally belonged to both of them. But Thomas wanted to keep Dove's for his sole use. He didn't want Emery or anyone else to print anything in Dove's that he didn't control. And remember, at this time, type was a physical object, or rather, thousands of physical objects. So you couldn't just make infinite digital copies. And if you didn't have the type, then you didn't have the type. So Thomas offered Emery a small amount of money to relinquish his claim on Dove's.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Emery didn't accept. They battled back and forth, back and forth, for years. Meanwhile, the Dove's Press was financially failing. It was successful in making and selling its beautiful, hand-printed books, but hand-printing is not where the big money is, or where the small money is. Private printing presses were a rich man's game, and neither Thomas nor Emery was a rich man. Emery wanted to cut the losses and shut down the Dove's Press. Thomas disagreed and banned Emery from the premises. To get some cash to keep the press going, Thomas and his wife, Annie, rented out their home. Annie went to stay with her sister, and Thomas moved into the attic of the Dove's Press and Bindery,

• 16:54Speaker 01

  directly above where his ex-business partner, Emery, was still working at his photo-engraving business in the space he rented from Thomas. Things started to get so ugly between Thomas and Emery, court proceedings began. But somehow, late in 1908, they did at last reach a compromise. Thomas, who was a decade older than Emery, would continue to use the Dove's Type for the rest of his life, and upon his death, it would become Emery's. It's a kind of a morbid deal, but it was a deal. In 1909, after seven years of wrangling, the Dove's Press partnership was, at last, declared officially over. And here is where our story turns to,

• 17:38Speaker 01

  "If I can't have you, no one will, but make it type."

• 17:42Speaker 02

  When our friendship ends because The Spice Girls lied, I'll need you to know I hate you, even after I've died.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Because what did you do, Thomas? What did you do? You threw the Dove's Type into the river. Throwing something away into a body of water sounds spontaneous, doesn't it? Like in a film, someone rips up a photo of their ex and flushes it down the toilet, or they throw their engagement ring into a lake. Whereas throwing away a whole typeface was a lot more time and effort. For once, Thomas, you chose action over abstraction. You planned this for how long?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Seven years.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Thomas, you were really excited about this and you were really excited about eventually getting found out. But you waited, you waited long enough to write a 116-page apologia about why you did it. Let's not forget, the word apologia does not mean an apology, it's a defence argument. You were going to publish it too, weren't you, Thomas, in 1913? But you realised it might be incriminating. So you waited. You waited until you wanted to close down the Doves Press and until you were printing the last ever Doves book. And when you were ready, which was one night in August 1916, you waited till dusk.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Then you walked the half-mile from home to Hammersmith Bridge that spans the River Thames. You crossed towards the south side, where the water was deepest, and you threw the type into the river. And this wasn't just a one-night thing, because, Thomas, how much type can you carry in one go? £10 or £15? And how much type was there altogether? At least £2,600. So, to get rid of £2,600 of metal type, a maximum of £15 at a time, means you went to the bridge how many times? You're a printer, not a mathematician. Thank you, Emery. 173.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It took Thomas a minimum of 173 trips to throw away all of the Doves type. Each night, you took the latest page of type that you'd finished printing with and wrapped it up in white paper, or put it in a bag, or filled your pockets with it, or, your favourite, put it into a wooden toolbox with a sliding lid so you could sprinkle it gently off the bridge. You didn't want to make a splash, you didn't want anyone to notice what you were doing, you were scared of being caught, it would be humiliating, it would be a crime, because this type was legally promised to Emery. So you would wait until nobody else was around on foot, you would hope for a passing bus or car so the noise would cover any splashes, and you would tip the type into the water.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Night after night, page after page. Sometimes, Thomas, you messed up. Once, a boat appeared from under the bridge and you nearly threw the type right into it. Another time, your bundles of type dropped onto a ledge by the feet of the bridge and you were tormented by these two packages conspicuously wrapped in bright white paper, sitting there in full view. What if they gave you away? Someone passing by in a boat might think, "Ew, what are these?", and open them up and find the famous Doves type, and oh, then there would be the police and the newspapers and the courts and the shame. The shame. The shame. Twice, you started hiring a boat to go to retrieve the packages, but you decided

• 21:28Speaker 01

  that would be even more conspicuous. People on the bridge or on the river or its banks might think, "Hey, why is that guy in a boat picking up those packages? Did he throw a type away?" Officer! You justified your disposal of Doves as making a bequest to the river. But this all took a toll on you. Late summer changed to autumn, changed to winter, and night after night, you, a 76-year-old man, walked a mile round trip through the bitter cold with as much metal as you could carry, metal that you loved so much you must destroy it rather than let it live without you. For five months, you kept making your trips to the bridge, and by the end of January

• 22:11Speaker 01

  1917, you had drowned all the Doves.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Melt down the steel.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Grind down the stone.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  There's nothing left except dust and rust and bone.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  After closing the Doves Press, Thomas destroyed all of the records. He said he wanted "no history of petty details, only the books themselves". "I want the history of petty details, Thomas, and if you hadn't been such a petty details aficionado, if you hadn't thrown a whole typeface into the river, I wouldn't be talking about you now. I remember you not because of the art and thoughts you added to the world, but the thing you took away. Is that really what you wanted? Is that the impression you wanted to leave?"

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Thomas, you were feeling your age and the fragility of your health, so you sold everything you could sell. You needed to prepare for the future. Your wife, Annie, had lost so much of her money on the Doves Press, you wanted something for her to live on after you died and to deal with the legal costs of you having destroyed the Doves type. On the 7th of September 1922, Thomas died peacefully in his bed in the attic of the Doves Bindery. And after that, four things happened, or uncountable things happened.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Nearly a decade on, girl power is back.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  My girls have announced that they are reforming for a world tour.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  Okay, we did the Olympics. Now they're back, back, back.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  We're going to be performing all of our hits. But we're going to focus on four things. One, the Doves type was, of course, supposed to become Emery's upon Thomas's death, so a few days after, not technically wrong, Emery, but really too soon, you asked Annie to hand it over. And of course, she couldn't, because she didn't have it, so you started legal proceedings. However, Annie and Emery didn't fight it out for anywhere near as long as Thomas had, they settled quite quickly out of court. But that doesn't bring back the Doves, or patch up the emotional damage for either of them. The second thing that happened, Thomas had kept very detailed journals for his last four decades, and on the fourth anniversary of his death, Annie published them.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And there was no mention of Emery.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Plenty of detail about which lines of poetry had been printed in which ink, but no, Emery, nothing from all those years where you two hung out together at the socialist meetings and the printing scene parties, nothing from all those family holidays in the neighbouring cottages, nothing from all your good years or all the bad. Emery had been edited out of Thomas's life.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yes, they made it look like you hadn't existed, but their final years were all about you, so they clearly didn't forget you. A hole where a memory used to be is still a memory-shaped hole. You take the type away and you've still got the words it made. You take the words away and you've still got the impression they made.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  The third thing that happened, when Annie died, four years after Thomas, her and Thomas's ashes were placed in urns in a wall at the end of their garden, backing onto the River Thames. Two years later, the river overflowed and their ashes were gulped up by the water. Thomas and Annie were reunited with the Doves type that had consumed so much of the last third of their lives.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Everything must end, the memories we made. Perhaps the real friends were the ones we threw away.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  The fourth thing that happened, Emery, you tried to resurrect the Doves type. You hired Edward Prince, who had cut the original Doves, to remake it, but it was too late. By then, Edward Prince was in his late 70s, his eyes and hands could no longer do such small, fiddly work to such exact specifications. Or maybe the real problem was, you can't recreate a memory.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  So Doves type remained drowned and dead for close to a century, until, in 2010, type designer Robert Green decided to try remaking it.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  I'm a freelance graphic designer, I was in between jobs and I had nothing to do, I might as well just redraw this typeface. How hard can it be, you know? Famous last words.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  He researched and drew and redrew the letters, working off how they appeared on the pages printed by the Doves Press. But from those, he couldn't reconstruct the type exactly, because every time the metal meets the page, the ink leaves a slightly different shape on the paper.

• 26:58Speaker 06

  It's like tracing around coastline. You've got the coastline of the land when the tide is in, and then the tide goes out slightly.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  After working on it for three years, Robert released a digital version of Doves type, but he wasn't all that satisfied with it.

• 27:14Speaker 06

  It's only going to be an impression of an impression, your idealised version of something.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Robert decided he needed to see the original Doves type for himself, and in 2014, he went looking for it in the River Thames. And beneath Hammersmith Bridge, at low tide, after only 20 minutes of searching for these tiny pieces of metal not much thicker than a matchstick, he found a lowercase "v", and then an "i", and an "e".

• 27:49Speaker 06

  When you're handling something that nobody's touched for, in this case, it was nearly 100 years, it's like for a second, time collapses. It did feel like I just literally reached out and caught it as it dropped it. And that's a very strange feeling.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Robert returned to the spot with a team of divers, and altogether, they found 151 pieces of Doves type. Just a fraction of a full set, but there was enough for Robert to be able to see far more detail of the original letters and hone his designs. He added more characters, like the at sign they hadn't needed yet in 1900, and he made an alternative version of the lowercase "y", because Emery had always found the design of the original one too aggressive. And Robert has released his updated version of Doves for public use, and anyone who buys it can use it for whatever they want.

• 28:48Speaker 06

  And this is exactly why Codman Sanderson threw it in the river. He didn't want it used for advertising and things that he didn't approve of, he only wanted the finest literature through his lens of what the finest literature and poetry and philosophy was. You know, he only ever wanted it used for that and nothing else. And of course, you let it out into the world and people are going to use it for letters to their bank manager. But of course, you put something out into the world, it's not yours anymore, there's nothing you can do about it.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  So sorry, Thomas. We can now print what we want. Keep calm and carry on, even though it's the wrong far. Passive aggressive signs, posters of live, laugh, love. T-shirts for my stag weekend, our eternal life for dust.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  All those tiny monuments to let us disappear. Impressions of your lives in perfect souvenirs.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Souvenirs was written, performed and produced by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick with Adrian Lebel on violin. It was a Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

• 30:29Roman Mars?

  After the break, Helen and I talk about the inspiration behind her live shows.

• 30:35Roman Mars?

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built-in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are, and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 31:39Roman Mars?

  Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds, because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states.

• 32:09Roman Mars?

  This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. Some design was made to be seen by all, like, for example, the seven wonders of the world. I mean, everyone should see those. While some were made to be less seen, like sewer systems. Like, when was the last time you thought about an aqueduct? Yet that doesn't mean they're any less impressive. You could say the same thing about PNC Bank's smart, calculated approach to banking. It won't make for flashy headlines or trends on social media, but it'll make the right money moves that'll help set you up for the successful financial future you're looking for. A design everyone can get behind. PNC Bank. Brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, PNC Bank, National Association, Member FDIC.

• 32:53Roman Mars?

  So we're back with Helen Zaltzman, and I want to talk to you about this radio piece that's adapted from a live show of The Illusionist. And I want you to tell me about the creation of the live show, how you tell stories with music and sound that involve the audience, and how do you think of it differently than when you're creating radio?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  I suppose because it's very different communicating with a bunch of people in a room versus via the internet over, it could be a long time period between me making something, them listening to it, whereas stage is very immediate, but also you can get away with more. Like, you don't have to have as many footnotes that I fill in a stage production. Although, I did take care over the factual correctness of this, because I hate to be corrected. And someone did come to see the show a couple of years ago who works with Robert Green that found the typeface, and he said that was very accurate.

• 33:43Roman Mars?

  Nice.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And I felt proud. Yeah. But usually a stage show, A, starts with a musical idea in my head, and B, is only written within 36 hours of the first performance.

• 33:54Roman Mars?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's horrible. It's really horrible, Roman. How do I fix myself? It's so bad. And then my husband, Martin, who plays the music, is like, I hate you so much. You always do this. And yet I know that he can pull it out of the bag because it always happens.

• 34:08Roman Mars?

  And why was this the right story to tell in the live context?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  I can't remember. I had pitched to an audio festival, Resonate, in Richmond, Virginia, that I wanted to do a stage performance where audience members played characters but using only a sound effect. And I had read about this story around the same time in just at this obscure mail-out. But I don't know why I put the two together. But the more I learnt about it, the more fascinating I found it, not really because of the type, but because of the friendship breakdown. They really were very, very important friends to each other for more than a decade. And then it was quite a short period during which everything fell apart, like, within two years. And then this immense fallout

• 34:55Speaker 01

  and the fact that you could hatch a revenge plan that took so many years to execute. I don't have the patience for that. My revenge plan would have to be within 36 hours.

• 35:03Roman Mars?

  36 hours. All creation and destruction has to happen within 36 hours.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Right. I think that's enough time.

• 35:13Roman Mars?

  I mean, one of the things that strikes me when you're thinking about creating musical accompaniment to a piece is the tantalizing aspect of having these two different characters who can be personified in music, kind of like Peter and the Wolf, you know?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  That was what I was thinking. I had pitched Peter and the Wolf, but it's about Edwardian type design. But when I say it starts with a musical idea, it's literally me in the shower, walking around, thinking, oh, suddenly a little four-line chorus has popped into my head. And then if I tweak the words, that's where the emotional progression of the piece starts to form. Because I'm like, okay, so it starts here, and then it gets sadder, and then it gets angry, and then it gets very weird.

• 35:59Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  And that's all just tweaking a very silly little refrain.

• 36:03Roman Mars?

  Yeah. You know, one of the things that struck me most when I heard it is when you bring in interview tape, which happens very late in the piece, which normally for a radio piece, that happens very early to establish that this-

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but pretty much everyone's dead in this.

• 36:19Roman Mars?

  Yeah, that's true. There's a certain fact pattern of the story itself necessitates that maybe the interview tape happens later. But, you know, normally you would interview some historian and their voice would be up top and they would be helping you tell it or something like this. Like, it would be unusual for like 75% of the piece to be your voice and music, and then somebody comes in, you know, and it's really striking itself as almost a piece of music to have the voice come in to me. Like, I was like into it when it found this new gear, kind of.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. It is, I suppose, now you explained it to me, a really strange thing to do, and I wonder why I did it. But I think partly because documentaries have been made about this before.

• 37:10Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  With the type designer, Robert Green, and doing it in that way where it is coming at it from the history of the type. And also, these guys are remembered for two things, one of which is being friends with William Morris, and the other is this typeface going in the river. But they're not really remembered for other things that they did and for the emotions that I found so compelling.

• 37:36Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  So I think for me, that was the root, rather than just, this happened then, and these were the people that they were running around with, and blah, blah, blah.

• 37:43Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Not that those things aren't important, but someone else had already done it.

• 37:46Roman Mars?

  Right, right. It's a different level of investigation to talk about their emotions in this process.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  But then we only have these sources that have survived. So we have a lot of letters and diary entries from Thomas Copton Sanderson. We have some letters from Emery, but Thomas has had typically more control of the narrative because he was just much more prolific in expressing himself. And so for a lot of decades, people thought Emery was the jerk because he hadn't complained as much.

• 38:12Roman Mars?

  Got it, got it.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  There's just a very weird little incidental detail.

• 38:17Roman Mars?

  Yeah, please.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  And something that I found very funny that I would like to investigate further is, this is not the only typeface disposed of in the River Thames. There have been several, and I think there has got to be a better way of disposing of two-plus tons of metal. It's lead. It seems like that's not where it should go.

• 38:38Roman Mars?

  Is there a short story of other typefaces that ended up in the Thames that you know of?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  There was a contemporary of Copton Sanderson and Walker called Charles Ricketts, who was an illustrator, and he had a printing press called the Vale Press from 1896 to 1904, whereupon a fire destroyed all their woodcuts, and he and his business colleagues decided to shut it down and threw the type in the river.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  So I don't know if that's where Thomas got the idea from and thought, well, this will be a nice benediction to the River Thames. Whether he thought, what am I going to do? Leave it on the curb? I can't do that.

• 39:14Roman Mars?

  It's a good point. I mean, like, throwing things in river is a long history of the way in which you dispose things. You know what I mean? That's not, it's not unusual. It's just, I think it's unusual. It feels unusual when it comes to typefaces, I think.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yes, because it is such a huge thing and so much effort. This is, it's so heavy.

• 39:33Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  It's hard to really understand because the pieces of type are tiny. They're like a matchstick thick and less long, but each of those is two grams. Sorry, I don't know what that is in old money. And then there's hundreds of thousands of those.

• 39:47Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Which really adds up.

• 39:49Roman Mars?

  Real, real effort. But then again, like, where else could you put it if you really were trying to get rid of it? You know, like, it's not like the garbage man comes along and takes it.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. What do you do with two tons of lead is just a question that in the 21st century, we still struggle to answer.

• 40:04Roman Mars?

  That's true.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Can you melt it down and do something else with it? Do Etsy stuff?

• 40:10Roman Mars?

  You'd probably do a lot of Etsy stuff.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:15Roman Mars?

  Well, Helen Zaltzman, it's been fun to talk to you.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 40:24Roman Mars?

  Our interview with Helen Zaltman was produced by Jacob Medina Gleason, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real. Kathy Tu is our executive producer, Kirk Colstead is the digital director, Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laish Madon, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Talon and Rain Stradly, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our own Discord server, there's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI

• 41:08Roman Mars?

  at 99pi.org.

• 41:16Roman Mars?

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