Jan Tschichold wrote ”Clay in the Potter’s Hand” in late 1948 for The Penrose Annual. It has been reprinted in various other forms in the years since and is included in The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design. This pamphlet version was printed on letterpress in 1992 by Engdahl Typography in Vineburg, California. I bought this lovely copy from RIT Press. It is difficult to excerpt such a short essay, but I can’t help imagining what the typesetter thought as he composed Tschichold’s last lines:
“The knowledge that he is rendering an anonymous service to valuable works, and to a small number of optically sensitive people, is as a rule the only reward for the typographer’s long and never-ending apprenticeship.”
