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Gerald Giampa: 1950-2009

Reporting on the death of Lanston Type owner and metal/digital type expert Gerald Giampa (1950-2009). On June 24, 2009, Gerald Giampa died in Vancouver of a massive stroke. Several eulogies and obituaries appeared, which are summarized below.

John Hudson: It was in large part due to his generosity and encouragement that I started down the path that led to my career as a type designer. When Ross and I met Gerald, in the early 1990s, the Lanston Type Co. was based in Vancouver and he operated an open-door policy to anyone with a genuine interest in type, even neophytes like us. Gerald had a strong sense of historical continuity in his chosen crafts of printing and type founding. His office space at Lanston, with its memorabilia of Frederic Goudy and other former Lanston associates, embodied this continuity even as it sat next to the room where the Ikarus tablets were used to convert metal type designs into digital fonts. But digitisation was only part of the work going on. New designs were also being developed, notably Jim Rimmer's Albertan. Even then, the Monotype matrix punching and finishing machines were in occasional use, and sometimes one was greeted at the door by the sound of the Heidelberg presses running. By that time though, the customers for hot metal type and for the kind of quality letterpress printing that Gerald offered were few and far between. There was a sense that the kind of work he wanted to do was increasingly difficult to find and to justify financially. A lot of time was available for talking about type and printing, for looking through drawers and specimens, for making plans and, it must be said, for drinking. Gerald made no bones about his alcoholism and, as he explained, treated the wine glass as one more lever on the press, to be pulled in sequence. Colleagues came to visit. Sumner Stone came, and Gerald cut metal patterns of Stone Serif, perhaps the first type designed for a digital medium to be back-engineered for hot metal setting. Dave Farey came to draw new weights for Lanson's Bodoni. It was on the back porch, under the grape vines from which Gerald made his own wine, that I first met Mike Parker, drawn to Vancouver by certain rumours regarding Times New Roman. When Ross and I attended our first ATypI conference, in San Francisco in 1994, it was with introductions to Matthew Carter and Dave Farey, courtesy of Gerald.

P22, where Giampa's Lanston Type ended up recently, writes: Lanston Type's rich history dates back to 1887 when Tolbert Lanston received his first patent for a mechanical typesetting device. Later refinements led to the Monotype casting machine and the emergence of the Lanston Monotype Company as one of the most renowned type supply companies in the world. The Monotype caster was revolutionary and along with other automated typesetting machines helped to usher in a new age of printing technology. Typesetting had, until this time, remained the same as Gutenberg's first hand-set movable type.

In the late 1800s, Tolbert Lanston licensed his technology to an English sister company and became a major international force. Lanston grew rapidly with America's pre-eminent type designer, Frederic Goudy, holding the position of art director from 1920-1947. The Philadelphia-based Lanston Monotype eventually parted ways with its English counterpart. English Monotype became simply known as Monotype from that time forth. Lanston was acquired by American Type Founders in 1969. After a series of other owners, the company found its way to master printer Gerald Giampa, who moved it to Prince Edward Island in 1988. During its time of transition, Lanston continued supplying the American market for monotype hot metal type needs until January 21, 2000, when the majority of Lanston's machinery and historical records were tragically destroyed by a tidal wave.

Giampa was one of the earliest developers of PostScript fonts. After the loss, he focused on digitization to an even greater extent. Under his stewardship, Lanston's classic typefaces were digitized in a style that was true to the sources, which are the brass and lead patterns from which the metal type was made. The past few years have seen Giampa and Lanston travel from Canada to Finland, and back again. In late 2004, Lanston has completed another journey back to the United States to come under the care of a new steward: P22 type foundry. Giampa is answering the call of the sea. He has traded his type founder's hat for that of a ship's captain to sail the northern Pacific coast. During his shore leaves, Giampa continues to act as typographic consultant to Lanston-P22.

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