Porter Garnett "Philosophical Writings on the Ideal Book" Compiled by Jack Stauffacher, published by the Book Club of California, 1994

The colophon of a private press book which was completed in Pittsburgh on this date in 1926 reads:

Here endeth (paradoxically) ‘That Endeth Never,’ written by Hildegarde Planner as a gift for Porter Garnett and now embellished and put into type by him, at the Laboratory Press, for her and a few of their common and uncommon friends. Printed on a hand press, with prayer & song, by his faithful students, Joseph Arnold Foster & George Earl Sheer. Finished on the twenty-eighth day of February MDCCCCXXVI.”

The manuscript of this book was a gift, and the printed copies were to be gifts. For these reasons and also because it was completed in the fifty-fifth year of his life and was the first to be set in type completely by his own hand, Porter Garnett expressed the wish that “no copy of this book shall ever be bought, sold or bartered.”

The volume thus epitomizes the pure private press tradition along with the ideals of its printer. While it is surprising that after three years of teaching the course in fine printing at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Porter Garnett had previously set no type, he most certainly inspired his students to do so. Their work at the Laboratory Press represents a definite contribution to the history of fine printing in the United States. While some of the student projects reproduced were examples of a preciosity beyond the years and experience of student printers, they represented in all instances first-rate craftsmanship in their execution.

Garnett’s idealism in the teaching of the craft of printing was under constant attack by elements of the printing industry during his tenure in Pittsburgh. Nevertheless he continued along the path he had set for himself in 1922 when his course had first been projected. In the Documentary Account of the Beginnings of the Laboratory Press, published in 1927 “as an exercise in the technique of book printing,” Garnett presented what he considered to be the reason for being of the press. In his introduction to the book, Garnett asked, “Will the students wish most to give or to get; to serve mankind or to exploit it?”