I

t was a no-brainer.
A mutual acquaintance introduced 
Michigan artist Lynne Avadenka to 
a Cleveland-based artist who had come 
into possession of a beautiful collection of 
antique wood Hebrew type, saving it from 
being broken up and sold in pieces. But 
he didn’t need it. Did she want it?
Avadenka, who lives in Huntington 
Woods and has a studio in nearby 
Berkley, didn’t hesitate. Now she’s looking 
forward to exploring what she can do 
with her new letters.
Avadenka has made a specialty of creat-
ing letterpress prints using Hebrew type. 
She says she was inspired to learn about 
early Hebrew printing and, subsequently, 
Jewish women’s participation in it, by a 
verse from Exodus (14:17): “Write this 

down as a remembrance in a record …”
For centuries, letterpress was what most 
of us thought of when we envisioned 
“printing.” 
Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 devel-
oped a method of creating individual 
letters and setting them in a frame so 
that multiple impressions of a page 
could be made quickly. (Moveable type 
was invented in China around the same 
time.)
Three-dimensional letters and other 
characters were cast from lead or carved 
from wood. The letters were stored in 
a case (an upper case for capital letters 
and a lower case for the others). The 
letters were formed backwards, and the 
typesetter — who would have to mind 
his or her p’s and q’s, which could easily 

be confused — would put the letters 
into a rectangular form, with spacers in 
between. The form was inked and paper 
was pressed onto the form, leaving a 
mirror-image of the type on the paper.
Hand-set type was used for newspa-
pers, magazines and books until the 
development of the linotype machine in 
the late 1800s. And hand-set type con-
tinued to be used for invitations, ads, 
posters and more until being supersed-
ed by computers and offset printing.
Now hand-set metal and wood type is 
used primarily by artists like Avadenka, 
who plans to use her new type in her 
work as a way to honor those who 
helped create the earliest printed 
Hebrew and Yiddish books.
When the first printed Hebrew books 

38 | JUNE 22 • 2023 

Lynne Avadenka in her studio.

ARTS&LIFE
ART

‘Handy 
 Works’

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Hebrew type is the inspiration for 
Lynne Avadenka’s art.

