Unidentified - Introduction Page - unknown - T-Shirt

This is a typeset introduction page: a cream sheet of printed text, framed by plain margins, that opens a larger work of printed matter.

Visual Elements & Composition

Cream dominates the design, filling most of the field with a warm, paper-like tone. Small gray areas are the only other colour, and they sit quietly against the page. The layout is a single rectangular page built from type rather than pictures. A heading reading Introduction leads the page, followed by a short paragraph describing ten faculty members of the Pratt Graphics Center, each represented by a recent print. Beneath that, a name and title, DONALD H. KARSHAN, President, Museum of Graphic Art, New York, closes the text block.

Meaning & Symbolism

An introduction page marks the threshold between the outside world and the work itself. Here the text is a foreword to a printmaking portfolio, so the page announces the artists and their prints before any image appears. The restraint of the layout, with no ornament beyond the type itself, signals a scholarly and formal tone. The page belongs to the 1970s and to the practice of printmaking, where a portfolio's foreword introduced the makers and the institution behind them. The original artwork is an anonymous typeset leaf, and its exact origin is not recorded in the catalogue data.

Shaped for the Chest

A printed text page reads best at a comfortable distance, and a tee carries it at chest height, where the block of type can be taken in at a glance. The cream field gives the shirt a quiet, bookish presence, and the wearer becomes the page's reader, opening the portfolio every time they put it on.