# Commissions

These prompts are finished and paste-ready for an image model; accept results with `press art accept <file> --as <target>`.

## Cover

Target aspect: 2:3 portrait (trim unset in config/metadata.yaml, so the house default 6 x 9 in trim applies; the same uncropped file serves the EPUB cover and landing page).

```
A book's front board only, viewed perfectly straight-on: a flat plate, no perspective, no 3D mockup, no spine, no page edges, no drop shadow, no background. The board is Victorian publisher's bookcloth: a solid field of bright Giants orange, PANTONE Orange 021, vivid and saturated, with a fine woven cloth grain, everything on it stamped in metallic gold foil as if by a brass die on an offset press, the metallic ink slightly impressed into the cloth and catching light. Around the whole board runs a ruled gilt border: two concentric thin gold rules close together, with a small gilt fleuron at each inner corner.

All text is gilt-stamped, centered, in stacked letterpress capitals, and must read EXACTLY as quoted below, letter for letter, including every comma, semicolon, apostrophe, and the period after the title. In reading order, top to bottom:

1. At the top, the title, largest, in wide-spaced capitals on one line:
MAKE READY.

2. Beneath the title, a thin gilt rule, then the subtitle in much smaller centered capitals, set as three stacked clauses, one per line group:
OR, A PRINTER'S MANUAL FOR THE AGE OF MECHANICAL COMPOSITORS;
OR, HOW ONE PERSON AND SEVERAL TIRELESS MACHINES MAY KEEP A SMALL PRESS HONEST;
OR, WHY EVERY PAGE DESERVES A WITNESS THAT COULD HAVE SAID NO

3. In the center of the board, below the subtitle, the emblem (described below), with clear cloth margin around it.

4. Low on the board, near the bottom rule, small and quiet, in modest centered capitals:
CLINT ECKER

The central emblem is a single gilt-stamped oval medallion in the manner of a Victorian woodcut engraving: bold cut lines, parallel hatching and crosshatching only, no gradients, no shading washes, no photographic detail. Inside the medallion: Titivillus, the small horned patron demon of errors, wearing a printer's apron, stands earnestly at a Victorian composing frame; one clawed hand holds a composing stick, the other lifts a single piece of metal type from the sloped upper typecase before him; ranked cases of type and the frame's wooden legs fill the lower part of the oval. The demon works with the sober diligence of an honest tradesman. The emblem contains no letters, no words, no motto, and no readable type faces.

There is no other lettering anywhere on the cover: no publisher's name, no signature, no monogram, no watermark, no words inside the emblem. Only the four quoted text elements above appear, in that order.

Portrait orientation, aspect ratio 2:3 (width to height).
```

## Plates

### the-surrounded-compositor

Chapter: `book/chapters/00-preface.md`

Caption: The trade never solved the compositor; it surrounded him.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-surrounded-compositor`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition, distinctly wider than tall. The interior of a Victorian printing office. At the center a young compositor stands at his double type case, mid-reach with a composing stick in one hand, working at obvious speed and entirely at ease. Ringed completely around him, close and unbroken, sit and stand the shop's readers: a copyholder reading a manuscript aloud, a proof-reader following a long galley sheet with a pen, a second reader lifting a corrected revise to the light, a pressman studying a freshly pulled sheet. Every face is bent toward a sheet; not one looks at the compositor; the circle has no gap. Strong window light from one side; type cases, galley racks, and drying sheets hung on lines recede into cross-hatched shadow behind them. Emotional register: the compositor serene and swift, the readers grave, patient, and inescapable. All writing on the sheets, cases, and galleys is rendered as illegible engraved hatch-marks; no legible words anywhere in the image.
```

### follow-copy-out-the-window

Chapter: `book/chapters/02-copy.md`

Caption: Follow copy, though it fly out of the window.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:follow-copy-out-the-window`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition. A Victorian composing room seen from INSIDE, a large sash window thrown wide open at the center of the image. A single manuscript page has been snatched by the wind and is flying OUT of the window, away from the room, already half over the sill and heading into the open air above the street; its trailing corner is the only part still inside. The young compositor lunges after it, body thrown across the sill, one arm at full stretch toward the escaping page, his composing stick still gripped in the other hand, his stool tipping behind him. The motion of paper and man is unmistakably outward, from the shop toward the sky; rooftops and chimneys beyond the window. Type cases and galleys recede behind. All writing on the page and in the room rendered as illegible engraved hatch-marks; no legible words anywhere. Emotional register: absolute obedience to the rule, carried past the point of sense with a straight face. Style dead serious, in the manner of a nineteenth-century trade-manual plate. No ornamental border.
```

### the-devils-clean-line

Chapter: `book/chapters/03-the-devil.md`

Caption: The devil at his case: the copy reads "peace," the proof reads "pace," and no fault is visible in either.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-devils-clean-line`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition. A printer's devil, a boy of eleven or twelve, ink-black to the elbows, sleeves rolled past them, stands at an upright double type case in a nineteenth-century letterpress shop, composing stick steady in his left hand, right hand caught mid-reach over the boxes, his whole posture bent to furious industrious speed. Clipped to the case at his eye level hangs a small manuscript copy sheet bearing one handwritten word: "peace". On the galley at his elbow lies a pulled proof strip bearing one printed word: "pace", set in perfect, even, immaculate letterpress roman, every letter true, indistinguishable in craft from a correct line. No other legible text anywhere in the image; all other paper and labels indicated only by hatching. The boy's face is serene and proud of his work. Background: dim shop interior, hanging galleys, an oil lamp, deep cross-hatched shadow. Emotional register: solemn diligence, wholly earnest, no wink; the horror is that nothing in the scene looks wrong. Grayscale.
```

### a-rubber-stamp-with-good-posture

Chapter: `book/chapters/04-the-hell-box.md`

Caption: A rubber stamp with good posture, hard at its reading.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:a-rubber-stamp-with-good-posture`

```
Wood engraving, portrait composition, in the manner of a nineteenth-century trade-journal portrait of a valued employee. Subject: a single tall wooden-handled rubber stamp seated bolt upright on a clerk's stool at a sloped proofreading desk in an old composing room, posed exactly as a diligent proof-reader at his work: perfectly vertical, squarely facing an open proof sheet, a small pair of spectacles perched where a face would be. It has no eyes and no hands; the sheet before it lies untouched, and a magnifying glass rests unused beside it. On the desk: a neat stack of proof sheets, a quill in its stand, a burning candle whose single light throws the stamp's long upright shadow on the wall behind. Emotional register: solemn, respectful, entirely without caricature; the portrait believes in this employee. Wood engraving with dense hatching and cross-hatching, single black ink, no gray washes. All matter on the proof sheets indicated only as ruled hatched lines; no legible lettering anywhere in the image.
```

### the-missing-face

Chapter: `book/chapters/06-imposition.md`

Caption: The only witness. Light through the proof, where the words should have stood.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-missing-face`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition. The interior of a nineteenth-century printing office at night, lit by one oil lamp on the bench. A pressman in apron and shirtsleeves stands in the foreground holding a freshly printed proof sheet up between his eyes and the lamp; thin rays of lamplight pass clean through word-shaped holes in the printed lines, falling in bright stripes across his face. The printed matter on the sheet is indicated only as ranks of fine hatched marks with crisp white gaps where words are absent; no legible letters or numerals anywhere in the image. Behind him, filling the upper half of the frame in shadow, a great iron mechanical press continues its work undisturbed, delivering a tidy, perfectly squared stack of identical finished sheets. Emotional register: the man gravely alarmed, studying the sheet like a physician reading an X-ray; the machine serenely indifferent. Dense cross-hatching in the shadows, fine white-line work where the lamplight strikes, heavy black border, in the manner of a solemn Victorian trade-journal plate.
```

### the-mirrored-brief

Chapter: `book/chapters/07-plates.md`

Caption: The engraver cuts the words exactly as written, reading none of them.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-mirrored-brief`

```
A wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition, distinctly wider than tall. Subject: an elderly engraver in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, seated at a heavy wooden workbench, seen from three-quarter left, bent close over his work with the absorbed sobriety of an alderman's portrait. In his right hand a burin; beneath it a small endgrain boxwood block resting on a round leather sandbag. Cut into the block in relief, half finished, the words "SORTS BOUGHT & SOLD" in mirror image, reversed left to right, the last letters still only scribed outlines. Pinned upright at his eye level, a single page of close handwriting, the brief that came in the post, its one legible line reading exactly "SORTS BOUGHT & SOLD", written plainly, unreversed, inside inked quotation marks. On the bench: torn brown parcel paper and cut string from the opened packet, a row of gravers laid out by size, a magnifying eyeglass on a jointed arm, fine pale boxwood shavings. Light from one high window at the left falls left to right across his hands and the block; the rest of the shop recedes into hatched shadow. No other lettering anywhere: none on the window glass, the shelves, the crates, the tools, or any paper other than the pinned brief. The engraving is solemn and exact; nothing in the scene acknowledges that the man is faithfully cutting, in mirror, words he has no need to read.
```

### the-empty-notice

Chapter: `book/chapters/08-the-wayzgoose.md`

Caption: The empty notice. The machinery says no while the hand is reaching for the glass.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-empty-notice`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition, tall and narrow. Interior of a nineteenth-century printing office at evening. An iron hand-press stands square in a doorway like a porter barring passage, and gripped upright in its platen it presents a single sheet of paper that is completely blank: no lettering, no marks, plainly empty. Facing it, halted mid-step, a printer in a work apron with rolled sleeves and a sprig in his buttonhole, dressed for a feast, one hand raising a full glass of ale. Beyond the press, glimpsed through the doorway, the feast waits untouched: a long table with candles, a roast goose, and proof sheets strung overhead as bunting. The printer regards the press with resigned respect; the press is immovable, solemn, and correct. Emotional register: the machine is not angry, only right; a dead-serious engraving of a ridiculous standoff. Strong candlelight from beyond the door, heavy crosshatched shadow in the foreground. No text, letters, numerals, or signage visible anywhere in the image.
```

### the-device-on-the-last-leaf

Chapter: `book/chapters/09-the-colophon.md`

Caption: The device goes on last: this shop and no other, smallness included.

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-device-on-the-last-leaf`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition, tall and narrow. Interior of a small printing shop at the close of day, nearly dark. In the foreground a solitary printer in shirtsleeves and a long apron bends over the imposing stone, setting into the forme of the final leaf a very small printer's device: a dolphin wound around an anchor, no larger than a thumbnail against the page. He handles this tiny block with the two-handed gravity of a man affixing a seal to a treaty. The rest of the leaf's type is indicated only as blind rectangular blocks of blank type, with absolutely no legible letters, words, or numerals anywhere in the image. Behind him the iron hand press looms enormous in deep crosshatched shadow, idle, its bar at rest, dwarfing both the man and the mark. Above, one hanging oil lamp is drawn low on its chain and still lit, throwing the only light down onto the stone; the other lamps along the ceiling beam are already dark. Emotional register: solemn, valedictory, a day's work ending well; the vast machinery waits in shadow while all ceremony concentrates on the smallest object in the room. Style dead serious, in the manner of a nineteenth-century trade-manual plate.
```

### titivillus-at-the-frame

Chapter: `book/chapters/00-preface.md` (recommission; the filename and caption already stand in the chapter).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:titivillus-at-the-frame`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition. Titivillus, the small horned patron demon of errors, in a rough monk's habit, stands on a wooden stool at a sloped composing frame, one clawed hand setting a piece of metal type with a craftsman's delicacy, the other holding a magnifying glass to his eye. Spilled and broken type litters the floorboards; a small wooden box of bent letters sits at the frame's foot. On the wall above the case hangs one simply framed placard whose text reads EXACTLY, letter for letter: "EVERY PAGE A WITNESS". No other legible text anywhere; all other type, galleys, and papers indicated only as hatched marks. Emotional register: absorbed, diligent, entirely earnest; he is good at this. Style dead serious, in the manner of a nineteenth-century trade-manual plate. No ornamental border or frame around the image.
```

### the-shop-at-morning

Chapter: `book/chapters/01-the-shop.md` (recommission).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-shop-at-morning`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition, distinctly wider than tall. A small printing office at morning: strong low light through tall windows raking across the floor. In the foreground the proprietor, in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, stands reading a freshly pulled galley proof with grave attention. Behind him, at the ranked type cases, brass mechanical compositors with jointed arms are already at work setting the next pages, unhurried, their forms catching the window light. Type cases, galley racks, and an iron hand press recede into crosshatched shadow. No legible text anywhere in the image; every sheet and case indicated only by hatching. Emotional register: quiet industry, the day already ahead of the man. Style dead serious. No ornamental border. DRAWING DISCIPLINE: correct architectural perspective, level floor, true verticals, one consistent vanishing point, eye-level or gently raised vantage. PRESENTATION: the image fills its rectangle to the edge or sits in one plain thin rule; never a torn-paper mat, never a tilted or rotated print laid on a background. Any machines are compact brass apparatus in the nineteenth-century instrument tradition (armatures, gears, a lens where sight is needed), never humanoid robots.
```

### the-hell-box

Chapter: `book/chapters/04-the-hell-box.md` (recommission).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-hell-box`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Portrait composition. A stout open wooden box mounted on a post at shoulder height in the middle of a printing shop, placed so every bench can see it: the hell box, half filled with bent, broken, and battered pieces of metal type drawn large enough to read as ruined letterforms without forming words. A printer's hand enters from the side, dropping one visibly bent letter in. Around and behind, the shop's benches and two brass mechanical compositors pause mid-motion, attentive to the small ceremony. No legible text anywhere. Emotional register: solemn civic ritual, a tiny public funeral performed correctly. Style dead serious. No ornamental border.
```

### the-imposed-forme

Chapter: `book/chapters/06-imposition.md` (recommission).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-imposed-forme`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition. A heavy iron chase on the imposing stone, seen from above at a slight angle, its pages of type imposed and nearly locked with quoins and furniture; one page's place stands empty, a clean rectangular gap in the metal. Up through that gap, from below the stone, a small horned head with bright engraved eyes has risen just to nose height, peering at the empty place with proprietary interest; one clawed hand grips the gap's edge. The compositor's mallet and shooting stick lie abandoned at the stone's edge. All type indicated as blind hatched blocks; no legible text anywhere. Emotional register: the shop's oldest inspector arriving exactly where something is missing. Style dead serious. No ornamental border. DRAWING DISCIPLINE: correct architectural perspective, level floor, true verticals, one consistent vanishing point, eye-level or gently raised vantage. PRESENTATION: the image fills its rectangle to the edge or sits in one plain thin rule; never a torn-paper mat, never a tilted or rotated print laid on a background. Any machines are compact brass apparatus in the nineteenth-century instrument tradition (armatures, gears, a lens where sight is needed), never humanoid robots.
```

### the-press-proof

Chapter: `book/chapters/05-proofs.md` (recommission).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-press-proof`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition, distinctly wider than tall. A proofing room: in the foreground a heavyset proof-reader in apron and rolled sleeves bends close over a long proof sheet held to the window light, pen behind his ear, utterly absorbed. To the left, three brass mechanical compositors stand in patient rank, each holding its own proof sheet at reading height like choristers. Between them an iron hand press with its bar at rest. On the wall hangs one simply framed placard whose text reads EXACTLY, letter for letter, with NO quotation marks in the rendered text: LOOK AT THE PAGES. No other legible text anywhere; every proof sheet rendered as hatched lines only. Emotional register: devotional attention; the placard is obeyed. Style dead serious. No ornamental border. DRAWING DISCIPLINE: correct architectural perspective, level floor, true verticals, one consistent vanishing point, eye-level or gently raised vantage. PRESENTATION: the image fills its rectangle to the edge or sits in one plain thin rule; never a torn-paper mat, never a tilted or rotated print laid on a background. Any machines are compact brass apparatus in the nineteenth-century instrument tradition (armatures, gears, a lens where sight is needed), never humanoid robots.
```

### the-wayzgoose

Chapter: `book/chapters/08-the-wayzgoose.md` (recommission).

Intake: `press art accept <file> --as plate:the-wayzgoose`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes. Landscape composition, distinctly wider than tall. The printing shop cleared for the annual wayzgoose feast: a long table down the middle laid with a roast goose at center, tankards, and bread. Proof sheets are strung overhead on lines as bunting between the press and the type cases. At the table, printers in shirtsleeves and brass mechanical compositors sit together as equals; at the table's end, the small horned printer's devil sits on a raised stool, bib at his neck, being ceremoniously served the first plate by the proprietor. Lamplight, deep crosshatched shadow at the room's edges. No legible text anywhere; the strung proof sheets read as hatching. Emotional register: solemn festivity, a rite performed with complete sincerity. Style dead serious. No ornamental border. DRAWING DISCIPLINE: correct architectural perspective, level floor, true verticals, one consistent vanishing point, eye-level or gently raised vantage. PRESENTATION: the image fills its rectangle to the edge or sits in one plain thin rule; never a torn-paper mat, never a tilted or rotated print laid on a background. Any machines are compact brass apparatus in the nineteenth-century instrument tradition (armatures, gears, a lens where sight is needed), never humanoid robots.
```

## Logomark

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as logomark`

```
A printer's imprint device in the early-modern printer's-mark tradition, drawn as flat line art in a single solid black ink on a fully transparent background. The device is a contained circular roundel: two concentric plain circular rules form its outer edge, enclosing an annular band. Along the top arc of that band, the only text in the entire image: the words "LGTM PUBLISHING" in letterspaced roman capitals, spelled exactly L, G, T, M, space, P, U, B, L, I, S, H, I, N, G, following the curve of the band. A single small diamond-shaped middot sits at each end of the text, and one small centered fleuron (printer's flower) occupies the bottom arc of the band; the rest of the band is empty. In the center field, an engraved manicule: a right hand emerging from a plain gathered shirt cuff, index finger extended and pointing upward, the other fingers folded, drawn in confident closed woodcut-style contour lines with only sparse parallel-line hatching for form: no cross-hatching, no stippling fine enough to fill in at small sizes. A small four-pointed star floats just above the fingertip. Style of a 16th-century printer's device cut in wood: austere, symmetrical, certifying rather than decorative. Hard constraints: one solid black ink only, no grayscale, no tints, no gradients, no shadows, no color anywhere; every line closed and printable; line weights heavy and even enough that the whole mark stays legible when reproduced at half an inch wide; no background shape, no vignette, canvas fully transparent outside the drawn black lines; composition centered with generous clear margin on all sides; square canvas about 900 by 900 pixels, crisp vector-like edges. The text reads exactly "LGTM PUBLISHING" and nothing else: no other words, letters, numerals, signatures, or watermarks anywhere in the image.
```

## Author portrait

Accept with: `press art accept <file> --as portrait`

```
Wood engraving with dense hatching, single ink, no gray washes: a nineteenth-century frontispiece author portrait, engraved in black ink only on white paper, in deliberate portrait (vertical) composition. Inside a plain engraved oval vignette bounded by a single ruled line, a bust-length three-quarter portrait of a present-day printer in middle age: short hair, trimmed beard, spectacles, a canvas shop apron over a rolled-sleeve work shirt, ink-darkened fingertips, gaze steady and faintly amused, one hand holding a composing stick filled with blank unmarked type. Sharing the oval just behind his shoulder, a small tireless machine, a compact mechanical compositor with jointed brass arms and a single lens, leans politely into frame as if sitting for the same formal portrait, rendered with exactly the same solemn care as the man. The background within the oval is a faint cross-hatched suggestion of a type case and the arm of a hand press, fading to white toward the edges; outside the oval, pure untouched white with no ornament. Emotional register: earnest, dignified, a formal sitting taken completely seriously by both subjects. Fine parallel and cross-hatched burin tool marks throughout, crisp confident line work, high contrast, the texture of a hand-pulled proof, strictly grayscale, no color, no halftone dots, no photographic tones. Absolutely no text of any kind: no letters, no numerals, no signature, no monogram, no printer's mark, no readable characters anywhere in the image, and the type in the composing stick reads as blank rectangular slugs only.
```

## Acceptance record
- Accepted 2026-07-18: `portrait` <- openai-2.png, 2304x3456px, placed at assets/author.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-18: `logomark` <- openai-1.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/press-logo.png
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `cover` <- cover.png, 1024x1536px, placed at assets/cover.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-devils-clean-line` <- the-devils-clean-line.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-devils-clean-line.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-mirrored-brief` <- the-mirrored-brief.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-mirrored-brief.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-imposed-forme` <- the-imposed-forme.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-imposed-forme.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-missing-face` <- the-missing-face.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-missing-face.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-device-on-the-last-leaf` <- the-device-on-the-last-leaf.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-device-on-the-last-leaf.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-wayzgoose` <- the-wayzgoose.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-wayzgoose.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-empty-notice` <- the-empty-notice.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-empty-notice.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-shop-at-morning` <- the-shop-at-morning.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-shop-at-morning.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:follow-copy-out-the-window` <- follow-copy-out-the-window.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/follow-copy-out-the-window.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-press-proof` <- the-press-proof.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-press-proof.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:titivillus-at-the-frame` <- titivillus-at-the-frame.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/titivillus-at-the-frame.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-surrounded-compositor` <- the-surrounded-compositor.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-surrounded-compositor.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:the-hell-box` <- the-hell-box.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/the-hell-box.jpg
- Accepted 2026-07-24: `plate:a-rubber-stamp-with-good-posture` <- a-rubber-stamp-with-good-posture.png, 1024x1024px, placed at assets/woodcuts/a-rubber-stamp-with-good-posture.jpg
