gods
The quadrats used by printers in throwing on the imposing stone, similar to the movement in casting dice.
gods: the wooden spacers a printer throws to fill the stone
In hand letterpress printing, gods are small wooden quadrats, typically measuring between 12 and 24 points in depth, used to fill empty space on the imposing stone. A printer grabs a handful and tosses them onto the stone in much the way a caster throws dice, distributing them to pack around type formes. The name derives directly from this throwing motion and the element of chance involved in their placement, though their final position is always adjusted by hand to ensure proper register and lock-up.
Gods differ from ordinary spacing material in their role and scale. Where reglet and leading fill specific line gaps with precision, gods serve a rougher filling function, taking up bulk space around the assembled formes before furniture and quoins lock everything tight against the chase. They are cheaper to manufacture than finished spacing material and are made from end-grain or side-grain wood, often birch or beech, chosen for durability under repeated throwing and repositioning.
Variant usage and regional names
The term is most common in British printing houses, though American and continental printers understood the same tool under different names. Some called them bricks or blocks. The practice was essential in newspaper and jobbing printing, where speed mattered and precision spacing was built in after the bulk filling was done. They were sometimes cast from metal in larger print shops, but wood remained the standard for their cost and weight characteristics.
A printer might use gods to fill a three-inch gap around a type forme before beginning the more careful work of inserting furniture and driving in quoins. The stone would be strewn with them, then adjustments made to ensure the forme sat level and locked securely. A forme that was not properly bedded with gods could shift during the pull, spoiling the impression and wasting time and paper.
The decline of hand compositing made gods obsolete by the mid-twentieth century. Linotype and monotype machines eliminated the need for the imposing stone workflow entirely. Today the term survives mainly in the vocabulary of printing historians and practitioners of the craft revival, a relic of the era when the speed of hand distribution and the feel of the stone mattered to daily production.