Cards and prints from a tiny island studio with a quiet voice...
To browse and buy limited edition letterpress cards and prints with an island flavour, please visit the Shop.
(Read on to find out more...)
To browse and buy limited edition letterpress cards and prints with an island flavour, please visit the Shop.
(Read on to find out more...)
THE STORY...
There has been a resurgence of letterpress printing at an artisanal level in recent years. The metal fonts and plates, along with the rest of the paraphernalia of traditional printing which was abandoned (often with relief, one imagines) by professional printers when technology rendered it obsolete in the second half of the 20th Century, are turning up on eBay at prices that would make the old timers stare. In a world that is turning too fast, there is clearly something increasingly appealing about a process that is slow.
And typesetting with moveable type is certainly slow! Each letter has to be handled and arranged individually, and so much can go wrong for the amateur. Every time I painstakingly organise a few characters of tiny metal or wooden type into its rigid frame (the 'chase'), proof these efforts on my desktop Adana press, adjust the letters I have put in the wrong way round, or raise those that are printing too faintly, I am struck anew with respect for the professionals who did this all day every day - printing books, newspapers, whole Bibles - and in living memory too. This level of craft and expertise gained slowly over a lifetime is something we seldom encounter any more.
The modern letterpress printer is more likely to make beautiful limited edition retro posters, using stunning carved wooden type on delicious paper; to fashion lovely invitations to important events; or to print exceedingly slim volumes of elegant and (necessarily) expensive poetry in exotic fonts. The results are often stunning, particularly where the imprint left by the pressed type in the soft paper (debossing) adds to the sheer sensuousness of the effect. (Ironically, traditional professional printers always aimed to leave as little debossed imprint as possible - for them, perfect printing left only ink on the page; now we value the aesthetics of this 'clumsiness'.)
And typesetting with moveable type is certainly slow! Each letter has to be handled and arranged individually, and so much can go wrong for the amateur. Every time I painstakingly organise a few characters of tiny metal or wooden type into its rigid frame (the 'chase'), proof these efforts on my desktop Adana press, adjust the letters I have put in the wrong way round, or raise those that are printing too faintly, I am struck anew with respect for the professionals who did this all day every day - printing books, newspapers, whole Bibles - and in living memory too. This level of craft and expertise gained slowly over a lifetime is something we seldom encounter any more.
The modern letterpress printer is more likely to make beautiful limited edition retro posters, using stunning carved wooden type on delicious paper; to fashion lovely invitations to important events; or to print exceedingly slim volumes of elegant and (necessarily) expensive poetry in exotic fonts. The results are often stunning, particularly where the imprint left by the pressed type in the soft paper (debossing) adds to the sheer sensuousness of the effect. (Ironically, traditional professional printers always aimed to leave as little debossed imprint as possible - for them, perfect printing left only ink on the page; now we value the aesthetics of this 'clumsiness'.)
My own aims as a printer are pretty modest, as befits the size of my press and studio. I take inspiration from the small-scale backroom printers who sprang up in their hundreds in the 18th and 19th centuries to print ephemera, political pamphlets and anything else that was required, as the written word became increasingly accessible to all sections of society. There is something very powerful in this idea that anyone with a small press and a tray or two of type could have an individual voice, however quiet. Artisanal perfection is not my aim - just putting this small voice out in the big world.
I have an interesting collection of fonts and some lovely, if fairly quaint, vintage metal plates of maritime scenes with which I (very slowly) make cards and small prints that speak of a quiet life lived on an island.
Please visit the Shop to browse...
I have an interesting collection of fonts and some lovely, if fairly quaint, vintage metal plates of maritime scenes with which I (very slowly) make cards and small prints that speak of a quiet life lived on an island.
Please visit the Shop to browse...
AN ISLAND LIFE
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)