Rudiments of Letterpress

A short while ago I spent a weekend at Hotbed Press Print Studios learning the ancient (well several hundred year old) art of letter press. To start somewhere near the beginning, Hot Bed Press is an open studio in Salford that offers facilities for a wide range of printmaking techniques including silk screen, etching, Lino cut alongside book art which members can do at their leisure, they also run loads of courses open to members and the public alike.
After signing up for the course we got an email outlining the weekend - we would start by learning how to do simple book binding stitching pages together to make a notebook, followed by making at least 2 different printed articles to take home at the end of the course from the following list:

1. An address card (business card style)

2. A headed note card (postcard sized with a name, address, phone number and email address)

3. A bookmark

4. A Greetings card

5. A Short poem (four to eight lines)


I opted for a business card and bookmark with a quote from Kerouac's On The Road, because what's more bookish than a book quote?

The tutor, Graham from Incline Press started with telling us how we would be sticking examples of different types of letter press printed stuff in our notebooks along with examples of what we made - including our mistakes - for future reference. Needless to say my book was bulging by the end as I'm pretty sure I was the only one to destroy type and I didn't just do it once (lead is pretty soft, so if your type isn't lined up properly it gets squished, but it just gets put into a box for recycling). The course allows a maximum of 6 people so everyone gets enough time to try stuff and ask questions etc..
I'm not gonna go into loads of details of how everything is done, as it would be a 3 page essay, besides if you've got an interest - get yourself down to HBP to try it for yourself!
We learnt how to set the type, it has to be laid out and all squished* firmly together, then packed and locked up in a chase ready for printing
*not a technical term



We used an Adana hand operated platen press, here's mine all inked up and ready to go



Here is the business card I made (I blurred out the number because I don't want random people from the internet ringing me)



We all managed to make ourselves business cards by the end of the first day, we then got asked what special 'furniture' we'd like to add to whatever we were planning on printing the following day as Graham had a whole collection of random animals, pointing hands etc... I settled for an eagle sat on top of the world.

On Sunday we all arrived fresh faced & on time, and with much warmer clothing than the day before, as it was quite chilly in the studios.

We set about setting type for our second print item, here's the type for my bookmark - one of the difficult things for me, is that you lay the type upside down, and of course, back to front - this can become confusing.



You do a test run first, which allows you to inspect the type, I'd managed to select a box of type that had the wrong type in it, so had to take out several letters, which has to be done with really sharp pointy tweezers and is quite fiddly.
Here's the finished product



I managed to make quite a few as you can tell, this will stop me turning the pages down on my books to mark the pages in future, but should you want one of these lovely things, you can buy them on my Etsy store that I have recently set up.

I enjoyed the course even more than I thought I would, and it's made me wonder yet again why I didn't pursue Graphic Design & Typography at College (as it would've been a wiser career choice .. maybe)as I love this stuff so much but then I remember how much I procrastinate over anything remotely creative - case in point, I attended this course in January and it's taken until now to write about it. If you want to see some really good examples of what you can do with letterpress, you should check out the We Love Letterpress Tumblog