act your SHOE SI/E

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them” Albert Einstein

Jacquetta brings some fun and quirky type setting to this morning’s letterpress workshop.

With no Z in this alphabet she comes up with another solution. A forward slash hints at the idea of a Z. Simple and effective. Oh the beauty of limitations. 

Jacquetta making sure type is back to front and and not upside down in this case as type is set straight into the chase. 

not your AGE 

Jacquetta chooses large caps type for SHOE SIZE & AGE to make her point.

Jacquetta’s Motto

"act your SHOE SIZE

not your AGE"

Jacquetta’s finished motto printed on the adana 8 x 5 printing press. 

Jacquetta was a fantastic problem solver and quick to learn which shows in her beautifully finished letterpress prints.  

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Hamilton Wood’s Type and Printing Museum 

Thanks Jacquetta for sharing this video about Hamilton Wood’s Type and Printing Museum.

Little Book of Letterpress

And thank you also for this beautiful gift ‘Little Book of Letterpress’ by Charlotte Rivers. 

Print Your Own Letterpress Cards

Ahrabella Prints wedding cards for Ruth & Pedro 

Ruth & Pedro wedding cards printed by Ahrabella

Using a combination of metal type 

Ahrabella exploring metal type

Exploring different coloured card stock

Ahrabella printing her cards on the adana 8 x 5 printing press

Congratulations

Ruth & Pedro

And thank you Ahrabella for your energy and enthusiasm throughout the whole process. It was a joy to work with you. 

Wedding cards by Ahrabella

create your own unique cards

Treat yourself to a creative play day

print on the Adana 8 x 5 printing press

Book Your letterpress workshop

Love is in the air

Lets mix some ink and print something with love

For the girls

& the guys

Who’s Your Type? 

‘Just My Type’ A short film  (48secs) showing the process of making  a letterpress card.

Gwendraeth Press Book Marks

Fab couple of days printing with wilderness poet, Suzanne Iuppa. Suzanne wanted to print bookmarks in preparation for publishing a book of poems by her friend and poet Laurence James. We each worked out ideas for the bookmarks by cutting up elements of the book cover design (abstracted wave and rope images) and the Gwendraeth Press logo. Suzanne assembled the paper cutouts until she was happy with a design. She then stuck the paper cutouts in place, traced the design and transferred the outline to the lino. 

We carved our lino blocks and printed the first batch in green on the Adana 8 x 5, then blue and finally Laurence’s initials were printed in gold using Univers lowercase type. 

Suzanne Iuppa has published two books. ‘Well Spring’ inspired by healing wells in Wales (Gwendraeth Press) and 'On Track - Poems from Welsh Pilgrimage’ (Alyn Books) inspired from her 200 mile walk following pilgrimage routes from South and West Wales.

Well Spring

“On the morning of March 21, 2014 I started my season-long search for ten Holy and healing wells in Wales, which I continued until the evening of Summer Solstice in June. The places I eventually found have been documented in ancient texts, and by biographers of our Celtic Saints; by book writers and modern day bloggers.  To assist me, I had been given some wonderful insight and information by legend-gatherer, photographer and writer Phil Cope. I had maps. I had boots and waterproofs and a hat and my trusty rucksack and the support of close friends and pen and paper, to write the start of poems which I first had a hint of, somewhere behind my held breath, whilst peering at St Teilo’s Well in Pembrokeshire in 2012, journeying on a long wet pilgrims' walk to St Davids.” Suzanne Iuppa, ‘Well Spring’ - Introduction to the Wells. 

On Track - Poems from Welsh Pilgrimage

"Coming upon these poems is like coming upon the wanderer. Like Suzanne, this pilgrim would commit all he saw - beautiful, wild, Godly - to words passed down in ink. A profound and spiritual evocation of the Welsh and their landscape, captured in this latterday pilgrim-poet’s stanzas." - Clare Dudman, author of A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees

'On Track - Poems from Welsh Pilgrimage' is available to buy from Alyn Books 

Suzanne will be performing her poetry in The Speaking of Nature Tent at MereFest 2017.

Merefest 16th September 2017.

Pressing Matters Magazine Launch

I was thrilled to be involved with Pressing Matters magazine launch last week at The Forge, Bristol. The first issue is now available and packed with informative articles and gorgeous photography dedicated to printmaking. I love reading about other artists so it was lovely to have an insight into other printmaker's approaches to their work. I especially loved the article about Nick Hand (founder of The Letterpress Collective) and Robin Mather’s journey on The Printing Bike. They rode from Bristol to Mainz in Germany to visit the Gutenburg Print Museum. Nick cycled a bike custom built by Robin to carry an adana press on the back and a box at the front for type and paper.

Other great articles in the magazine cover the art of letterpress, linocut, collagraph, etching, screenprint, wood engraving, stencil art and risograph and an interesting reflection by Ben Goodman on the parallels between engraving and human existence.  

In the lead up to the magazine launch I prepared some postcards using an old gramophone plate which I had bought in an antique shop in Bristol. John Coe, founder of Pressing Matters and creative director at coecreative carved his Pressing Matters logo into lino and we set it up on my adana 8 x 5 press for people to print onto the postcards. We put out some card for bookmarks too and the press had its work cut out for the rest of the evening!

Printing the Gramophone

Gramophone, locked in the chase, inked up, put in the press and printed on postcards ready to take to Pressing Matters magazine launch. 

Printing Pressing Matters on the Adana 8 x 5

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Printing Pressing Matters postcards and bookmarks on the adana 8 x 5 printing press and hand carved  rubber-stamp at The Forge, Bristol

Pressing Matters Postcards

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Printing Pressing Matters on postcards with Gramophone and date typeset in Univers 24pt on the adana 8 x 5 printing press. 

Pressing Matters @ The Forge

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People printing Pressing Matters on the Adana 8 x 5 printing press at The Forge Bristol. 

Pressing Matters Bookmarks

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Printing Pressing Matters bookmarks with a hand carved rubberstamp print of the adana 8 x 5 printing press. John Coe’s first issue of Pressing Matters Magazine.