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. 

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.

South Bank Arts Trail - free printing demos @ El Rincon Spanish Bar

Eightfivepress printing demos

Discover the wonderful world of traditional letterpress printing

As part of the Southbank Arts Trail, Bristol I’ll be heading over to El Rincon Spanish Bar with my adana 8 x 5.  I’ll be giving free demos on how to set type on the 1950’s table top printing press and there'll be some printed goodies to take away on the day! : ))

"PRINT, v.t. to impress, to imprint; to mark by pressure; to fix deeply, as in the memory; to stamp with coloured patterns. v.i. to practice the art of typography; to prepare and publish a book. n.a. mark made by impression; printed letters; the impression of types; a printed fabric, an engraving. n. Print’er." from Rapid Printing Made Easy - a Handbook for Users of the New Adana High Speed Printing Machine.

Saturday 14th May 12-4pm

El Rincon Spanish Bar

298 North Street

Bristol

BS3 1JU

Hot off the 8 x 5 press!

Enjoying printing on my Adana 8x 5 again. It’s been a while as the last few months I’ve spent most of my energy developing my new website. So with a new website I thought it was time to make some freshly printed business cards.

eightfivepress - woodblock letterpress linocut

Typeset with Univers lead type. Printed with grey /blue linseed oil based ink.

I printed these while listening to the wonderful Debbie Millman (designmatters) in conversation with writer and adventurer Caroline Paul. 

"Debbie Millman is a is a writer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the radio show Design Matters”.

Debbie interviews artists, writers, educators, designers, musicians, poets, film makers, bloggers including Seth Godin,  Alain de Botton, Eileen Myles, Tim Ferriss, Alison Bechdel, Krista Tippett, Maira Kalman, Oliver Jeffers, and many many more. 

"And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both." — Debbie Millman

Laurie & David Wedding Invitations - Part 1

Last year I printed wedding invitations for Laurie and David. I filmed the process of printing the invitations on the Adana 8 x 5 platen press using lead type for the cover. The inside was printed with a polymer plate. 

This short film (3m16s) shows part 1 of the printing process - printing the cover using vermilion ink on 100% recycled card. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Typesetting & Printing on the Adana 8 x 5
Printed and filmed by eightfivepress
Music ‘Daylight Ends’ by Snails © 2017