Letterpress: The Year Ahead

We’ve had a busy couple of months behind the scenes at the St Botolph’s Letterpress. We’re coming on leaps and bounds in the print room, we put on the first of our annual letterpress themed exhibitions, and we also screened the great documentary Proceed and Be Bold! about maverick printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

Now we’ve finally got a chance to catch our breath, it’s time for a look back at our programme of talks and events so far, as well as a look forward to who we’ve got planned for the rest of the year.

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Justin Knopp of Typoretum popped down at the end of March to show us all some of the inspirational work being produced by letterpress printers across the world. Utilising cutting edge technology (literally so in the case of laser cut wood type) or sometimes just putting a contemporary spin on traditional methods, it was a great cross section of the things that can be done with type. We’ve gathered together all of the images and credits in a Facebook gallery here so you can still be inspired even if you missed Justin’s talk.

As a special bonus, we also saw a short film about Typoretum made by Jamie Murphy of The Salvage Press. You can see it online here.

We followed up in May with another excellent presentation, this time by Len Friend of the Crescent Card Co. in Maldon. As well as being an experienced printer and machine minder with a lifetime in the trade, Len is also the chairman of the Essex branch of the British Printing Society. Suffice to say, he really knows what he’s talking about.

With a look back over the rise and fall of commercial printing in the 20th Century, Len made it clear that although a lot of knowledge has been lost, and letterpress printing will never reach the dizzying heights of those days, there is still plenty of potential for a new generation to take it forward and carve out their own space in the world of print.

Samples of proofing sheets from the Anchor Press in Tiptree helped to make the sheer scale of letterpress back then a little more real, whilst a short film detailing a commercial operation composing, imposing, printing and binding a small book illustrated how drawn out the process was before computers got involved.

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Looking ahead, our programme of talks has been booked in until January 2015, with a great mix of subjects, backgrounds and experiences. First up is David Jury, who’ll be coming down on July 30th to talk about Fine Press printing. Extravagantly produced, limited edition hand-bound books will illustrate how letterpress is still used to provide modern artisan printing.

David is probably well known to many locals from his days as a lecturer at Colchester School of Art. However, not everybody realises that he is a published authority on the history of design and print, even producing a book devoted to Letterpress. Add to this that he’s also a designer and printer in his own right, he generally succeeds in making the rest of us look bad, and no doubt his talk will be one of our best yet. Not to be missed!

In September we’ll be joined by our first ‘jobbing’ printer. Operating from his print workshop in a mid-terrace house in Leytonstone, Russell Frost of Hooksmith Press will be telling us about his journey to becoming a letterpress printer. It’s an unusual route, stopping off at professional fly-fishing, landscape gardening, and (literally) scouring the highways, bi-ways and hedgerows of his native New Zealand hunting for neglected printing presses.

Our November talk is a little closer to home, as Alan Brignull of the brilliant The Hedgehog Press, just up the road in Wivenhoe, will be giving us a history of amateur printing. One of the stops on his talk will be Gt Totham, home of 19th Century farmer Charles Clark, who apparently built his own press and used balloons to disseminate his pamphlets across the countryside.

Finally, January will see a visit from the lovely ladies of Harrington & Squires in Tufnell Park, North London. Having made the leap into letterpress from a design studio background, they’ll be giving us a glimpse of life in their unusual studio, nicknamed ‘The Corridor’. We’re particularly interested to hear how they manage to fit a platen press like ours in there!

The events will all be at 7.30pm on the last Wednesday of the month. As always, you can keep updated with letterpress goings on at the Waiting Room via our Facebook page, our website, or by signing up to the main Waiting Room mailing list. Or if you prefer a direct approach, you can email project leader Paul Butler.