Letterpress

Maybe it's something to do with the new year, but I've been thinking for a while that I need a hobby. I started running a few months back and although that occupies a fair bit of my spare time it doesn't really satisfy any creative urges. As much as I enjoy my day-to-day work, it's just not the same as creating something purely for yourself.

Over Christmas I bought one of these prints for my girlfriend (and sort of for myself!) as a present.

It's by a guy called Douglas Wilson and I got it from the Keep Calm Gallery. It's a beautifully simple and perfectly executed idea, Douglas buys up old maps and then prints over the top with hand letterpress. The nature of the work means that each piece is unique, and as a customer on the internet you never know quite what your print is going to look like. He also does a second variant which again is overprinted onto different maps.


All of this got me thinking that letterpress would be an interesting route to explore. I've always loved the aesthetic of letterpress as well as it's tangible, physical nature. It seems an ideal way to combine my love of typography and print with my (very vague) artistic urges. When you spend all day creating imagery on a computer, it's easy to lose sight of the craft aspect of the work. There are some great pieces of letterpress work out there, including this piece for The Economist by Craig Ward.


To cut a long story short I started looking into the logistics of printing at home (home being a tiny one-bed flat). I've done a bit of woodcarving, etching and screenprinting in the past but letterpress is completely new to me. After a bit of reading around (mainly on the hugely informative Briar Press site) the easiest route for a beginner in the UK seems to be getting hold of an Adana.


Sadly Adanas are no longer in production (although you can get spares and refurbished models from Caslon). This leaves options like eBay, Gumtree, car boot sales and blind luck. I'm a bit impatient though so I've started looking into another approach, DIY letterpress! Given that I have little to no aptitude for DIY (apart from a highly prestigious grade D for Design & Technology A level) this may be a little ambitious. I don't know whether it's just sheer bloody mindedness but the idea of doing your own printing seems so much more appealing when it's coupled with doing in on your own hand-bodged press.
I've looked around and it seems I'm not the only person delusional enough to have thought of this. Here are some examples of presses that other people have made using their own ingenuity.

Winking Cat Press

Winking Cat Press

ReadyMade

Instructables.com

And probably my favourite design, just for its unorthodox approach to the problem:

Grant Gehrke

I think I'm going to have a crack at building one based on the ReadyMade design above. I can get my head around the instructions and it looks like it might be within my limited means. Fingers crossed I'll post up some letterpress work soon(ish)...