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


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.



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

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)...
3 comments:
Hello Tom,
Stumbled across your blog and just wanted to let you know about http://britishletterpress.co.uk/
and to say that if you haven't done so read John Ryder's Printing for Pleasure (1976)
Cheers,
Paul Moxon
Mobile, Alabama
Hello, Paul. The "Ready Made" design to which you refer is actually my design. They contacted me and asked if they could use it, and I agreed. However, you will only see one small reference to me in their story. I have since improved the design, making it stronger but easier to build. You will find detailed construction instructions and hints for use at:
http://www.monoprints.com/info/resources/bottlejackpress.pdf
Best of luck with it.
Cheers ..... Charles
Sorry ... should have addressed my comments to Tom.
Cheers ...... Charles
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