Seasons Greetings

Printed at the Gloucestershire Printmaking Cooperative near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

No L in sight

First cards printed on my Adana 8x5. Maybe the 'No Joy' reading betrays my true feelings about the big business that is Xmas. Difficult to get an even print with the wooden type. Rough & ready umlaut cut from a rubber. Getting an even pressure across the print by adjusting the screws on the back is tricky: you can see here that the pressure fades off from right to left. The clinking sound of the inking disc as it moves round is quite festive!

A is for Autumn...

... C is for Colour and O is for Ode.
The first line of To Autumn by Keats was rolling round my head when I made these prints:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

They will both be exhibited at a show entitled 'Seasons' opening on December 1st at The Old Passage in Arlingham, Gloucestershire.

Every cloud

My last postcard printed on the Vandercook SP15 in the UWE (University of the West of England) Print Centre before the building is demolished, and the print department moves home on the campus, & I finish my Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking MA.

Letterpress post card production line

From setting to production line: Printing on the Vandercook SP15 is an addictive pleasure.
The metal type (30 & 72 point) is Halley, I think, but can't find any reference to it online.

Rain storm in an L

The texture of wooden type is beautifully captured by printing on Japanese paper. It's Tosa Shi/Shia in this instance. There's a rain storm in full swing.

Spoon printing

Printing wooden type on to heavy (450gsm) paper, I wanted a solid ink coverage & discovered that rather than printing using the press, it was more effective to hand-burnish the type using a wooden spoon. Hand-burnishing also enables you to incorporate an element of drawing in to the print as you decide how to press the spoon on to the paper. The paper has to be damp, & I locked the type in place on the press bed using strong magnets.
Here is the type after printing. It was a first for the 'V' which I had made out of hard wood (sapele) using a CNC router at UWE (University of the West of England) having made an Illustrator eps file of the letter form. The V is 316mm tall.

Solvitur Ambulando

A literal translation of the latin phrase 'solvitur ambulando' (attributed to St Jerome) would be, 'it is solved by walking.' Go for a walk, and everything seems easier. Solvitur Ambulando has become a theme in my current work & an injunction to myself to get out and walk more.

This letterpress collage image was exhibited at The Museum in the Park in Stroud in September 2014 in a show called The Art of Walking. The exhibition was part of the Laurie Lee centenary celebrations, so the map in my piece centres on Lee's home village of Slad & The Woolpack Inn.

Screen Dreams

Letterpress, stitch and bleach. Image for the Stroud 2015 Film Festival.
Wooden letterpress printed black on black paper, with added stitch & typewriter text, then Quink Ink and bleach poured over the top. The bleach revealed the letterpress text hidden in the black-on-black initial printing.