Monday 23 December 2013

Season's Greetings




















Christmas tree woodcut made by my mum (Joyce Oliver) sometime in the 1950's or 60's, cleaned & printed some 50 years later on a Vandercook proofing press.


























Winter Walker. Lino/vinyl cut based on a photo taken below the Daneway Inn near Sapperton, Gloucestershire, on a walk with Walking the Land in November 2012. Printed on a small Albion Press at the Gloucestershire Printmaking Coop in Thrupp.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

And per se and or ampersand

Rolled coloured litho ink onto the wooden block by hand & (of course!) meant to keep the rollers on the Vandercook press up and out of contact while I put the paper through, but forgot, so the rollers took some print off the block and started their own mix. I went with the flow & carried on inking up the block with red, yellow &/or blue ink & turning the paper to get over-printing. Carried on printing not adding ink to get paler over-printings too. Could have carried on all night ...


Tuesday 3 December 2013

Winter coat pocket treasures

We inherited my dad's long winter overcoat, and when my son was trying it on for size, we decided to check the inside pockets, and found these treasures!

The theatre ticket is from the Theatre Royal in Norwich. Going to the pantomime at Christmas with my grandparents & auntie was one of the holiday rituals. Wondering what the panto might have been 46 years ago, I googled "Theatre Royal Norwich 1967 pantomime" and to my delight was directed to an Eastern Daily Press article uploaded yesterday which contained an image of the dame in the 1967 production of ... Babes in the Wood!

The bus ticket is a Cheltenham District Traction Company ticket, probably purchased for a journey from Cheltenham to Prestbury on either the number 1 bus, or the 587 service. I can remember the smell and taste (I used to roll them up and "smoke" them) of those paper tickets.

The news receipt will have come from Prestbury Post Office and Newsagents where my parents ordered their newspapers. February 3rd was on a Saturday in 1968, just a few days before my 9th birthday.

The little note is written by me, and I am very touched that it stayed safe in dad's pocket for all those years. It is a request with the relevant telephone number and says,"Harriet come to tea on saturday with play clothes." Those were the days (my friend) when the black dialled telephone sat alone on the hall window sill, and was used nearly exclusively by our parents, who answered any call with a recital of the number, in the form of a question: "Hello, Cheltenham 7666?"


Sunday 17 November 2013

Letters on letters

Monoprint, letterpress & John Bull Printing (c.1966) text.
Playing with french & the first line of the John Donne poem letter To Sir Henry Wotton:

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus, absent friends speak.



Wednesday 30 October 2013

Saturday 21 September 2013

Two (letterpress) days out

The Whittington Press Open Day, September 7th.
Presstival 2013 poster featuring very large Caslon ligature.




















Tilley Printing in Ledbury, Open Day visit on September 10th.
Lots to make me smile!



Monday 2 September 2013

This land is your land

The title of a folk song written by Woody Guthrie in 1944. It speaks to us in Stroud at the moment where 2 housing development plans are working their way through the planning process.
Letterpress comment here: the rights of the land owner on one side, balanced against the public right of way on the other. Our local valley landscape of fields, woods and footpaths is a precious part of our lives.
The small woodcut to the right of the word "is" is by father. He cut his initials the wrong way round, so they have printed backwards. Schoolboy error, dad?!




Wednesday 10 July 2013

100 talismanic forms of the character Shou, representing long life


100 characters as published in a 1975 Thames and Hudson book on Taoist diagrams and calligraphy which themselves derive from The Religious System of China written by Jan Jakob Maria de Groot (1854-1921). Each character is beautifully balanced and harmonious, moving in and out of symmetry with a satisfying rhythm.


For this silkscreen, I traced the characters on to mark resist film and had to change pens as I went, when the original ran out of ink and then finding a similar drawing line was difficult. The unplanned change in line quality adds more variety to the set, I hope.

Thursday 13 June 2013

Gentle gentrification

As a member of Walking the Land, the first Friday of every month takes me on a drawing walk in the Stroud area. This print (vinyl cut with wooden and metal letterpress) is the result of a walk in Edge, a village near Painswick, and a discussion about land ownership and the extensive renovation of old farms in the area. There was no upper case P in the metal Bodoni typeface I chose for the phrase locating the hamlet of Paradise, but I realised that without it, the phrase becomes a relevant twist on the expression the grass is greener. This print is currently part of an exhibition at The Old Passage restaurant at Arlingham, on the banks of the river Severn.


Friday 17 May 2013

Doublets word game

Doublets is a word game invented by Lewis Carroll. The rules were published in Vanity Fair Magazine in 1879:

The rules of the Puzzle are simple enough. Two words are proposed, of the same length; and the Puzzle consists in linking these together by interposing other words, each of which shall differ from the next word in one letter only. That is to say, one letter may be changed in one of the given words, then one letter in the word so obtained, and so on, till we arrive at the other given word.

I love the poetic flow this game creates, and have been using it in my current work.
The overprinted version is a photoshop experiment. I will try the real thing on press, using colour overprinting.



Wednesday 15 May 2013

Going round in circles


A latin palindrome describing the behaviour of moths: in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni which translates as: we go wandering (in circles) at night and are consumed by fire.

I want to print letterpress in circles. The print shown here is a rough hand-printed version from loose metal type. I now have a type high (23.3mm) metal circle template to build up to the correct circumference (or do I mean diameter?) for setting on the press bed with flexible thin leading. Just not sure how I will fix the letter spacing as it moves round the circle. Work in progress... 
 

Sunday 7 April 2013

Émail. First attempt



French for enamel is émail*. No computer technology involved in painting liquid enamel (powdered glass) on to copper plates, drawing into the enamel once dry, and then firing in a kiln at 800 degrees celsius.
Wonderful to watch the unpredictable (to me) colours that appear as the metal cools, and to see the black firescale crack and jump off the copper where no enamel has been applied. An addictive process. This photo misses the gloss of the enamel and the gleam of the copper.

* Appearance of random bits of french due to french husband.

Monday 1 April 2013

Laser cut agricultural music

After a long gap, another posting. Samples of laser cutting on wood and a laurel leaf. I have no idea what these esoteric symbols mean, but I call them agricultural music. Watching the laser beam is fascinating: apparently random jumping as it cuts, not a systematic start at one end of the image as I would have imagined. Then a wonderful bonfire smell when the cutting is complete. Hi-tech mixes with memories of my childhood garden.