A little while back Mark McGuinness visited Centrespace and recorded a podcast with Nick. While you can hear Ellen printing in the background, Nick talks about the tradition of letterpress printing and tells stories of some of the fine old presses that live in the printshop.
You can listen to the podcast here and Mark has also posted the full transcript of their conversation.
We've been wrestling with the new found tranquility of the city alongside the panic of how we're all going to get through this in one piece. Ellen and I have been in this little corner of the Old City of Bristol for seven years now. We have quietly been collecting and sorting type, restoring and operating presses. We've been working with and alongside lots of amazing people both in workshops and by creating print. We've also collaborated with lots of friends; other printers, poets, musicians and artists. It's been a lot of work and a lot of fun. At the moment, as you probably know, we can't run workshops for the foreseeable future. We are trying to look at how and when that might change, but for now we rely of commissions and selling print from our shop. We are very grateful to all the people who have helped by buying stuff from the shop already and we are adding new things each week. Please take a look, we've worked at having a bunch of things from £5 up to £150. Thank you again, it really is what is keeping the printshop going, we look forward to seeing you here again, hopefully not too far off now.
Our little credit card sized guide to the history of Universal Suffrage, is £5 (free P&P) and is a must for anyone lucky enough to have the vote, as well as essential for the suffrage round of a pub quiz (they'll be back soon). Our luggage label set is a fairly random use of the amazing Victorian ironmonger wood engravings in our collection again £5 inc P&P. The playing cards are illustrated by our good friend Jeb Loy Nichols. Each card is illustrated with a country soul legend and the pack was printed by our own legend, Ellen Bills on the death defying Heidelberg Windmill press. You can see them in action here. The Move Slow and Mend Things print is a collaboration with friends, Joe and Cally who had spotted an opportunity to offer a response to the evil giant, Facebook who adopted the phrase Move Fast and Break Things. Our print is A3 and printed slowly on the FAG40 proofing press with our battered wood type and is in the shop for £15 plus P&P.
We just have a handful of each of these left now: The print of the Bristol's Old City (where we are based) is from a walking map (also in the shop) and illustrated by Simon Tozer. It is 380x560mm and printed on Somerset Satin and costs £30 plus P&P. "No One Can Own a River" is scratched on a sign telling you when and where you can walk alongside a stretch of the Wye. The phrase is detailed in our friend Richard King's book The Lark Ascending. The print costs £15 plus P&P and is 282x670mm, it makes good use of some lovely old river blocks by Jon McNaught. The final print is from Jeb's playing card set (above) and uses a set of the blocks from the playing cards, it is 204x631mm and is £15 plus P&P.
We'll see you soon, meanwhile thanks for you support.
Photography of print shop Lily Watts.
During the Journeyman exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey, Nick and Ellen ran two workshops in the gallery space. This was the second day which made good use of the printing bike and the collection of Adana presses from the printshop in Bristol. The workshop included typesetting using lead type and printing short runs of small cards and bookmarks.
