News from the printshop

Keeping ourselves busy.

From top left clockwise: Vivienne Westwood words (in the shop); a collaboration with Chuffed and Claire Cartwright; Own the means of the production poster (in the shop); packaging for Wright’s; Progress (in the shop); labels for Wilding Cider.

It goes without saying that it hasn't been quite the year that we were expecting. We are very grateful to everyone that has supported us either by commissioning work or by visiting and buying from the shop. We've not had a workshop in over a year and considering that they have been 50% of our work and income for eight years, it's no surprise that we've had to change and adapt to get by. We've continued to print for other people as well as design and print things that we care about. The shop has seen a lot of new editions from this work. We have also had time to plan and work on projects that hopefully will see the light of day sometime soon.

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Workshops on the horizon.

We are excited to welcome people back into the workshop. Running workshops have always been a key part of what we do here. We're hoping to start from mid-April, we will put dates on the website in the next week or so. Please email you have any questions. Workshop gift vouchers are available in the shop. If you are a family, group of friends or business that would like to arrange your own workshop, we'd love to hear from you.

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More Printing Bike adventures.

Most of us have been thinking about the first place we'd like to travel in a month or two when we can leave these city walls once more. I've been starting to plan another printing adventure on the brilliant bicycle that my good friend Robin Mather made back in the carefree world of 2015. Since then there have been several thousand miles worth of hills, and many a postcard printed and posted from the far flung hills of Britain, France and Germany.

The new adventure will be to cycle from library to library, 100 in total around the country and print 10,000 bookmarks. The idea is to work with writers and artists to create beautiful bookmarks. In doing so I'll cycle 1000 miles carrying the lovely little Adana press up and down many a hill (much like the one about which is on the England Scotland border). It's still in the planning (and funding) stage, so if you have a favourite library or any ideas for such a hair brained caper, please email me your thoughts.

Thank you for your ongoing support. Please visit the website to hear more about our projects and share the link for the shop with friends – there are many treasures to be found and it's a great way of supporting us. We hope to see you very soon.

Letterpress in a Time of Pandemic by David Goldblatt

After living under a regime that governs by slogan, I found myself trying to reduce what I took to be the lessons of 2020 into a similar refrain: “Believe the Science”, “Assume the Worst”, “Act Now and Save the Planet”, which was OK, but it was also kind of ugly and hectoring, which is the way of the slogan.

Is it possible to communicate something of this, to retain the punch and urgency of these staccato phrases, but also leave some room for the reader to make their own sense of the moment? I found those words in the work of the late Ulrich Beck.

Nearly thirty years ago I wrote a doctorate and a book on the then esoteric subject of social theory and the environment, including the work of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck and his pioneering work on the idea of a risk society. Beck could see the ways in which our mounting environmental and social crises were undermining the legitimacy of expert cultures of all kinds, from politics to science, as our capacity to transform the world outran our capacity to regulate and limit that power.

A month into lockdown I reread some of Beck’s work, begged Nick and Ellen to let me back in the print shop, and with much help and support from both of them, it is his words that that you can see in the prints on this page: sociological haiku meets concrete poetry, ee cummings meets comic book panels.

They are currently up on the walls of the chocolate factory within Centrespace, but I would much prefer them to be placed on the lecterns from which our rulers are currently speaking to us.

David Goldblatt is a writer, academic and broadcaster. Follow his letterpress work on Instagram @david_sgoldblatt

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Set of four photographs: top left and right by Lily Watts; bottom left by Nick Hand; bottom right David Goldblatt.

21st Century Creative Podcast

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.