Letterpress Billboard

Letterpress printed posters celebrating the local businesses of St Philip’s Marsh in Bristol being pasted up for Bristol Open Doors 2021.

This has been a lovely public art project in collaboration with Pete Insole and Nat Roberton from Bristol City Council to give a Victorian makeover to local businesses in the area. Using the finest of our wood type collection and engraved blocks each poster has been printed on a range of gorgeous GF Smith colours using the FAG Swiss Proof 40 press.

We love that the type and blocks we have used would have been used for just this purpose at some point in the past. We couldn’t be prouder to be part of this project.

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

---

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

Tranquility and bird song: tinkering with lead and wood type and the thud of a printing press.

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.

Move Slow and Mend Things

At this time of lockdown, isolation and distancing it is especially comforting to be collaborating with Cally and Joe Schofield and print these wise words with some of our treasured wood type. This is a response to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook “Move Fast and Break Things”, just an alternative point of view worth considering.

Posters are A3, letterpress printed on a cotton-based 175gsm off white paper and available in our shop £15 + p&p.