Journal — Letterpress & Printmaking

This week I printed the cover for our upcoming chapbook. From experience, I know that printing handmade paper with a deckle edge does not always result in printing on a straight line. To ensure the covers are free-from wobble, I printed the words onto a sheet of paper which will then be pasted to the front of the book. The title is printed onto Five Seasons paper, which is a recycled, British-made paper. Designed for use by Five Seasons Press, this paper is lovely and smooth. Hopefully this paper will be continued, but with the passing of Glenn Storhaug, it's...

At some point in the design of On the record, I decided to use ornaments between each of the sections. It was a lovely idea. I had the perfect ornament. Emphasis on The. Singular. It was all fine until I needed to print it twice on one page. As I'd already printed the first page (and put all the letters away to print the next page), I was in a bit of a pickle. Changing the decorative ornament would have meant re-setting and re-printing four pages. This would have been a time-expensive problem. With nothing to lose, I put a...

I've come to the hard realisation that, actually, I haven't got enough letters to set the whole of On the Record at once. Initially, I'd envisioned setting a full signature of eight pages. Putting the letters away (leaving the sheet time to dry), and then composing and printing the reverse side of the same eight-page signature. Sadly, I only have enough letters to set four pages at once. And even then it's a bit tight (there were only two "o"s left when I finished the most recent spread). From the plus column: this means there will be less to tidy...

Have you got a favourite book? Not necessarily the topic, although that's important too, but the actual physical object. A book that you thought, "Yes, this is exactly how a book should be." Perhaps you even have a small collection of books that are differently perfect. (Please share pictures with me if you are in this lucky situation!) There were a few books we used as inspiration for the chapbook I'm putting together now. The first was Notes on Printing and Publishing Literary Books by Andrew Steeves. The second, A Daibo Coffee Manual, was more of an affirmation that we...