Stories, records, and notes from the world of printmaking.
Since selling the letterpress printing business in 2020, I have kept in touch with the new owners, Archivist Gallery, and this year they asked me to provide a machine on which to demonstrate letterpress printing at Top Drawer, held at Olympia from Sunday 13th to Tuesday 15th September 2026. I was delighted to oblige, particularly […]
In 1983, I was living in Gloucester and working from the family end-of-terrace house and its large garage as a letterpress printer and machinery mover. Simon Lawrence of The Fleece Press contacted me looking for an Autovic art platen press. These were among the finest platen presses available, with excellent inking capacity and an exceptionally […]
In 2021 we were asked to transport a Stanhope printing press from the University of Reading to film studios at Uxbridge, where it was to appear as part of the set for the Netflix series Bridgerton. The press was required as authentic background dressing for the print shop where Lady Whistledown’s society papers were supposedly […]
In October 2024 we were contacted by a film hire company looking for a 1930s printing press to appear printing banknotes in The Immortal Man, the latest production in the Peaky Blinders series. Fortunately, we had just the machine for the rôle: a Vicobold art platen of the right vintage. The press had spent its […]
Yesterday, Patrick went to Richmond, south west London, to prepare a couple of etching presses destined for Switzerland. The first job was to weigh the Littlejohn No.8 which has a bed size of 28” x 48” and some hefty gearing. This was not as much as he expected, weighing in at 522kg. S. R. Littlejohn […]
Today, Patrick visited Leicester Print Workshop to move an 1838 Columbian iron hand press forwards by about two feet. It now stands proudly centred in front of the large front window, where it provides a fitting focal point for this friendly and highly capable fine art printmaking workshop. The Columbian is one of the most […]
Opportunities to acquire a genuine Wharfedale press are few and far between, making the sale of this fine example from the workshop of Justin Knopp of Typoretum particularly noteworthy. Justin acquired the press in 2004 from David Esslemont, whose workshop was then based in mid-Wales. Over the past two decades the press has been used […]
Among the various parts of an etching press, few are more important, or more often taken for granted, than the blankets. They sit in place doing their work day after day, and it is usually only when they begin to stiffen, mark, or behave less evenly that they receive much attention. The condition of the […]
In the rarefied world of hand-printed wallpapers there is no bigger name than Marthe Armitage. Starting in the 1960s, she hand cuts all her designs onto lino and these original blocks are still in use nearly sixty years later. Throughout this period all her wallpaper has been produced on a hand-cranked offset lithography press which […]
