In the Studio, Letterpress

Welcome to our letterpress studio, this is where the magic happens!

Our mission to rejuvenate British letterpress printing began in 2010, when co-founder William spontaneously purchased a Heidelberg platen printing press. Although the machine itself is over 100 years old (William’s not quite there yet!), it’s still going strong alongside five other beautiful presses in our studio. What exactly is letterpress? It’s a pretty simple concept; a raised surface is inked and pressed to paper to leave a block of colour. The joy and special quality of letterpress lies in its tactility, being able to both see and feel the impression made my the ink on the paper.

1. Let’s start with the design. The fun part of letterpress is the ability to print one colour at a time. Sure, it’s not as speedy as a digital press, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Designs with large blocks of colour are ideal, or typography based work.

2. Next we have to make our plates. If you’re going for old school text, the traditional way is to “set” the individual letters onto the printing plate. Thankfully our team are technical whizzes, which means we are able to separate different blocks of colour from an artwork on the computer. We mostly use photopolymer plates in our studio, so we can create raised surfaces in a very nifty way using UV exposure. Each plate will be used to print a different colour within the design, meaning we might end up with a few plates per artwork.

3. Once we have all of our plates made-up for a design, we can start by setting the first plate (in other words the first colour) and inking it up. To make sure the prints come out as accurately as possible, the pressure of the contact between plate and paper can be adjusted, so the lines come out a clean as possible and nothing gets squashed.

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4. Time to get things rolling! All systems go. Once on, the machine automatically places the paper in front of the plate where it is stamped, before transferring the printed paper to a pile. This makes it super easy to keep track of quantities as we go.

5. Once the first colour is down, it’s time to change the plate for the next one, and so it begins again!