First of the month

October has been a month of firsts:

First LEN appearance at an event.
Angie and I (Hazel) took part in the Manchester Artists' Book Fair, representing LEN and some of our letterpress creations.  At the accompanying morning of talks on the theme of 'Collaboration and the Democracy of Book Arts' Angie spoke about LEN, as well as her recent book project with Philippa Wood Open House.  As a result we had lots of visitors to our table who were keen to talk about letterpress, there was a definite buzz in the air!

Happily we had spent a few (only slightly frantic) hours the week before printing out some business cards, which came in very handy.

Angie produced some cards from one of the images used in her recent book, just one of the joys of the polymer plates that we have been working with a lot lately.

On our return from Manchester we were very pleased to host our first official LEN visitors, Lin Tobias and Clare Williamson from Melbourne, Australia.  They shared images and stories from their recent trip to several prime letterpress locations in the USA, including Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum and Hatch Show Print where Lin was lucky enough to have done some internships.

After getting us all fired up about lovely letterpress we roped our visitors in to help with our first LEN session of the (academic) year, where we were lined up to do some printing for one of our 'guest printers' Sarah Bodman.

Working with a polymer plate - a gorgeous reproduction of some original 1930's(?) American commercial printing - once the image had been set straight and locked in it was reasonably straightforward to print, though Sarah challenged us with her selection of paper size - almost too small for the press! - so nimble fingers were required.  

Many thanks to our guests for their help with this, and for their letterpress anecdotes and enthusiasm, we could have talked all night!