Letterpress printing. Tour de France.

I have been celebrating the Tour de France in my printing shed! I decided to make a print for each of the three main jerseys worn by the leaders of the race, and turn them into cards. Here is the maillot vert, the green jersey, worn by the fastest sprinter.

Poor Mark Cavendish is out of the race, having fallen at the finish line on the first day. I was hoping for him to be wearing this jersey at the end of the race in Paris in three weeks time.

But the card looks nice, stitched with green thread of course.

The best climber wears the King of the Mountains jersey. It's rather exciting, white with red dots.

I have used some huge full stops, and stitched the print onto the card with red thread.

And the race leader wears the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey.

The big wooden letters look fabulous, and I really like the bright yellow, not a colour I usually use. 

The maillot jaune is listed on my Etsy shop, and the others will follow. Vive le Tour!

http://etsy.me/1q7RpXm

A very frivolous font. Letterpress in the kitchen.

I am not sure we will ever actually sit down to eat at the kitchen table again. My latest purchases from the print shop in Manchester are here, waiting to be cleaned, and then? Well my house is very small so they might just have to stay here!

I have a very busy week out and about being a poet in schools and libraries this week, so don't have time to play with my lovely new wooden and metal letter. However, while waiting for my toast to do its thing this morning, I quickly cleaned and photographed these wonderfully frivolous letters. I love the little flick on the exclamation mark. The whole thing is so exuberant. I am really looking forward to printing with it.  My father's initials are FX.

Luckily the toast took a little while, so I quickly picked out words from another tray of three small wooden fonts.

Wherefore art thou, pictured next to the foods that fuel my lodger and I. Bananas and peanut butter are a very excellent way to keep going!

Letterpress printing. Wooden letters. Shakespeare. White spirit.

I have transformed my kitchen into a print room, with the proofing press on the floor

 and a washing line strung between two shelves, in front of a rather exuberant Susie Perring print.

I am making Shakespeare prints,

with my trays of wooden letter on the floor, and on a small table behind the kitchen table.

The proofing press is a beast. I love it.

And I have learned two very important things this morning. First, that white spirit DOES remove printing ink from a stone floor. Second, that it does NOT remove it from pyjama trousers. I suppose there is a third thing. Put on printing clothes before beginning to mess around with ink and type.

Loving Letterpress. Wooden alphabets saved from the skip.

There is something so seductive about wooden type. This is one of two type trays I brought home from a print shop in Eccles, Manchester. You will notice at the top of the picture a rather robust table top proofing press that also found its way into the boot of the Ford Fiesta.

I went to a printing firm who are moving premises having been in the same place for a very long time, and had not thrown anything away. So all the letterpress and everything to support it was still there, having been put to one side as technology progressed, and then forgotten about.

There is so much of it that the owner is having difficulty finding ways to shift it all, and he's very concerned that much of it may have to be scrapped. However, I have been able to give him a couple of names of enthusiasts who are probably better resourced than me, and with luck the type and all the letterpress and printing treasures will find new homes. I certainly wish I was a lot wealthier!

The letters are grimy with the dust of decades, so I have been gently cleaning them, and looking forward to printing. There are four full upper case fonts, and I fully intended to have more, but the proofing press caught my eye.

Aren't these letters beautiful? I am planning a series of Shakespeare cards with collage and letterpress, and these are going to be perfect. There are so many other possibilities as well!
As always, my black and white cat is very interested in all that happens, particularly on the kitchen table.

letterpress printing. love.

Blissful in my shed, printing with my beautiful de Little of York wooden font.

Look at the lovely black ink gleaming.

I made words that just came into my head.

I printed LOVE and OH YES

and then

DON'T FALL and NO!

I don't know if the four are related. I was too busy enjoying the process to ask myself!