RANDOM ACTS WITH WOODTYPE

I was given a great big box of old woodtype sorts that have been sitting on the shelf in my workshop glowering at me to do something useful with so I succumbed today and laid them all out on the Farley.

Most of them had some kind of accent on them and there were way many more vowels than consonants and after scratching my head for a time, I realised that there was no way was I going to make any meaningful words out of them but they would be great for making decorative paper for use as either wrapping paper or for bookbinding projects. Slow going though... Each sheet had to be put through twice as my proofing press isn't quite big enough. Anybody like to give me a bit of time on a Vandercook?

Arrival of the Arab

Thought it was time for a change from pictures of my notebooks.
Just been away for 10 days on a business trip to Hong Kong and China visiting printers and binders, mainly of children's books. I'll post some pictures of how books are mass produced by hand later when I've managed to sort through them all but in the meantime got back early Friday morning to find this beauty in my workshop!
It's an early 20th century Arab Platen Letterpress printing machine - a classic of its kind. I'm looking after it for a mate and we're going to hopefully restore it back to full working order so I can print my title pages etc by proper letterpress. Very excited about it but hoping it won't distract me too much from the hand binding. I've got a showcase exhibition coming up at the beginning of March for handmade goods in our town called "Made in Bradford" so I need to finish at least another 15-20 notebooks.

Watch this space.