Could this be the most beautiful room in the world (Adana Workshop Part 1)

This Saturday we attended a letterpress workshop at the wonderful St. Brides Library. It was entitled "One day Introduction to the Adana" and that's certainly what we got, and then some.

I've decided to split this over 2 blog posts as I may over-gush otherwise. The course was taught by a tremendous fellow called Richard Lawrence, who has been in the letterpress business for longer than I have been alive. His encyclopaedic knowledge, patient instruction and dry sense of humour made the day an absolute pleasure. Our fellow workshopees were a lovely bunch as well, which was lucky, 'coz you never know...!

Our main goal in attending this workshop was to understand the basics of setting up our Adana ready for printing. Having bought our press in a right old state and refurbished it ourselves (see previous post), we have had no instruction at all how to go about fine tuning the thing to get the best possible results, and muddling through on that front really hasn't gone well so far.

We could print from it of course, but thus far it's always been a little disappointing. This sadly has meant that the Adana has mostly been sitting on the side in my library our spare bedroom, a little unloved, whilst we do all of our printing on the big ol' proof press, 'coz it's just easier.

I am pleased to say we learned exactly what we needed to know and plenty more besides. Richard was full of all sorts of useful little tips and tricks of the trade, and happy to impart them to us novices. I'm delighted to report that having followed his instructions to the letter upon returning home, our little Adana is putting in a much improved performance, and I expect it to be doing a little less dust-gathering from now on.

So for this first post, I'd just like to introduce you to my New Favourite Room in the World, where our workshop was held, then next post will be more about what we did there. The studio had an extraordinary collection of presses, type, furniture (the printing kind), leading and other equipment. I don't know what half of these things are called, so I'm not even going to try descriptions here...

Here's me being overwhelmed and playing photographer:

To be Continued...