A Trip to Ditchling

We recently paid a visit to the beautiful village of Ditchling in Sussex. Ditchling has a rather interesting history and for such a small place has hosted more than its fair share of artistic residents. Indeed, it was something of a creative hub in the earlier 20th century and now boasts its own museum, showcasing the work of local artists and craftspeople.

This museum of course was the main reason for our visit to Ditchling, and of chief interest for us were exhibitions on typographic legends Edward Johnston and Eric Gill.  

I assume most people reading this know who Eric Gill is (Gill Sans, guys) and his friend and mentor Edward Johnston was the genius responsible for the London Underground font (Johnston Sans). Johnston has featured on this blog before when we visited the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton. Ooh we do love a good museum.

It was absolutely fascinating to see their work on display, especially that which shows the development of their respective typefaces.

Johnston's original profession was as a calligrapher or hand-letterer, so it was lovely to see some of his work in this area as well.

You'd think this would all be exciting and interesting enough, but Ditchling's delights were only just getting started. Most of the rest of the museum was dedicated to displays on (our very favourite thing)... letterpress! Woohoo!

Their print shop set-up had me green with envy and did a great job of laying out the basic process for those unfamiliar with proper printing.

Just look at the patina on the wooden type... and the massive old type case... and the beasty Stanhope press...! Sigh.

In an absolutely inspired (and slightly bonkers) move, the museum had also been involved with an (ad)venture called the Big Steam Print. This involves printing giant lino-cut designs with a dirty great steam roller. Why not??

Image from artfund.org 

At the museum, they had a huge communal linocutting thing going on, where you could contribute your own little design to a massive linocut sheet that will be printed as part of Big Steam Print at the Ditchling Fair on 18th June (hey, that's not yet! You could totally go and see it!).

Whilst I was running around taking photos of everything in the print shop, Sam Boy and our mate Kathy were doing just that.

All in all, it was an excellent day out. We drove down, but my friend Kathy came on the train, so can confirm it's definitely do-able as a day trip from London. The train station is in Hassocks though, which is a bit of a trek on foot from Ditchling itself, you may want to consider a taxi depending on how much you like walking!

If you fancy getting in a spot of exercise whilst you're there, a stroll up on Ditchling Beacon proved bracing. For lunch, there are plenty of options, we had some lovely sandwiches in the garden at the The Green Welly Cafe, a stone's throw from the museum. The museum shop itself also had some incredibly tempting cakes on display.

Alice and the Arab - Balscote Press Visit: Part One

Last weekend we were lucky enough to have a 2-day private workshop at Balscote Press near Banbury. Our main goal was to learn as much as we could about operating the Arab press, and hopefully come home armed with the knowledge we needed to finish the restoration of our own press.

We had a wonderful time hanging out with Brian in his workshop and learnt a shedload of useful stuff. Most importantly for me,  I'm not scared of the Arab anymore!

I'm going to break our trip down into a few different blog posts so it doesn't get too long and boring. First up: printing our Alice in Wonderland block on the Arab.

Here's Alice locked up in the chase:

We need to get us some of those awesome giant double quoins.

Next we ink the press with this stunning shade of red:

We had a lot of make-ready to do (or "fiddling and diddling" as Brian called it!) before we got her printing to the quality we wanted. Here's the block being inked:

The wooden blocks you can see also getting covered in ink are called type-high bearers. They are a brand new discovery for us, and help to evenly distribute the ink by supporting the rollers at the side.

The press in action:

We printed onto the top packing sheet first (usually called the tympan, but in this case it's an A4 plastic pocket!) to get the positioning right:

Lots of Alices:

Doesn't she look lovely:

Posts to follow on our other activities including making photopolymer plates from halftone photographs (who knew that was even possible?), and making our own rubber stamps.

A Visit to Vancouver

Last month, we were lucky enough to spend 3 weeks in Canada for our rather belated honeymoon. We had a wonderful time, met some delightful people and were blown away by the spectacular scenery.

Don't worry, I'm not going to spam you up with holiday snaps, this is heading back in a printing direction very shortly.

We travelled around all over British Columbia and Alberta during our trip. One of the many highlights was a day spent exploring the shops and markets of Granville Island in Vancouver.

We'd heard rumour of a letterpress studio operating there and we found them! One Black Stone Press.

We ducked in for a chat and were met with the sight of one of the most stylish, well-appointed and cleanest letterpress studios we have ever seen.

There we met a lovely chap named David Clifford, a fellow Brit who's been living (and printing) in Canada for many years, after apprenticing in London in the 1960s. He runs Black Stone Press with his daughter, Yasmine.

I was astounded by all the equipment that David had collected over the years, and again how clean he managed to keep everything! It was a fascinating visit, and we'll certainly add 'stalk local letterpress people' to our to do list on any future holidays we may be lucky enough to take.

Type and Transport

You know the Tube font? It's cool isn't it? And the branding across London Transport: brilliant, smart, consistent, right? Alright fine, I bet you've never really thought about it. Take a second now though, and I think you'll agree.

It's coming up 100 years since calligrapher Edward Johnston designed that iconic typeface; so much a part of Londoner's lives that it's almost invisible. To celebrate, the London Transport Museum have put on a fabulous tour at the depot in Acton, entitled Johnston Journeys, and I can certainly recommend it. Apologies for the quality of my photos.

The depot itself is a wonder to behold. Apparently the museum at Covent Garden only represents 10% of the archive of stuff held by London Transport, and all the rest is squirrelled away in this vast depot. It's a complete Aladdin's cave of transport history, really quite extraordinary.

The tour itself was excellent fun. Very well curated, cherry-picking artefacts from all over the depot that related to Johnston and his typeface, in its various incarnations over the last century.

The absolute highlight for us (of course!) was the type case filled with wood type. They even had some formes still locked up with various bits of signage, it was a delight to see.

Sadly it was shut away in a glass case, so we couldn't really get anywhere near it... understandable though, even I could imagine getting a bit light-fingered faced with such a treasure.

The only slight downside for us was that the chaps who gave our tour, whist incredibly knowledgeable on trains, tubes, and the history of the Underground, perhaps weren't quite so expertly informed when it came to the history (and terminology) of type and printing.

For us personally, that being our main area of interest, I suppose it would have been nice to have a bit more detail on that side of things. I know I sound like a total Hermione when I say things like that, but of course I mean no disservice to the volunteers there; they're doing a grand job.

Overall, it was a fascinating couple of hours. We could have happily stayed to explore for the rest of the day. So if you've any interest in the history of type, design, branding, transport or indeed, just the history of our fair city... do check it out.