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.

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.

Read All About It

It's letterpress, but not as we know it.

We came across a fascinating video this week, showing the process of printing newspapers "pre-computers".

The film was made in around 1950 and it's a great snapshot of printing history. You can see linotype and teletype machines in action, proofing, plate-making, photographs being developed and some bone fide 1950s scouts. It has everything. It certainly filled a few gaps in my knowledge. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did...

Bon Voyage Emily :(

A dear friend and colleague of mine is relocating from London to Bristol. I am both delighted for her, insanely jealous, and already missing my cinema buddy.

It's also her birthday coming up, so inspired by our joint frustration with our overcrowded metropolis, we made this card for her.

From that angle, it may just look like your average beautifully letterpressed birthday card (!), but if you look closer, you can see we've been playing with blind impressions again, and a hidden message is revealed...

Here are some pics of the type being locked-up and inked. This was a bit of a messy one, our roller's too wide to do this with any finesse so we had to wipe it off before printing!

I'm pleased to report she loved it. Bon Voyage Emily & Jon, missing you guys already!

Gold! And a lucky find.

Let me clarify. We have not found any treasure, gold is just an ink colour, and the lucky find was a type tray. Ok, expectation management out of the way, just a quick catch-up today...

I've recently gone down to a 4-day week in my day job, allowing me the brilliant expanse of all-the-Wednesdays to focus on our little letterpress company, Grey Letter Press.

I'll admit the first week didn't go that well, I ended up spending more time cooking and cleaning, as it was such a novelty to be home and have time to do these things. Of course, at the end of the day I felt frustrated and cross with myself. I didn't lose a fifth of my salary to be a bloody housewife!

So, since then I've been much more focused and spent lots of time reprinting cards, look here I am, printing...

Cards what I printed (innit):

In big news, we're trading at our first craft market soon (woohoo!), so we need plenty of stock. I will be posting again about this nearer the time of course, but we'll be at the Crafty Fox Market the Dogstar in Brixton on Saturday 25th April. Do swing by if you fancy it (and buy loads of cards please).

We thought some of our cards could do with a little revamp, so I've been trying out printing some existing designs in gold. Gooooolllld! Whaddaya reckon? This one we've decided is definitely a goer:

Not so sure about this one, I think maybe the original black is better? What say you?

In other news, we've had a weekend away in the delightful seaside town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Apparently, it's pronounced "All-brough", which is confusing. Not much to do if you've got kids or are easily bored, but if you just like sea-views, walking, eating and drinking like we do, I'd certainly recommend it.

We took a very windy stroll up the coast to the neighbouring village of Thorpeness, where we found a lovely sort of vintage market, called the Thorpeness Emporium. All sorts of delightful bits in there, including a gorgeous 1960s John Lewis sofa that totally stole our hearts. Head's won out on that one (can't afford it, don't need one), but we did allow ourselves to be tempted by this very unusual looking type tray:

That's me, nearly getting blown away on the walk back. I'm not wearing a tiny hat, btw, that's the handle of the tray.

We believe the tray is for storing leading, or furniture. Well, that's what we're using it for anyway. Lovely stuff.

Thanking you

A little later in the year than we might have hoped, we've printed these cards for our Christmas thank yous. Certainly suitable for non-festive expressions of gratitude as well, they'll be appearing in our shop sometime soon.

We wanted to keep these fairly simple in design, and liked the idea of experimenting with un-inked type again. We've used blind impressions before, but so far, only for insulting people : )

Now I just have to go and write the blimmin things...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Birthday Card

It was my best friend's birthday this week. She has the slight misfortune of being born on New Year's Day, so it's always a bit tricky trying to organise celebrations etc. Last year was her 30th and her husband arranged a fantastic surprise party in a lovely pub in North London. The theme was Buffy the Vampire Slayer (awesome), as Lisa is a huge fan of the show. We were chief in charge of decorations and got massively carried away with candles, velvet, bats, tarot cards etc. We even had my Dad whittle a stake for us. It was pretty cool.

This year, as it's less of a landmark birthday, no such shindiggery is taking place. Though we have printed a Buffy-themed birthday card for her. This is a quote from (I believe) the third season of Buffy. A slightly ironic birthday message, but I think it works perfectly...

Here's the locked-up type (I love this font, I want to use it for everything!):

A delicious blood red for the ink:

We were going to use this crossbow detail on there as well, but it looked (to use the technical term)... a bit crap.

And here's the final card! Gorgeous!

Not sure if this is a bit too niche to make available for sale, though I suppose the Buffy cult is a big one. Drop us a line if you'd like to see this in the shop : )