Letterpress Galley Trays for sale on eBay

In case any letterpressers read my blog, I am selling five galley trays on eBay and wanted to let any interested parties know! They are from the massive pile of letterpress goodies I recently acquired and are all in pretty good shape, if in need of a bit of a cleanup.

The auctions end on Sunday, 6 November 2011 and all start at £0.99. Am happy to post overseas too.

Check the listings for more detail. You can find them here.

Letterpress luck

Recently, I have been the recipient of some amazing letterpress luck.

I received a call from a stranger offering me a 'shed load' of letterpress equipment that otherwise was going to the tip. To me, this call was akin to getting a call from the lotto people. I couldn't believe my luck. Particularly when i had been asking around about moving lead type myself and what this would cost to get started. Lets just say there was a bit of a financial barrier.

I am going to need to make a few trips to get all of this stuff home, but basically, so far i have another Adana 8x5 press, that i have cleaned up and looks like it should be in good working order, as well as boxes and boxes of lead type, wood type and other printing miscellany.

I am going to document here things i find as i go because i need some way of remembering everything i come across. And perhaps even to get a bit of help identifying some bits, as there are already a few pieces i am uncertain about. So you all better get your letterpress hats on cause here we go!

The back of the car packed up with the first load. My little car struggled with the weight of all that lead!

Cleaning up the Adana 8x5

Sitting in its new home next to my first press. They make a cute pair. It just needs some new rollers and i would prefer if is had a gripper for when i print. Lucky for me it is almost exactly the same as my first press so i have had something i can compare it to. 

Anyone know what these are?? 

Or what these are used for??

A bag of wood type that i need to sort.

Bags...

and bags...

and bags of lead type that i need to sort and identify.

Who knows what these blocks are used for? The base of each is dirty with ink from type from the look of it. 

Loads of quoins.

I think these are galleys?

Not sure what these bits are actually called, but they are for tightening and loosening the quoins and there are some tweezers in here for my eyebrows. No just kidding, i presume these are for moving the type around. I haven't come across a composing stick yet, which i think is a fairly vital bit of kit from what i understand, but hopefully there are a few kicking around in some of the boxes i have yet to unpack!

There is even some lino to make my own lino blocks with.

And finally some spacing blocks.

This will do for now - if anyone has any light to shed on any of the items i am unsure of, i would very much appreciate it, so please, shine away!

Look what I made...

I had so much fun making these. Find out more over at Phoebe and the Letterpress.

These cards are now available on my Etsy shop @ phoebeandthe.etsy.com

Letterpressing for Christmas

For Christmas I have gone out on a limb.

I have got two magnesium plates made up to print our own personalised Christmas cards. One is the stamp I will be using on the backs of my cards with my logo and 'catch line' (Phoebe and the Letterpress, Custom letterpress papery things). The other was a Christmas message for the front cover of the card. I wasn't sure how well I would print with either of these, I was more worried about the logo stamp than the bigger Christmas stamp. But, it all felt a bit risky.

I thought the small font size, thin lines and detail in the fonts, namely rosewood, I chose for my logo stamp would give me issues. I remember when I was making my wedding invitations, the man who made my photopolymer plates, a Mr Sparrow, quite famous in letterpress circles, now sadly retired, warned me of the dangers of using small fonts. In fact I think I had to go up to a size 12 font before he would happily make my wedding invitation plates for me (maybe he was being cautious as I was a beginner). The stamps he made me printed very nicely, but I bemoaned the fact I didn't get the deep impression I was hoping for. I suspect this was more due to the hard card I was using than anything else. Edward, or Ted as he prefers to be known (brilliant name!), was a traditionalist and keen on the 'kiss' method as opposed to bashing the font forcefully into the paper. I remember him telling me that letterpress shouldn't leave any 'deep impression' on the paper other than the ink. I was confused as it was precisely this impression that had made me fall in love with letterpress. As I read more, I discovered two different views in letterpress. One is to leave the lightest kiss on the paper, and they other is to impress a deep 'debossing'. I personally love the debossed look. So, as I have progressed, I am always striving for the deepest impression I can muster, really thrusting those letters irretrievably into the page.

I started printing with my logo stamp and was pleasantly surprised. The impression, while not as deep as I like, was still fairly good and all my tiny fonts printed clearly, cleanly and legibly. Even the rosewood font came out perfectly. So I deemed this run a success. Good, that was the hard part over. Next I was moving on to my big Christmas block with large font using a variety of typefaces. This I thought would be easier as Ted had been so positive about large font. But NOOOOO! I cant seem to get the ink to transfer to the paper evenly let alone worry about the impression on the paper. I am double inking, and pressing 3 to 4 times and still I am getting problems with patchy ink particularly in the middle of the my stamp. I rollered the stamp myself thinking perhaps my rollers weren't getting at the stamp properly, I packed up the tympan in a variety of ways, I adjusted the impression bolts constantly and I still cant get it perfect. My husband has tried to reassure me that they don't need to be perfect because after all they are handmade, but it is driving me bonkers.

There are a few other options I can try to improve the prints but these all involve mess, something I wasn't prepared to undertake late last night. At the moment, I have the stamp sitting in the top corner of the frame thing (god, I really need to learn what everything is called already!), so I think I should try and move it into the middle to try and get a bit more control over where the impression bolts are affecting.

I have also been a bit dodgy and have been layering up my tympan in a haphazard fashion. I think I might need to take all of that apart and put it together properly. Other than that, im not sure what else I should do! Fingers crossed this works. If it doesn't, I am going to cry. Still they do look pretty cool, I particularly love the shade of red (one I got from Caslon when I purchased my Adana). It is lovely and bright and festive!

I have printed on 2 different papers - 

One was a Somerset

The other was thick watercolour paper cardstock

Here are some photos of that i have printed so far.

If i know you, you are probably going to get one in the mail. Sorry to ruin the surprise!

Nearly forgot, if you are interested in more about my letterpress, check out http://phoebeandtheletterpress.com 

Phoebe and the Letterpress get stamping

As some of you will already be aware, I am trying to get my own little letterpress business started, Phoebe and the Letterpress (there will be more about that later on).

I am still in the beginning stages and trying to get all my materials together before I can list anything on my Etsy shop. But in the meantime I have been stamping away in preparation. One of these was a 'Thank you' stamp I had made initially for our wedding. I have popped some photos up on my website of these attempts and I think they came out beautifully. I really lucked in with the light when I was taking the pictures too, I think they almost look professional (to my amateur eye anyway).

I thought you might enjoy checking them out.

P xo