Back to basics – our crafty Christmas
In the spirit of austerity we decided to make our own Christmas cards, plus the decorations for our tree and in the office. And we also thought it might be a bit of fun to go back to basics.
Becci Neal and Robert Soar developed the concept of 'degrees of merriment', and designed our interior theme, our very special card, and tags for the tree. We despatched Matt Walpole down to the legendary Winklebag Press in deepest Suffolk to act as a printer's devil in producing them.
(Technophobes, look away now...)
We needed twenty of each of three tags -- H, O and ! -- each printed separately by hand in six colours, a total of 360.
Winklebag Press arranged for 16g Magnesium plates to be made, mounted type-high, from Becci's artwork, we used recycled paper and vegetable-based inks.
To make sure the three separate elements registered correctly we printed on a 1950s Stephenson Blake proofing press. The plates are locked-up in a chase and then inked using a brayer. Each sheet of paper is carefully positioned, a layer of packing placed on top and the printer pulls a heavy roller over the print-bed and the image is transferred to the paper.
Letterpress printing is a lengthy process and it took Matt a little while to get the hang of it -- no clicking 'cmp p' -- and there were a few rejects before he got into his stride.
The reverse was printed in red on an old Adana 8x6, again each one by hand.
We're very pleased with the results. They may not be works of art but they're certainly works of an artisan. And of course, they're a limited edition.
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