Back in 2009 I wrote a blog post about the new fashion for letterpress printing with a heavy impression. 'What...,' I asked, 'is the point of letterpress without impression? As another customer said recently, we deliver blacker blacks and denser colours than litho. When we work with metal and wood rather than plates you get the qualities, good and bad, of the design of the type and the physical limitations of putting it together.'
This is still the case, up to a point. Over the intervening years printing technology has, of course, continued to improve. I was recently shown some text set digitally in Bembo and printed with an inkjet printer. Hot metal Bembo printed letterpress would not have looked any better, which means that what I now have to offer, more than anything, is a visible impression. Fortunately there is an increasing range of soft papers that make this easier. However, a heavy impression wears out metal type so I only use that effect when printing from plates.
'We like the traditions of our trade, though,' the post continued. 'We talk about cases and galleys, not drawers and trays. When we’re left to our own devices we like our type to kiss the paper just the way our machines were made to do it.'
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Last week, thanks to John Purcell Paper, I had the good fortune to join a party touring the St Cuthberts paper mill near Wells in Somerset. St Cuthberts is one of the few mills still machine-making paper on a cylinder mould, an older process than the Fourdrinier machines used in most mills.
They specialise in artists' and print-making papers using 100 per cent cotton or high-quality wood pulp. It was eye-opening to realise that although the process is centuries old the manufacturing is a highly technical operation. The weight, thickness and colour of the paper are carefully monitored on the machine and checked once again after it comes off it. Seeing the labs and talking to the people who worked there reminded me of my distant days as a science undergraduate. It was a good reminder that while our focus may be on visual experience, printing, like paper making, is a highly technical business.
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