A dozen large format “Poster Poems”, with words from Nick Alexander, are now complete and ready for posting up during Ledbury’s Poetry Festival. Having spent quite a few hours designing and typesetting my own “Poster Poem” for Tinsmiths’ Talking Wall (for Ledbury Poetry Festival 2011) I really appreciate these as works of art. With masses of large format wooden and metal lettering to choose from, plus beautifully carved line spacings and a fascinating library of engravings and illustrations it takes quite a bit of time to familiarise oneself with the fabulous resource that is, Tilleys – not to mention the wonderfully built and oiled machinery of Martin Clark’s presses.
So, with belts flying last Friday I inked my first roller on the enormous banquet table-sized press. Of course, with a few mishaps – mainly due to my lack of co-ordination or ability to think “in reverse” – the first colour was printed in a trice. Like decorating, it seems that with printing, it is all in the prep. You can see, from the shiny type in the photographs, that inks take some time to dry and so one has to give it a bit of time before hand-mixing the next colour (no pantone colours here!). The most marvellous thing about the whole process has been seeing blocks that had been rather languishing in a dusty corner (requiring a little leap of faith to imagine them in use), produce bold and crisp imprints – as good as new……
Do come and see Tinsmiths’ Alley emblazoned with a dozen large format poster for the poetry festival – and to hear the poet Nick Alexander recite a selection of his poems. The posters, each produced in a limited edition of 25, will be for sale at Tinsmiths during the Poetry Festival. They will appear in the Artists Prints section of the website at the end of next week. Look out for the heading “Tilley” to see all twelve poem posters.
Have just found your site via The Times, up in my loft are large wooden type face from a old printers in Portsmouth called Box Clements my father bought the business in the 60’s which became the Whitbourne Press and he used the blocks on a large roller printing machine for posters ie for the Isle of Wight pop festival (wish I had some). I grew up with printing and helping my dad on the treadle printing machine doing business cards and on other machines plus collating and the guillotine under his watchful eye. My grandfather was also a printer and I did desk top publishing. Hoping to use the blocks to print on cotton for a quilt based on type face and the family history of printing. Longing to visit and will as soon as it’s possible.
This sounds really interesting, especially as at the moment we are organising two textile printing workshops (using blocks) here during the Herefordshire Arts Week which runs from 10-18th September. The workshops go alongside an exhibition held here of printed textiles from “artisan” designers in the Uk. The print workshop, led by Sylvia Stiff, will run from 10-4pm on each Sunday of the arts week (well 10 days). Perhaps this would be a good time for your visit, if you’d like to join in with some of the typefaces? The event will be ticketed as we will have to make sure everyone has enough space to print. I’ll put this on the website in July and put it on the Blog then too. Thanks for telling us about your history and the project.