LETTERPRESS

I've been learning about letterpress for over ten years now. The problem with letterpress in Australia is that there is very little equipment to collect, and few people who know how to use it creatively.

At art school I had a very experienced letterpress teacher for a couple of years, then I took some time off and when I got back he had retired. From then on I've been teaching myself, talking to old printers (who are usually working in commercial printeries doing odd jobs), and lapping up the increasing information available on the internet.

I've been very lucky in that I've never had to leave the equipment I learned with. I still work at the Art School, and have access to a fantastic but small collection of typefaces, including wood type, and I print and teach with two flatbed cylinder presses, a Graphix (fully automated) and a Korrex (electric inking, manual printing).

At home, under wraps, I have a Vandercook SP-20 (complete with manual) and a table-top Adana 5" x 8", plus a small selection of type. I hope to set up my own printing studio within the next 12 months.

After numerous requests, I have scanned my SP-20 manual. If you would like a PDF copy of the manual (download size 929KB), click here. Happy printing!

BOOKBINDING

Always one for whipping up a little book-type thing,
I did a lot of basic binding during my Visual Arts degree. I learnt a lot more on the job as a technical officer, and even more when I started attending and teaching workshops on alternative book structures.

But I've also yearned to make 'proper' books, sewn, with gorgeous hard covers that open flat on your hands as you read. So over the last two years I've been attending evening bookbinding classes at the local technical college and have been fortunate enough to find a teacher trained thoroughly in conservation bookbinding. He teaches me, I practice the techniques at the Book Studio, and then I pass on bits of it to my students -- the bits I feel confident about.

This year I learned that if you bind something 20 times in a row, you get very confident. But you also have to adapt bindings to suit the book you've made, the structure it needs. I've learned that binding a book of very thick 'art' paper is quite different to binding a book of thinner 'book' paper. It's a continual learning process, even when editioning and batching, and I love that about my work.

MADE

Transmigration
Poetry by Nan McDonald, drawings by Jan Brown.
40pp, hand-set letterpress and embossed drawings, case-bound by hand with a hand-set letterpress-printed cover. Edition 90. Completion date is early 2008. Available now! Go to the Duckshop for more details.

pr0n coktales
A chapbook of spam, hand-set in letterpress in black and a garish orange prawny colour.Chapbooks are traditionally 8pp single-section booklets. Available now! Go to the Duckshop for more details.

Wanted: John Howard, for crimes of...
Hooray! Completely outmoded now, but a fabulous souvenir of days gone by...
Hand-set metal and woodtype. Still available! Go to the Duckshop for more details.

MAKING

Poems to Hold or Let Go
Poetry by Rosemary Dobson, wood engravings by Rosalind Atkins.
56pp, letterpress (using photopolymer plates) and relief prints, case-bound by hand with a hand-set letterpress-printed cover. Edition c. 200. Completion date with any luck is mid-to-late 2008.

PLANNING

Places
Poetry by Bernard Hardy, woodcuts by John Pratt. Chapbook.

Collaborations with:
Byrd (2008)
Garth and Katharine Nix (2009)
Jordie Albiston (2009/10)
Tracy Crisp
Rosalind Atkins

(dates only supplied if notions have progressed that far)