Weddings and Tigers

A new letterpress print about weddings and tigers -

Printed on the Adana using our nice old wedding block and some Bodoni italic.

This one is in our Etsy and Folksy shops now...

We didn't dress up as tigers the day after our own wedding (or go to the seaside), although I suspect it would have been more fun if we had!

We're looking forward to the bank holiday weekend so we can both make a start on some new prints, and start planning a new and exciting project - more news soon!

Happy New Year!

We are starting 2009 with lots of ideas about using our Adana prompted by the arrival of these little beauties from Father Christmas....

Rollers!! No more careful hand inking for us! The Adana needs a bit of TLC - the springs for the rollers are a bit stiff from lack of use but hopefully we shall soon be printing with proper rollers and using the ink disc for the very first time. Hurrah!

We are also looking forward to the eventual arrival of the Model press - it might be a few months yet though, because the rollers need recovering and we have to find a home for it here (we need to do a bit of spring cleaning and chucking out first...)

Here is an advert for the Model in a copy of 'British Printer' from the summer of 1902...

The magazine came with the press, and has some beautiful adverts! The other page just visible in this shot is the 'situations vacant' page with various adverts. My favourite is this one -

'Engraver wanted for Artistic American and View work; must be competent man and able to make his own sketches; exceptional opportunity for first class man.'

What about a competent woman?! Although I'm not sure you could call my engraving competent - perhaps Jon could have applied instead of me...

When we were doing the history of our house (built in 1894), we looked up the 1901 census to discover that the occupants were involved in printing and bookbinding too! Here's an extract from the census - click on the image to see it properly.

Harry Webster (aged 19) was a bookbinder, Lionel (aged 18) was an assistant compositor and Grace (aged 16) was a book sewer. We haven't been able to find out anything more about them, but it's quite nice to think that we have our press and type all set out in what was probably their bedroom.

Quite how six people managed in our tiny house I'm not quite sure - sometimes there barely seems room for the two of us!

Anyway, here's some nice decorative type that came with the Model press in a sweet little wooden box. We haven't used it yet - but we're looking forward to testing it out with those new rollers!

Note!

We love this little vintage block - it's got a few little chunks missing but I think that adds to its charm once printed. I especially like the 'E' (and her little hat).

A short post today because I'm busy printing Christmas cards. The green is almost dry, so I had better make a start on the red - photos to come!

Flowers and a new print

Last night I finished the flowers for Christine's flower project.

The rest of the flowers have been turned into pretty brooches! They were quite fiddly to attach to a brooch back, but they look great pinned on, and we'll be selling some of them on our stall at Clutter City this Saturday.

For Jon's birthday last week I gave him a little linocut of our house, which I've been beavering away on in secret since the end of July. It's hard enough not to let slip what his present is normally, but keeping a linocut a secret is hard! He kept wondering why there were ink splotches in the bathroom when he came home from work, even though I supposedly hadn't been doing any printing...

Here's the wood mounted lino block with the design all drawn and ready to go -


In progress (after being hidden in a drawer inbetween spells of working on it) -

And the finished print framed on the wall - twelve layers, about 6x4 inches, and about six weeks of skullduggery.

We will be at Clutter City again this Saturday - come and say hello if you're in Norwich!

Peas and artichokes

We have been out in the garden enjoying the sunshine this week, plotting new ideas for various prints and keeping a close eye on all our little vegetables. Today we harvested our first pea pod! Hooray! It was a Hurst Green Shaft, and it was delicious - why bother cooking fresh peas when you can just eat them straight out of the pod? Like green smarties, only better.

Inspired by all this vegetable growing I did a quick watercolour sketch of some artichokes yesterday (not grown by us, but bought from the local farm shop instead). We've been trying to decide what kind of print we could turn my little painting into - Jon thinks it would make a good wood engraving on one of our tiny little 2 inch blocks, and I think it would make a nice woodcut.

I think we might end up doing both!

A new photograph of an old print

This week I have been slowly re-scanning some of our prints and taking some nice new photographs of them to add to our Etsy listings. It's a slow process, and the only one I've done so far has been the green TLR camera print, which I think looks rather nice on top of our new bookshelf. The new improved listing is here, and more will follow in the next few days!

We had a jolly day out in London on Monday - Jon had a work meeting, and the office is right next to St James' Park, we followed the sound of the band up to Buckingham Palace and watched the Changing of the Guard (from behind a very large crowd of eager tourists).

Whilst I'm beavering away on jazzing up our Etsy shop Jon has been busy working on a new wood engraving. At the moment he's still sketching the design onto the block - more photos to follow before he starts cutting!

A wet bank holiday weekend

Another wet bank holiday weekend here (although it was sunny yesterday, so Jon got lots done in the garden), so we have been stuck inside with nothing to do but carve woodblocks, print, eat toasted fruit loaf and drink plenty of tea.

I have been busy carving and printing the next layer of a square print of a cockerel. The background colour and the first layer of his feathers are all printed, so today I did some cutting before printing the next layer of feathers - a dark orangey-red. It is working out very well at the moment, but will probably take at least a couple more weekends work before I manage to finish it.

Jon is busy working this weekend, so hasn't had much time for art - but he is busy coming up with plenty of ideas for his entry for the 71st annual exhibition of the Society of Wood Engravers - the submission date for entries is in the first couple of weeks of July and both wood engravings and other types of relief print can be submitted.

Yesterday, when it was still sunny, Jon took a lovely photo of one of our home grown alliums. I only cut one to bring into the house but now I wish I'd cut them all as they have now taken a bit of a battering from the rain...

Easter Tulips

Tulips, originally uploaded by spoonergregory.

The Easter weekend has been cold, wet and snowy so we have stayed inside and worked on some new prints.

Jon has finished a new black and white linocut of some tulips on our coffee table, surrounded by our new favourite mugs, a pile of books and our fruit bowl. Here he is quietly cutting out the tulip leaves whilst I was busy in the kitchen...

I have been working on a small multi-layered landscape print, which requires lots of slow, steady cutting and careful planning. I'm very pleased with how it is shaping up, and Jon thinks that its one of my best so far... Watch this space for the finished print!

The tulips print is now available from our Etsy shop!

The Periodic Table of Printmaking

The sun has been shining on Norwich almost continuously since our last post, and we have been out in the garden enjoying it - planting potatoes, radishes, tomatoes, chillis, herbs and much more!

We have been working hard on our ideas for the Periodic Table printmaking project - I am doing Neodymium and Jon chose Selenium. We are both doing woodcuts, and started cutting the blocks today! Neodymium is used used to colour enamels and glass, so I based my design on Art Nouveau enamel jewellry and glass designs - the final colour scheme hasn't quite been decided yet, but I'm looking forward to using my new gold printing ink in some way, shape or form! Selenium was used in the honeycomb-style lightmeters of old cameras, hence the vintage camera in Jon's print.


Hopefully they should be printed by the end of the week - the other completed prints are appearing on this web page as they are finished.

Currently listening to: Camera Obscura

Springtime

Spring is well and truly sprung in Norwich now, it was so warm last Wednesday that we had our lunch out in the garden to enjoy the sunshine (before the conker tree comes into full leaf and blocks it out). The first of the purple sprouting brocolli is ready to eat, the lawn's been reseeded and last year's compost looks like being a fine vintage! All this has inspired a suitably Spring-y print, a woodcut of two daffodils (see below). It started out as being four flower heads, but got reduced down to 2 as that seemed to work better, even if it makes it look like they've had a fight and are no longer talking to eachother! Japanese plywood is great to work with, easy to cut but still strong enough to hold sharp lines and fine details. Our tools are a bit of a mixed bag at them moment. The fine lines are done with a dedicated woodcut tool that looks like its escaped from a backstreet surgeon's bag c.1750, while the clearing work is done with some super-cheap chisels from the bargain bin of Norwich's premier alladin's cave of hardware, Thornes. Still, they seem to work nicely together!


Current listening: Adam Green, Jacket Full of Danger

Bookplates

Its been quite a while since we last posted here, partly because the main project we were working on (an engraving for a bookplate) had to be kept secret until this weekend as it was a surprise wedding present! And partly because its spring and we've been out frolicking.

The design for the bookplate was engraved on 'new' formula resingrave which is meant to be less prone to chipping than the old one, though we weren't sure it was that noticeable a difference... The lettering was a new challenge and required lots of painstaking drawing of guidelines and double-checking in a mirror to make sure nothing had gone too awry.

The picture at the top is a view of the cathedral across the rooftops of Ely, and those of you who know it might spot that the tower and the lantern have been squashed together to make them fit in the space! This was the biggest edition we've ever tackled in one go, 50 copies in total, all on Zerkall paper.




















We're currently planning our contributions to the Periodic Table of Elements printmaking project, which aims to recreate the entire periodic table using a unique 6x6in print to represent each element. Loads of printmakers are involved and it'll be intriguing to see how it develops! We've been allocated selenium (Jon) and Neodymium (Sarah) and, armed with a few scraps of information courtesy of Google, we're already thrashing out some design ideas. As usual, watch this space!

Currently listening to: Gruff Rhys, Candylion, after seeing his wonderfully mad live show at the Arts Centre last week.

Reeds and Waves

Another weekend, another tiny woodblock engraved. This time a slightly less fiddly design than the Edgefield print, loosely based on many bracing walks by the sea in various parts of Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall. Its nowhere in particular, but there are elements of Cromer, Wells, St Ives, Penzance and even Plymouth in there somewhere! Again only 5 x 3cm. Will need to invest in a good magnifier if this keeps up...


Also finished is Fen Reeds, inspired by our post Christmas walk on Wicken Fen (or at least near Wicken Fen, what with us forgetting our NT cards and not being able to get in to the posh bit).


Our main website is due an overhaul to add all the new prints and generally tart things up a little, so do keep your eyes peeled for that over the coming weeks!

Currently listening to: The Shins - Wincing the Night Away