Not leaving it to chance

Printed on the letterpress using wooden type:
 OS Grot Ornamental 10 point

My preparations are underway for the Bristol Artists' Book Event (BABE) and its all going according to plan, though as ever there is lots more to get finished.  I will be joining other members of the abc to sell some books and ephemera, and our stand will feature an exciting Lucky Dip, for which we printed a few signs on the letterpress, just to get the right aesthetic.  The fingers on this manicule look a bit odd though.

Zip it!

After the frustration of a power cut midway through our letterpress class a couple of weeks ago I returned home and, keen to get some printing done, set about carving out some new rubber stamps with which to make some long overdue greetings cards.  There were a couple of themes going on, to suit different occasions, but as usual it was printing the stamps in a different way to that which I had intended which yielded the preferred results.

Zip card

On your recommendation

In December I signed up to take part in Beau Beausoleil's call to book artists for an inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street.  Here are the full details of the project.

I am hoping that the idea I am working on will capture that spirit of the book that he describes, and  demonstrate the value of the bookseller by pitching us all as 'sellers' in our recommendations to others.

I have begun to collect book reviews along with a bit of data from a range of friendly contributors.  I am intending to print these on A6 index style cards, kept as looseleaf within a custom made folder.  The idea being that the reader could browse for a review but the book title and author would not be displayed, only the ISBN, and they would get a brief idea of who was recommending it in order to help them decide whether to follow it up.

More on the printing process later.  If you would like to contribute a review please get in touch!

Final February

This is the print I am handing in for the Russia-UK artists' book project. And before you say it, it's supposed to look faded out!

It was printed from a card collagraph onto 250gm off-white paper using rubber-based black ink.  This final version was a second pull to get the grey newsprint effect.