LETTERPRESS IS AN ENDANGERED CRAFT

As listed by the Heritage Crafts Association

I've recently joined the Heritage Craft Association (HCA) who maintains a list of heritage crafts in the UK including a list of those becoming endangered. Endangered here is through a lack of training or professional practitioners. I'm involved in a few of the crafts on the list including papermaking and calligraphy but it is letterpress that finds itself upon their red list.



From inside letterpress circles the current surge in popularity for letterpressed items can make it look far more like a growing industry and some may wonder how it can possibly be classed as "endangered".

The HCA vision is for "A society in which heritage craft skills are popularly acknowledged as being of vital cultural importance, and are nurtured and celebrated for their own intrinsic value, not just for the objects or environments they produce, conserve or restore." and that is something which I totally support.

Yes, there are many people exploring the art of letterpress but not very many of them are doing it as a full time commercial activity. There is also some dilution of the craft amongst many producing hand made items as a hobby or part of their arts and crafts offering. This dilution comes partly from the need to produce quickly and cheaply in order to make letterpress more commercially viable.

There are some who do all of their composition, layout and design digitally and then make or buy a photopolymer plate and print this on a small clamshell press made of MDF and steel. There are then no design restrictions, no layout of type, locking up, no limited storage issues or vintage press maintenance. Is this still what we would class as letterpress or have too many of the craft's skills and equipment been replaced and moderised. I'm not saying this doesn't have its place or that it's not letterpress per se, just that it doesn't sit in the heritage of letterpress skills.



For me, the heritage element is more important than the output and I think the HCA vision supports this. I recently restored a vintage Albion press that was being used as a rusty seized up garden ornament. It's now in my studio and working again, doing the job it was intended to do. That is the value here, not the restoration itself. I could have restored it and had it as a studio ornament like you see in many modern print shops but my mission was for it to be used again for it's intended purpose.

I restore old type for the same reason, I don't want to clean it up and display it in a job case, I want it to be fully cleaned and brought back to type high so it can be used for printing again. I might level out a compressed corner on some wooden type but I do leave in scratches and small dents.

It is possible to restore many things to "as new" condition but in doing so we often remove some of their visible history. Something we call "Object Biography" in Museum Studies. These are tangible signs of an intangible history and evey historical object has a story to tell, they often have these scars from their former life and working presses, equipment and type are no exception. In fact it's part of their appeal.

While letterpress printers of the past would have removed these imperfections it is now generally acknowledged that they will be kept when using vintage type. There's a certain beauty and artistry in allowing that history to show through in the final print.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that everything we use wears out over time and I'm grateful that there are still people producing new lead and wooden type but I feel there has to be a balance and a distinction between heritage letterpress and using letterpress techniques in a modern practice. The composition of type, working with a limited amount of letters, have to make ready and make do are skills that incorporate into the process and something I enjoy far more than the printed matter that are the end results.