The Studio in 2022

In April Sabine comes to stay as a journey-woman for letterpress. It is her second placement and she will stay for a whole week. As for her project, she has planned a concertina brochure.

As of 2019 the studio is on the list of places where young people can go to spend some of their journeman-time working with metal type and printing letterpress. With the manual proof presses, a good stock of metal type and many years of experience from working with the techniques, I have a solid foundation for passing on knowledge on how to work with and understand the cultural heritage of letterpress. The „Verein für die Schwarze Kunst“ has initiated the effort called „Walz für Handsatz und Buchdruck“. After both printing and handling metal type have dropped out of professional teaching curriculum, the only places that can pass on know-how are in studios and workplaces which are still alive and operational.

The proof press made by Simmel 70 years ago, before the brand KORREX was coined

In May we head for another trip south. At a school in the town where I used to live near Stuttgart a printing press, a paper guillotine, some metal type and a mix of equipment is rendered homeless, after the room the equipment is in is claimed for other uses. The press is an earlier version of my KORREX Hannover, no rollers, completely manual. I had spent my last two primary school years up to the age of 10 at this school after we had relocated there from Aachen. Even though there was no print room then, it is nice to have the opportunity to save this particular press from going to the wreckers. It finds its new home in our barn and will be used for the „printing-for-all“ offers during exhibitions. In autumn it will be properly oiled and wrapped up for hibernation.

“Printing for all” on the Simmel-proof press in the barn

It is a long standing tradition with the Oxford Guild of Printers to ask their members to print ephemera. There will always be some members who print an edition so that the prints can be distributed to all members. The year 2021 was the first year with a given motto: the alphabet. So first of all, each printmaker had to choose one letter. I went for Q, standing for quarantine and the yellow flag to signal that a ship is free of disease. The collection then comes through the post in a box neatly made by a bookbinder.

My contribution to this year’s ephemera for the Oxford Guild of Printers: year 2003

This time round the motto is „40 Years On“ commemorating and celebrating the 40 years the Guild has existed. Again each printmaker had to make up their mind first, and this time each had to choose one of the 40 years. I went for 2003, the year in which we completed casting type on Greno‘s Monotype machines. This collection, too, arrives in a lovely box.

The old barn when it is turned into a bespoke temporary gallery space.

In late August the first ever Wayzgoose at the studio is held. A wayzgoose is the traditional meeting of printers around Bartholomew‘s Day which is 24 August, just before in the printroom the lights need to be put on again for work. The date is the same as the regional Mill-day and so it is all about the brandnew millprint series of linocuts. For this year‘s printing-for-all an extra windmill has been cut as outline and the block is mounted in the new press, which has been built exactly 70 years ago. Visitors can pull a print themseves and colour it later at home. A new version of seeds sachet is prepared for the event, this time it is filled with corn cockel seeds. The wildflower has been growing abundantly and there are plenty of seeds to share.

“Giving Diversity a Home!” – printed labels for seed sachets

We had made a small bed to grow vegetables early on. Now a bigger one needs to be made measuring 70 square metres and we start breaking up a piece of the meadow. Next year we will have the first harvest of kale, sweet corn and swede plus a bumper crop of beans.

Briefly noted:

„Separation“ Broadsheet for FPBA Parenthesis deLuxe Portfolio 42

The studio has become one of the „Audio Stations“ along LandArt-Route 5.

Exhibiting at BuchDruckKunst in Hamburg