New letterpress and artist's book work

I've been working hard at the Tom Paine Printing Press with some new wood and metal type which I've recently acquired, and I'll be posting images here within the next few days. Just sorting and cleaning the type takes ages, and of course the typeseeting, locking up the forme, and printing on the hand press is a slow business.

New images of Lewes Railway Land, and a painting

A new version of an oil painting I did in 1986. It's interesting that many of the preoccupations of my recent poetic photobooks (Kings Cross, The Euston Arch, Thames - The London River, The East London Line, etc.) are demonstrated here - the landscape and skyscape, the mixture os urban and rural, the impact of the railway, the steam locomotive as image, my own memories, etc. This scene has long been submerged under new housing developments. I actually travelled on a steam train from Uckfield to Lewes (they used to run from London Victoria to Brighton using this route - a great alternative to the Brighton main line), through this landscape, in 1962.

The photo at the top is one I took leaning out of the train window as it approaches Lewes Station, in 1962, having just crossed the River Ouse (by the Phoenix Iron Works, or East Sussex Engineering as I think it was known by then) and the western end of Cliffe High Street, and run down from the viaduct over the railway land.

The middle image is one of a series of photos I took in the winter of 1985-6 to form a 90-degree panorama of the Railway Land.

The East London Line: Artist's Book 2010

Above: Shoreditch Station and Brick Lane, October 2008.



Watch this space for the developing story of my new East London Line artist's book. This has been in gestation for a year or two, but it's getting there!

Isaac Rosenberg & More Creative Typography

Here are more images of recent work I've been doing on my wooden hand press (Common Press). The second is Variations on a Capital 'E' (including one lower case 'e'), using my own hand-cut 17th Century character (4.5 inches high) taken from Moxon. Red was frequently used for titling in early printed books.

The first and third are the wood block and first progress proof respectively of a woodcut I'm doing for my Rosenberg book (Isaac Rosenberg, the artist and poet). This block, which I cut and proofed today, is about 12 x 18 inches and is thin plywood so I will have to build it up to type-height if I print it with a page of text.

New & Other; Creative Typography

Two photos of type-cutting, typesetting and printing work I've just done at my Tom Paine Printing Press in Lewes High Street. Printing was done on the wooden 'common press' which I use all the time. The Valentine is printed using wood type on Khadi hand-made paper from India, and is about a foot (i.e. 30cm) square. The large capital 'E' print is from a woodcut which I'm in process of working on. I traced a large 17th Century capital 'E' (mine is about 4.5 inches high; or approx. 324 point, or 27-line pica) from Moxon's book, transferred this tracing to the wooden block, and cut out the character using a Stanley knife and wood-carving tools (gouges and chisels). It's very soft and grainy plywood, and clearly I'd get a much better result from a typographic point of view by using fruit wood. The three smaller 'E's (two caps and one l/c) above it are from different founts; the caps show very distinct differences from Moxon's, particularly in the serifs.

Altazimuth Press at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair

My Altazimuth Press and Tom Paine Printing Press will be showing their products at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair next weekend (7th/8th November) at Oxford Brooks University. Altazimuth Press products include Kings Cross, Thames - The London River, Afghanistan - A Journey, The Euston Arch, and Ypres Willows. I'll also be showing some semi-abstract typographical posters which I've printed on the wooden 'common press' (see below).

What a hectic summer it's been! The Tom Paine Festival in July, printing Paine's 'Case of the Officers of Excise' (limted edition of 30 copies) in August, Lewes's Artwave Festival in September and more printing in October (including Paine and Lewes Bonfire broadsides).

The opportunity has come up to move the Tom Paine Printing Press to a shop in Lewes High Street - No.151, opposite the Bull House where Paine used to live and work, and the Westgate Chapel (Unitarian) where he was married. I'm therefore moving the Press from the Market Tower (with grateful thanks to Lewes District Council for providing the space there since the end of June). It will take me several weeks to complete the move, as I have to dismantle the wooden 'common press' very carefully, and re-erect it in the new premises.

The High Street shop will be called 'PRESS', and will also act as a retail outlet for the Press's products, and also for prints and artists' books by local and other artists and printmakers.

I was very fortunate to be given a printer's 'random' or cabinet for typecases, by Graham Moss of the Incline Press, along with some type and other equipment. I also obtained some more type - metal and wooden - from the now-closed Printing House museum in Cockermouth (north end of the Lake District). I'm still very short of the 18th Century 'Caslon Old Face' type, so if anyone out there has any to dispose of . . . ? Or indeed any metal or wooden type.

Artwave, artist's books nearing completion - Rosenberg & East London Line

Isaac Rosenberg - see Rosenberg artist's book below


Whitechapel UndergrounD Station - see East London Line artist's book below


I'm demonstrating the printing press (the wooden common press) in the Market Tower, Lewes, during Lewes's Artwave Festival every afternoon from Friday 28 August to Friday 4 September inclusive.

As well as the Tom Paine material, I'm also using the press to print the text and blocks of some of my own artist's poem & image books, including Rosenberg (the Whitechapel poet and artist, who was killed in the First World War), and The East London Line (inspired by the current redevelopment of the old East London Railway from Shoreditch through (or rather under) Whitechapel, Shadwell, Wapping, Rotherhithe and Surrey Docks to New Cross and New Cross Gate).