Letterpress Workshop in the heart of Nottingham
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to attend a letterpress workshop at Pop Press on St James Street, Nottingham. The odd couple, as they call themselves, Ming and Steve have been established for years having moved up to Nottingham 10 years ago from the big smoke where they started a greeting cards business, developing a range of linocut and mono prints which were sold in Paperchase and Scribbler as well as independent stores, they came to embrace a new life and join in the creative fun that is taking Nottingham by storm.
Steve and Ming were incredibly welcoming when entering their lovely shop with general chit chat. Chris and I quickly asked if they do workshops and booked in, the shop closes on a Monday and open it up especially for workshops, because all the action happens downstairs.
The building is historical Nottingham making the ground, shop floor is cozy and has beautiful traditional big glass windows giving it a light and airy feel, perfect for a creative space. This is why it is closed during workshop creating time. Now when you travel upstairs and it’s like diving right down the rabbit hole into a world of excitement. Some would call it messy, others would call it organised chaos, for me it was a wonderment of inspiration and creation, a world of opportunity.
The workshops can be anything from 2 to 4 hours, if you want to start adding in illustrations in I would recommend doing two workshops to really get stuck in.
So what actually is letterpressing? Well in a nutshell it is a technique using a printing press or foot treadle ‘Alan’ the letterpress in our case, a process which many copies are produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surfaces against a sheet of paper.
Pro tip — come prepared with rough idea for your creation. A quote or saying works best, keep it short and snappy. We decided on Avocado, Hummus, Eggs to produce a notepad for the kitchen. Now with the idea, Steve explained the process, compose your message with movable letters in the ‘chase’, this is like a picture frame without the glass, then build around your letters with ‘furniture’, long spare blocks of wood, and metal ‘leading’ making it nice and tight. The final touch before placing the chase into the press is take ‘quoins’ and with a key you tighten them to ensure the chase has no movement.
Here comes the, fun, trial and error segment. Once our chase was placed in Doris (letterpress) we inked up our letters by maneuvering the press with your hands (see pictures) being careful not to press too soon, there is a real art to this. Now ready you go for gold, literally in our case, and letterpress until you’re satisfied, transferring the ink from the type to leave an impression on the paper. It can take many attempts, many changed to the levels so don’t get disheartened, it’s all part of the fun and very rewarding in the end.
Our notepads didn’t take long to accomplish and we had our hearts set on a print for the kitchen, quote ‘Gin and Bear It’ expressing our love for Gin. This we decided to use a mix of the movable metal letters and then introduce plastic plates known as ‘photo-polymer plates’, these give you the opportunity to explore more font styles and play with size.
So to conclude, the people are amazing and talented, the place is stunning, and the workshop itself was brilliant. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to try something new, make something personal for a loved one or for yourself, or be like Chris and I make a date/day of it.
To find out more click on the links below:
We're Steve Dunn and Ming Chung, the odd couple who make letterpress goods in our garden workshop.pop-press.co.uk
Victoria Douglas: Creative Enthusiast
