Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future

In the basement of the School of English at the University of Leeds is everything required to make a book from scratch, including paper-making equipment, presses and type, and a bindery. This facility was developed piecemeal over fifty years, however, as academic fashions changed the room fell out of use. Similar sets of equipment can be found elsewhere, in other English departments that no longer teach bibliography, for instance, or in printing departments that no longer teach letterpress printing. They can also be found in museums and galleries, representing a way of reproducing text made redundant by newer technologies. This research network brings together those who have, or are working with, letterpress to explore what relevance this print technology has in the digital present.

Led by the Centre for the Comparative History of Print at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Printing History and Cultures at Birmingham City University and the University of Birmingham, the network brings together curators, printers, artists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to investigate the place of historical printing today. Such a network is particularly timely. While many print rooms fell into disuse with the decline of bibliography and textual studies, the emergence of the digital humanities has prompted a resurgence of interest in analogue media forms and the technologies that produced them. Similar shifts have occurred in typography and book arts, as practitioners have turned to older practices to inform and complement work in digital media. Equally, beyond the academy, writers, artists and small presses continue to work with letterpress, whether in a deliberate attempt to take control of the production of print, or as part of an investment in historical print culture more broadly. Yet just as the significance of letterpress printing is being recognized, the numbers of those trained in such techniques are declining: bibliography is rarely taught as part of English programmes; letterpress is subordinated to other techniques in schools of art; and printers no longer learn letterpress as part of their formal training (and those who did are now retired).

The aims of the network are threefold. Firstly, it is conservational, drawing upon the varied expertise of its participants to document surviving presses and type while exchanging skills and knowledge about letterpress printing and its many histories. Given its constitution, the network will shape approaches to print and printing beyond the academy while scholars, in turn, learn from the practitioners, curators, and artists in the network. Secondly, it will develop practice-based methods of research and teaching that can situate letterpress printing in a range of disciplines. This will allow us to set out the ongoing role for such techniques in knowledge and cultural production, while also reconnecting scholarship itself with its printed heritage. Finally, the network looks to the future. Although we recognize that engaging with historic printing is fundamental if we are to fully understand the way movable type has shaped Western culture, we want to use historical approaches to explore what such technologies can teach us about knowledge production in the digital age. We will interrogate the way that older print techniques underpin newer methods, whether developments in printing, digital typesetting and design, or the ways in which we understand the impact of digital culture. It is only by engaging with historical printing, we argue, we can start to understand the politics of textual reproduction today.

This network will study how historical printing equipment is being used for both practical purposes and historical interest. It will connect scholars from a range of disciplines with practitioners and those in the heritage sector. We aim to work with the following groups in particular:

1. Heritage sector. Museum collections often contain printing equipment, but while some display it, others are unsure how it might be utilised. The network creates opportunities for knowledge exchange between curators, administrators, practitioners, and academics. Both the Centre for the Comparative History of Print (Centre CHoP) and the Centre for Printing History and Cultures (CPHC) have extant connections with the heritage sector: Centre CHoP work closely with the Thackeray Museum, the Brotherton Library, and The Leeds Library; members of the CPHC are from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Winterbourne House and Garden, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In addition, we have invited other representatives from the European heritage sector to speak at the workshops (Luke Clark, Watford Museum; Joseph Belletante, Musée de l'imprimerie, Lyons), and the National Print Museum, Dublin, the Association of European Printing Museums and the Printing Historical Society are involved in the network. For heritage professionals, the principal benefit will be increased understanding of the history and function of printing equipment and how it might be interpreted for visitors. Network participants, both scholars and museum professionals, will work together to produce a guide to printing equipment that will allow institutions to identify and inventory holdings, the first step to displaying and / or bringing it back into use.

2. Printers. There is a resurgence of interest in letterpress printing with a number of small and artisanal presses flourishing both in the UK and internationally. To enable historical presses to be put to both artistic and commercial use, we want to involve printers in all network activities, helping them, in turn, to learn more about the history of printing and how their practice might evolve. Practical printers are speakers at our events (Nick Hand, Letterpress Collective; Nick Loaring, Print Project; Jamie Murphy, Salvage Press) and many of our academic partners are also printers (Angie Butler, Sheena Calvert, Alex Cooper). The workshops provide the opportunity for knowledge exchange and, as we will print a summary of each workshop's discussions, there are further opportunities for printers and scholars to collaborate both practically and academically.

In addition to those from small presses, we aim to reach larger, commercial printing companies through the engagement activities, with the eventual goal of helping them to exploit both the histories of their companies and the practices they employ.

We will achieve impact through the following mechanisms:

1. Workshops. These are the principal means of delivering impact, allowing network participants to learn from one another. Representatives from the heritage sector and printers are involved as speakers at all three workshops and further collaboration is enabled through the printed summaries.

2. Survey and guide to printing equipment. As this will be produced in collaboration with curators and museum professionals, this guide will take advantage of the unique combination of skills and expertise brought together by the network while ensuring that it meets a genuine need.

3. Engagement activities. We will provide two public print workshops, intended to both raise the profile of the network while also forging new relationships. Not only are such events very popular with members of the public (both Centres have run similar events), but they are also good ways to make further connections with the printing industry.

4. Website / social media. These provide the means for further exchange outside the workshops as well as a resource for those unable to attend.