Selected broadsides / 10 from the archive
A standing selection from the archive of broadsides printed at the workshop between 2014 and 2024. Each is a single-run print, between 80 and 240 copies, on Zerkall (where stock allowed) or Hahnemuehle Buetten (post-2021). Click any plate for the broadside's history.
From the workshop / 6 essays
Long-form essays on the presses, the type, the ink, and on the slow closing of the workshop.
March 2014. A 1908 Heidelberg Original platen press, 480 kg, lifted by crane through the upstairs window because the staircase could not take it. Notes on a press that has now printed every broadside in the archive.
Read the essay →Bought broken from a closed sign shop in Helmond in 2016. Took eighteen months to restore. Has produced every proof of every broadside in the archive since.
Read the essay →The black I print with is not commercial black. It is a hand-mixed compound, made in two-litre batches every eight weeks, that I have refined over nine years. Notes on the recipe, on the smell of fresh ink, and on why letterpress black is darker than offset black.
Read the essay →A short inventory of the metal type that lived in the cabinet against the north wall of the workshop. Eight families. Sizes from 6 to 96 point. A few are still being cast; most are not.
Read the essay →The Zerkall mill in Dueren closed in 2021. Letterpress printers across Europe lost their preferred mould-made paper. Notes on what has replaced it, on the substitutes that almost work, and on the substitutes that do not.
Read the essay →Spring 2024. The building was sold. The presses went to Antwerp. The type cabinet went with them. Notes from the last week in the loft.
Read the essay →"I think of myself, in the day-to-day, as the temporary caretaker of a machine that will outlive me by several centuries." from The day the Heidelberg arrived