Eden Mill

Last week I was in Scotland on holiday and visited St Andrews. We were booked onto a gin tasting tour at Eden Mill and was surprised when we arrived that the distillery and brewery is actually in the the former Guardbridge Paper Mill, which until 2008 many of you would have known as Curtis Fine Paper.

The Fife-based Eden Brewery became Scotland’s first combined brewery and distillery in 2014, when they branched out into making Scotch Whisky and Gin. The move also represented a slight twist in history as before becoming the Guardbridge mill making paper, the mill was a distillery owned by the Haig family, called the Seggie Distillery between 1810 and 1860.


Guardbridge Paper Mill - early 20th century?

The former paper mill buildings which now house the Eden Mill Distillery and Brewery.

The mill clock, which still works...

Inside the distillery, the former paper mill offices are now tasting rooms and administration offices.

Many of the original mill fittings and fixtures in this listed building are still in place.

As Scotland's first single-site distillery and brewery, making gin, whisky and beer, Eden Mill spirit is created by distillers in copper pot-stills and exhibits a wide range of flavours from botanicals sourced from the local area, as well as from around the world - and I tasted all of them, courtesy of our excellent and knowledgeable guide.

I've previously written about other paper mills which are now being used for other uses, including one owned by Google as a data centre:

https://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/from-paper-to-data.html

..and one used as a shopping centre:
https://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/from-paper-mill-to-shopping-mall.html

I hope Eden Mills continues to expand and utilise more of the former mill site ...just so long as they can retain their craft heritage and hand made ethos.
https://www.edenmill.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 31.08.2017

 

...the last time I visited Curtis Fine Papers, Guardbridge Mill was in 1997 to see the paper being made for the Boots annual report, which I shall write about on my next "job from the past" post tomorrow! 



Caramel Spring/Summer 17

Eva Karayiannis, founded Caramel in 1999. Originally from Greece, she came to London to study the history of Art at Sotheby's, eventually establishing a business selling and ultimately designing children's clothes. Caramel is known for its fresh silhouettes, distinctive colour ways and intricate attention to detail.

 

This is the look-book for the Spring Sumer collection. The format is a very simple 16pp broadsheet, which opens easily to read and displays a large poster type area, when fully open.

Size is 594mm x 420mm  folding to 210x148mm. The birds eye view below should give you the best idea of the format and the way it works.

The paper chosen is our Omnia Natural 120gsm because it would work with the intricate detail that is present in the images but that would give a natural look and tactile feel. It is printed offset litho in four colour process (CMYK) and as you can see from images, some of the images have dark areas, but there is no loss of detail, which is what can often happen printing on an uncoated paper. The neutral shade of the Omnia Natural works just right with these images.

Outside spreads folded out

Click on images to enlarge

Inside spread, folded out flat:

It is printed offset litho in four colour process (CMYK) and as you can see from the spreads, some of the images have dark areas, but there is no loss of detail, which is what can often happen printing on an uncoated paper. The neutral shade of the Omnia Natural works exceptionally well with these images. The below image demonstrates the amount of detail that is retained in the shirt and the vibrant colours.

Art direction and design is by the in-house studio at Caramel based in London.  Printing is by Gemini Print, based in Brighton.

http://www.caramel-shop.co.uk/
http://gemini-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.08.2017

It's a wrap!

‘FORGETTABOUT IT’ is American artist Joyce Pensato’s second exhibition with Lisson Gallery and was shown this summer. This is the 142 page hardback book published to coincide with the exhibition. Featuring an entirely new body of work, encompassing large-scale paintings, drawings and a site-specific wallpaper installation, this catalogue is a survey of Pensato’s collaboration with Lisson Gallery over the last three years.

Size of the book is 290x245mm, portrait and it has a 'bookjacket' printed on our wonderfully lightweight Offenbach Bible 60gsm.

...except this is no ordinary 'bookjacket' as it folds out further to reveal a complete artwork at a size of  560x 910mm.  

Click on images to enlarge

Printed one side only, offset litho in CMYK and hot foil blocked in metallic gold foil, you can see detail of the foiling below:

Catalogue is published by the Lisson Gallery. Edited by Louise Hayward and Ossian Ward. Design is by Zoë Anspach.
Print is by Pureprint.

http://www.lissongallery.com/artists/joyce-pensato
http://www.pureprint.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.08.2017

Oxford Mathematics - Notebooks

William Joseph were commissioned to create a world-facing identity for the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. Their solution was to use Sir Roger Penrose’s P3 tiling to form the basis of an identity that can be applied flexibly across different materials.

One of the items that the identity was applied to is this neat little set of notebooks.

 

The notebooks are A5, portrait and are simply printed offset litho in a silver special only (1 colour) on the cover and 'bellyband'.

Click on images to enlarge

The use of the silver is amazingly effective:

The cover of the notebooks are printed on our Colorset 100% Recycled 120gsm and the colours used are Spring Green, Solar and Flint.

Click on images to enlarge

Each of the notebooks has an 8pp cover, which is on the 120gsm. Combined with the 64pp text which is unprinted on our Shiro Echo, White 80gsm, they have a wonderfully unstructured feel which means they flow beautifully but don't feel flimsy.

...they flow

Click on images to enlarge

Design is by London based design company William Joseph and the creative director on the project is Stéphane Harrison. Print and notebook makeup is by Pureprint.

http://www.williamjoseph.co.uk/

http://www.pureprint.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.11.2017

Doppelgänger

Today I had a bit of a shock when I went to visit one of our favourite customers in East London. I was delivering some samples into Gavin Martin Colournet when I was greeted by a very good looking fellow, who looked just like me!

I wasn't actually aware that a celebrity face mask kit was available for me and it turns out that sadly they aren't available in the shops ...Dave Miller had actually made a Justin Hobson facemask!

Using their excellent repro and printing skills, I think they actually managed to make me look slightly better (definitely shorter) than I do in real life! -  thanks for brightening up my day!

ALSO...
Do have a look at the new Gavin Martin Colournet website which shows lovely work and has a wonderful new film by Jonathan Arundel: https://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.08.2017

Workshop Fun

Last week, I organised for a small group from The Partners to spend the evening in the print workshop at the St Bride Foundation. There were about twenty of us in all and after an introduction and briefing by Michael Clayton the group were encouraged to have a go at setting type, inking up and printing.

For those not familiar with the St Bride Foundation, it was established in 1891 to fulfil social needs in the Fleet Street printing area. Facilities included a library, baths and a swimming pool (as hygiene was poor) and a printing school which was the forerunner of the LCP. Nowadays, this historic building houses a world renowned printing library with a large letterpress collection, a community theatre space, a bar, print workshop, meeting and conference rooms. It is still located in the original building, just off Fleet Street.

As well as printing, Andrew Long demonstrated lino-cutting and most people had a go. As the name suggests, this technique is actually engraving into a piece of floor linoleum, which is then inked and used to print from. The results can be amazing! ...you can see the concentration at the lino cutting bench below:

Andrew, selected one of Stanley Donwood’s London Flood prints. The engraving which was divided into 15 pieces which were then individually cut by different people over the course of the evening. I even had a go and this was my section (as you can see, I initialled it with a cheeky J!)

At the end of the evening the pieces were assembled and below, you can see Marc Spicer printing the result: 

...and here he is holding up the finished result:

Below is the comparison with the original on the right hand side

You might have spotted there is a head floating in the river which looks like me! Thanks to Nick Eagleton's lino cutting skills, he used his piece of lino to produce a likeness of me, which he also used to print me a card below

You can read a far more erudite version of the evening on The Partners blog written by Marc: http://www.the-partners.com/blog/2017/8/11/letter-heads

It was a really fun evening, where everyone got a chance to have a go and join in. We had some food and a few drinks laid on at St Bride's and a few of us even made it to The Old Bell on Fleet Street afterwards!

My thanks to all the staff and friends at the St Bride Foundation with special thanks to Mick Clayton, Andrew Long and Bob Richardson who made the evening really good fun.

I just wanted to note that Peter Smith who is resident wood engraver at St Bride was unable to join us as he is recovering after an operation but I want to wish him well and a speedy recovery.

www.sbf.org.uk

http://www.the-partners.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 16.08.2017

Beau House

Beau House contains eight luxury appartments situated in Jermyn Street in London's west end. Developed by Dukelease, the Architects are Brimelow McSweeney with interiors by Oliver Burns. This book is for the Brummell Penthouse, so named after the Regency dandy Beau Brummell. This magnificent publication has a casebound cover. The size is 320x245mm, portrait.

The book has a 96pp text, plus printed endpapers.

The text is printed on our Omnia 150gsm. As you can see from the images, there is lots of colour and images with the exterior and interior images looking great on the Omnia, retaining detail in the dark areas.

Click on images to enlarge

The text is 'section-sewn' in 16pp sections which you can see beautifully bound together with the ribbon marker.

Click on images to enlarge

The brochure is printed offset litho in CMYK plus one special colour throughout and as I'm sure you can see from the images, the reproduction is superb.

Click on images to enlarge

...even the relatively plain pages for the floor-plans feel good printed on the tactile uncoated surface of the Omnia:

The cover has a foil and de-boss over the whole front and back cover. The cover is covered in Fibremark Setalux 1780 over a 3mm board.

Design is by London based branding agency Identity, Design Director is Lisa Roser. Print is by CPI

This is an exquisitely produced book which uses a great choice of materials and print finshes. The project is printed offset litho throughout. Print is by CPI Colour with Simon Reid handling the project.

http://www.beauhouselondon.com/
http://identity-design.co.uk/

http://www.cpicolour.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.08.2017