Pergraphica at St Brides

Yesterday evening,  I jointly hosted a small event together with Mondi, the manufacturer of our new Pergraphica range of text and cover papers. We invited a small group of designers from a variety of different studios to spend the evening in the print workshop at the St Bride Foundation. There were about twenty of us in all and the evening started with an introduction about the Pergraphica range by Isabel Bernd (below) from Mondi.

We then moved to the Letterpress workshop and were given a history and briefing by the technicians, Bob, Barry and Andrew.

Then everyone was encouraged to have a go at 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, conference rooms.

Everyone had a go at  lino-cutting, Andrew had selected the letter E from a Pouchet engraved alphabet which was divided into 16 pieces which were individually cut by different people over the course of the evening.

...just look at the concentration!

When each of the panels was finished they were assembled and put on a proofing press, as you can see below:

...and here is Andrew Long with the first print:

...and here's the finished result:

Thanks to Mondi for sponsoring the event and for providing the Pergraphica paper used throughout the evening.

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

www.sbf.org.uk
https://www.mymondi.net/ufp/en/brand-group/pergraphica

Posted by Justin Hobson 14.11.2019