St Bride Foundation Wayzgoose

On Sunday I had a table at the St Bride Foundation WAYZGOOSE. This is a term (unfamiliar to most people) that used to refer to an annual holiday in a printworks and was often an awayday to the coast or some other sort of day out, more often than not, paid for by the firm. In this instance the St Bride's Wayzgoose was a kind of letterpress 'bring a buy' sale.

Over twenty different tables displaying and selling everything from lead type to tabletop presses and printed examples of work.

Here is the table that I was allocated, where I adopted a "throw it all on the table" approach! I took lots of offcuts and discontinued paper and board items. All paper, cards and envelopes were sold by weight - 20 pence per 100 grams.




...and I raised £125, donated to the St Bride Foundation.

My neighbours on the table opposite was Caslon. Many readers will be familiar with the typeface, Caslon, first cast by William Caslon in the 16th century. The firm is still run by the Caslon family and there were three generations represented at St Brides on Sunday, pictured below. Today, they supply machinery, inks, powders and the ever popular Adana printing press.

Three generations of the Caslon family. http://www.caslon.co.uk/

My thanks to Mick Clayton for inviting me and to all the staff and friends of St Brides.

 

...and I mustn't forget to thank Zillah Curtis at St Brides, who has recently taken up wood engraving. Zillah created this beautiful commemorative Wayzgoose, goose, which she printed on Shiro Alga Carta and kindly presented it to me on Sunday. Thank you Zillah.

If you missed out this year, make a note in your diary for next May, as it is sure to become an annual event.

http://www.sbf.org.uk/

http://www.caslon.co.uk/html/_adana_letterpress___.html

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.05.2015

Workshop evening

Last week, I organised for 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 after a briefing by the technicians, Mick, Bob and Peter, 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 and meeting & conference rooms.

  

As well as printing, wood engraver, Peter Smith demonstrated lino-cutting and many people had a go. Peter had selected an engraving which was divided into 12 pieces which were individually cut by different people over the course of the evening.

At the end of the evening the pieces were re-assembled into the image and then placed on the Vandercook proofing press, below:

The superb printed result was printed on Shiro Alga Carta, Ivory 250gsm and it's just beautiful!

In the Layton Room there was an exhibition on display by Designer Bookbinders. The exhibition shows 58 bindings, spanning the career of Trevor Jones (1931-2012), a founder member of Designer Bookbinders. Jeanette Koch from the society was on hand to talk about the exhibition and his work.
http://www.designerbookbinders.org.uk/

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 and most of us made it to the Bridewell Bar downstairs afterwards!

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

www.sbf.org.uk

http://peterssmith.weebly.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.04.2015

Alga Carta written about in the Financial Times!

A nice surprise last week was to find that Shiro Alga Carta had made it into the Life and Arts column of the Financial Times.

The full article (and recipe) is available on FT.com:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6528b1bc-e2e0-11df-9735-00144feabdc0.html

The leaflet referred to, reproduces the recipe written by Elizabeth David in December 1969. It has been reprinted by Sally Clarke to celebrate the publication of 'At Elizabeth David's Table' in October 2010 and for the patrons of Clarke's Restaurant in Kensington, where a week is being devoted to recipes inspired by Elizabeth David.

The 132x210mm recipe leaflet was designed and produced by Simon Rendall and printed in two colours on Alga Carta, Avorio 160gsm. The device is illustrated by Jon Gray.

http://www.sallyclarke.com/

http://www.ft.com/

Shiro Alga Carta is a paper manufactured by FAVINI using polluting alga harvested from the Venice lagoon, combined with FSC certified fibres. Algae blooms at the end of Summer in the Venice lagoon as the warm water combines with pollution. The algae must be harvested to maintain the lagoon's eco-balance (circa 5,000 tonnes of wet algae is removed annually). The algae (seaweed) is used partly as pulp replacement but mainly as a filler and this accounts for its unusual smooth feel and the random specks.

http://www.favini.com/

 

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.11.2010

Venice uses Alga Carta

Now although this wasn't a project that I worked on, it is of interest as it's printed on the new SHIRO Alga Carta. It is a pack produced for the Venice Tourist board which incorporates a card which lists places and events and a map.

Don't know who the designer is for the project but obviously the material choice does make a lot of sense as the Alga Carta includes seaweed which is taken from the Venice lagoon, which is growing because of pollution and has to be taken out ...and here's a picture of what it looks like  

If anybody out there is now thinking of ordering some some samples of our new SHIRO Alga Carta as a cheap way of getting a seaweed body wrap, forget it - I've tried it and it doesn't work! (no, not really)

http://www.venicecard.com/

http://www.hellovenezia.com/

http://www.favini.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 19.08.2010