Thursday 18 March 2010

Mark Making - ideas from the press


Having taken lots of good research photos at the Gregynog press I have now started mark making and design development. I am looking at the marks/scratches created over the years on the floor from the machinery plus the textures, surface and movement of the the actual machinery. These have also been scanned and I am trying some designs within CAD - not my strongest area by any means!

The ideas I feel from these are very different to how I feel about the actual printed page and the words within it telling the story, singing the poem and how precise and exact the layout is.

I have also started machine stitching lines on to fabric to symbolise the text on a page, but hope to develop into hand stitching with the right fabric!

So this is the start of the development and its quite scary - but it will be interesting to see what the end results turn out like as this is so different from my previous work.




Monday 1 March 2010

Gregynog Press



Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Gregynog Press in Wales to see their working printing press. They were extremely helpful and showed me the 'Monotype' system of composition. Using all traditional skills with precise type, bindings, papers and wonderful illustrations - engravings, woodcuts and paintings creating beautiful books.

Their love of the machines and processes involved were evident in their enthusiasm and I felt quite privileged for the time they gave me. I now have some lovely research for my project and lots of photographs.

www.gwasg-gregynog.co.uk