Letterpress: Digging Beneath the Surface

My response to an invitation from the editor to reflect from an educational perspective on current issues and contradictions within contemporary letterpress printing.

The article first reflects on letterpress as a form of relief printing and the new-found emphasis on exploring surface. It then shifts to the relief that many feel that people are still printing with letterpress, though goes on to question the sustainability of that engagement. It seeks to validate a breadth of approaches inclusive of a full re-imagination and hacking of processes and machinery, while also encouraging a critical generosity from older more technically experienced printers in sharing legacy knowledge to help shape new ideas about what sustainable enquiry through letterpress might yet mean.

Contribution to knowledge
• To highlight the challenges of advancing formal innovation through a consistency of engagement with skilled practice within the structural exactitude and pace of the contemporary design curriculum.
• To position letterpress as a medium within artistic research and post-digital experimentation which fosters dialogue.
• To reflect on the use of letterpress as a tool for critical thinking and a site for cultural disruption, able to challenge structural and disciplinary systems of power informing exclusionary histories by championing heritages in printing in operation beyond conventional trade practices.
• To acknowledge technical privilege and recognize the potential for barriers to the engagement of others in the protectionism of expertise and illustrate the value of inter-generational mentoring and two-way knowledge exchange in the development of letterpress as an ongoing and evolving practice anchored in, but not limited by, history.

Impact
• This article was essentially an argument calling for generosity from established printers and a platform for encouraging more informed critical reflections on the practices of newer letterpress practices. Fostering engagement of whatever kind is the only hope for this industrially obsolete printing technology. The primary audience of this journal are exactly the community that we need to help dismantle barriers to engagement and growth.
• Made available online which has enabled wider distribution across letterpress communities and typographic educational networks.