I started my 2 weeks apprenticeship at Hand and Eye Letterpress. It is an opportunity that I have waited for a year since I found out about them at the end of 2009. I applied in late November when I heard that the internship for 2011 was opened and was kindly offered a place by Phil Abel, the owner of Hand and Eye.
I am interested in letterpress because I can see many similarities between that and my love of screen prints. There is typography involved as well and I would really like to know the process. Also I love the idea of preserving a tradition, and paying tribute to the many past and present master printers who have created and maintained this wonderful skill. Printing in the Letterpress way is attention to detail by eye produced by the hand, one needs to be very much present and I love it.
Hand and Eye is a letterpress company that still adheres to the traditional letterpress method but also uses some modern technology as necessary. However, most of the process is carefully monitored and controlled by hand and eye, and that is why it is called Hand and Eye!
Basically the idea of the internship is that I, like many before me and no doubt many more after me, will come to help out with some light duties in the company, and in return Phil will teach me some basics of Letterpress and typography. It is a wonderful idea and a great opportunity to many who have always wanted to know about letterpress and worked in a friendly and mentored environment. It is quite old school and I love the idea.
The web site for Hand and Eye Letterpress is
http://www.handandeye.co.uk
Yesterday was my first day as an apprentice there and it also happened to be a very busy day for Phil, so he settled me down with an excellent introductory book to Typography. 'Typography' by Carl Swann
The book gave me quite a good introduction on Letterpress, but it is to be the next 2 weeks that I will really get to understand and appreciate what is said in the book, through the real hands on experience.
In the afternoon Phil operated on his 50 year old Heidelberg printing machine and explained some basic operational procedure to me.
The best thing about the machine is it is all there for the eye to see. It maybe a machine at the end of the day but it is different in the sense that you can see and understand how it is operated, you can see how it is working and what to do to maintain it. In some way it is like a bicycle - you can understand and work with it.
It still prints beautifully, Phil printed 3 jobs in a short space of time and they are all excellent quality, there really is no difference to the quality that could be produced on a more complicated modern printing machine. I supposed it is also largely due to Phil's skill but it does demonstrate that such an old machine could still work very well when looked after properly.
