Making grass into paper (I)

I didn't bring any paper over to Australia (even so, my idea of the bare minimum luggage is embarrassing to haul into my hosts' homes) so I find myself in the strange position of having access to a printing press, but with nothing to print on. Fortunately, I am here on the Sunshine Coast as the guest of the Papermakers of Queensland (Inc) so my lack of paper is being actively addressed.

Right now I am staying with Helga and Victor Hill on their farm in the Mary Valley. On my first afternoon Helga and I went out along the road to harvest Hamil grass, a pasture grass which, when ungrazed, towers over us (not so impressive as we are both shorties) with wide tough blades.

Helga's eagle eye for spotting plant pests with papermaking potential found us some Chinese Burr on the other side of the road, so we collected an armload of that too. I was only slightly nervous about reaching into the tangled Australian undergrowth, but followed Helga's example of stamping my feet to scare off any snakes and kept a sharp eye out for scarey spiders. Fortunately the biggest animal we saw was one of these cute caterpillars that seems to thrive in the Hamil grass.

Once safely home with our two sacks of grass and Burr we set about preparing it to be cooked down as the first step towards becoming paper. The grass is quick and easy to process, as it just needs to be chopped small enough to fit in the giant cookpot. That's me cutting grass in the foreground while Helga starts the much more laborious task of stripping the bark off the Chinese Burr. Only the bark is fibrous enough for papermaking, and our big armful of Burr sticks was eventully reduced to a maddenly small tangle of bark strips. In contrast, one sack of grass easily filled a pot to capacity, so we put that onto cook immediately. Grass soup is stinky, and made even less appetising by the neccessary addition of caustic soda, required to help break down the plant matter and release the fibres. It was a noxious witches' brew, that we boiled outside the shed where Victor paints his anti-dam 'Don't Murray the Mary [River]' signage. The Hill's farm is just one of many in this fertile food basket of a valley that will be affected by the proposed dam at Traveston Crossing, and they are very active in their opposition. At the moment we are avidly following the journey of cross-country kayaker Steve Posselt as he paddles and drags his kayak from Brisbane to the Mary River to draw attention to the scandaloulsy flawed dam proposal.

Meanwhile our pot of grass bubbled and boiled over in a poisonous shade of deep, dark green, stinking and steaming, with Helga adding more water and caustic soda as seemed appropriate to her experienced senses. I stirred and payed close attention to every step, as there is no ready formula to follow, just an intuitive understanding of the process that I will only learn by practice. We cooked until after dark, and then left the mix to sit over night, hoping it might prove to be ready when tested in the morning.

Next day, however, Helga rubbed the broken down grass between her gloved fingers (caustic soda, remember?) and said it needed more cooking. So we topped up the water and set the flame alight again, letting it cook until the mixture felt like a slippery gel and the fibres mashed easily, but not too much. Then, and only then, did we stop the cooking and sive out the mass of green slime into an old net curtain, leaving the caustic water in the pot to cook our second batch of grass in.

The next step is rinsing out the caustic soda from the grass, a water-intensive process which in this case utilised the farm's creek water piped to an outside sink. However, the first half dozen buckets of rinse water were so alkaline that they couldn't be tipped down the drain and instead had to be hauled over to a fence line where we applied it as weed killer. Eventually however, the soil ph tester which Helga inherited from her gardening mother, indicated progress towards neutrality (and Victor had fixed up the drain pipe to go somewhere appropriate) so the work became a bit less back breaking.

I lost count of how many times we filled the bucket with clean water, opened out the net and swirled our hands through the fibres before lifting the heavy net out, emptying the bucket and starting again. The hours fly by when papermaking with Helga- I'm constantly surprised that two or three have already passed and it's already time for another cup of tea!

Once Helga was satisfied that the grass was completely ph neutral, the tester confirming the squeaking clean feeling between the fingers, we left Victor to keep an eye on the second grass brew and went off on another harvesting expedition, this time to fill up our pot of Chinese Burr bark. This was to be found on top of a hill, most easily accessed via a neighbour's farm. A heavy shower started just as we arrived, creating the perfect excuse for another cup of tea, and a chance to meet the New Zealand neighbours and have a chat about home, admire their coffee bushes and accept a big bag of passionfruit from their vines. The rain stopped as suddenly as it began so Helga and I wriggled through a barbed wire fence and tackled the edge of a big area of Chinese Burr. It's one of those exotic plants which was fashionable for gardens once (I have no idea why, since it's ugly and smells bad) and then escapes into the wild and jostles out native plants from their niches. We filled the back of the car with it, and arrived home to find the second batch of Hamil grass ready for rinsing. That took until dark, so the bark stripping had to be tackled the next morning, before I scrubbed up (with only partial success as the bark stains skin) and left to catch a bus and two trains to Brisbane for a Passover weekend of over-eating in delightful company.

...to be continued...

Birth of the Wooroi Press

After a few busy days in Brisbane I travelled north to the Sunshine Coast, first stop Tewantin. Here I’ve been helping the Wooroi* Press get started. A group of book artists on the Coast had responded a few weeks ago to my search for papermaking opportunities by offering to trade papermaking expertise for my assistance getting their letterpress up and running.

I arrived at the Stagg’s art-filled home on the edge of Wooroi Forest after dark on Sunday night following an arduous journey from Brisbane on public transport (Noosa seems determined to keep its posh resort status by making it as difficult as possible to get here). The next morning I went straight into the print shed and after a quick glance at the unbelievably tidy and well-organised print set up I dived straight into showing a small but enthusiastic group of letterpress novices how to compose. That part was easy with a cabinet of lead type including plenty of useful sizes of Gill (my most favourite font, and yet not available at Te Kowhai), a few leads and reglets and plenty of wooden furniture, quoins and composing sticks.

Reglets in cabinet with planer and mallet

Di Tait had arrived with a beautiful little book which she wanted to print a title page for so we used her two word title as the demonstration. Once that was locked up in the chase we turned our attention to the presses: a Chandler Price New Style, a funny little Chinese table press and an even smaller Remington proofing press. The Remington’s bed was only big enough for a small galley and the Chandler Price has such a huge platen that the two word title would have been swamped, so we inked up the table press.

The table press had been cleaned up from the dreadful state in which it had come into Maryke Stagg’s possession, but it still needed plenty of work, so taking a half decent print took most of the afternoon (and it really was only half decent). Meanwhile Helga began composing another block of text to try on the Chandler Price.

Maryke at the barbeque cleaning station, working on the fashion plates with kerosene (Wooroi Forest in background)

The Chandler Price has a huge platen, easily big enough to print an A3 sheet or greater, and of course a correspondingly large chase. Unfortunately, the next day when we started inking up, the rollers turned out to be too small: sitting lower than their trucks and obviously worn out in the middle where two of the three remained stubbornly red despite running repeatedly over the ink disk. Sure enough when we heaved the heavy chase into place, the rollers didn’t touch the type, not even the one roller which appeared fully inked. They are either the wrong rollers for the press or have shrunk dramatically since they were last used! With that disappointment, the workshop split into two hives of activity: one group started on the Remington, pulling prints from the collection of fashion plates of the 1920s, and John and I got stuck into fixing up the table press.

After hours of happy fiddling with the platen, the frisket bar, the lays and the roller arms (oh how I do love to problem solve on printing presses, especially in the company of a bloke with excellent tool skills) the funny little Chinese table press was reborn to take effortless, near perfect prints. After a couple of satisfactory proofs in which we discovered Helga’s paper printed much better damp than dry, she swung into full editioning mode and started churning out dozens of cards with her Martin Luther King Jr quote. It was delightful to watch another person fall in love with letterpress and its inherent gift for multiples.

Meanwhile Di had been busy on the proofing press and finding out all the ways in which it still needed to be worked on. John applied his magic touch with tools and oil can and soon that corner of the print shop was producing satisfactory results as well. Our two days of learning, repairing and persisting through numerous frustrations was suddenly exhilaratingly successful and the Wooroi Press was born (and documented with some group photos).

Wooroi Press Gang, 15 April 2008, Meliors, Di, John, Desley, Maryke and Helga with Chinese table press

We hung samples of our first prints on the notice board and the flurry of activity continued: Maryke and Di rearranging some of the equipment for better work flow, Helga printing more and more of her cards, John setting and proofing ‘Wooroi Press’, Desley experimenting with embossing, and me sitting back and enjoying the sight of letterpress passion spreading like a virus.

The scariest thing about leaving Whangarei was the risk of loosing my access to letterpress for months or longer. Instead, I was immersed in letterpress within days of arriving in Australia. I have found another print home in the Wooroi Press, and though I may travel far and wide over the next few months, I know I will return here to print again. The lure of Gill type, the huge CP platen (once the rollers are working) and most of all the good company of the Wooroi Press gang will be impossible to resist for long.

The counter on the Chandler Price New Style press

*Wooroi means place of kangaroos- and today I saw several of these most beautiful and graceful creatures on the golf course across the road.

Vandercook At Last

I spent my last afternoon in New Zealand at Green Bay Press in West Auckland, playing with a beautiful Vandercook press.

About six weeks ago I met Beth Serjeant completely by chance when my family wandered into a workshop Beth was teaching at the Ponsonby Art Station. Beth and I discovered we shared a passion for letterpress and had one of those urgent, intense conversations that MUST be continued in a more appropriate time and place. I rang her up a few days later and asked if I could come and meet her Vandercook press before I left the country and she graciously agreed.

Beth welcomed me into her garage turned print shop which is dominated by the big flatbed press from the 1950s but looking very modern to my eyes, accustomed as they are to century-plus old platens. I've been desperately keen for ages to have a go with a Vandercook- they are the favourite of many of the letterpress printers whose work I admire on the internet, especially in the United States where they seem much more common than in the Antipodes. The attraction for me is the big flat bed which can print any size paper, up to huge posters.

Beth let me pull a few prints of some type she had already set up in the press, so now I have some idea of the basics. The rollers turn on an electric motor, but each paper is pulled through manually with a satisfying full-body motion of the handle. I do like the physicality of printing. Beth says that when she first acquired the Vandercook it was like an arranged marriage and she thought it might make a good bench for her workshop. Fortunately a visit from Claire van Vliet who fiddled about with the press and got it up and running turned the arranged marriage into a love affair.

The text I printed was a Karakia mo te harakeke (Maori prayer for harvesting flax) printed onto flax paper. This seemed like a blessing on my journey, as in the next few days I will begin learning to make handmade paper with Australian native plants. Other blessings from Beth included the gift of an excellent printer's apron and sharing chocolates sent by Claire, with the surprise fortunes: 'Live your dreams' (me) and 'Be nice to a stranger' (Beth). I feel like I have found two life-long (or long-lost) friends in Beth and the Vandercook.
After we finished printing and cleaned the press we had a show and tell of some of our own work and some of Claire's that Beth has in her collection. I had seen a page of Beth's book Visionary earlier in the exhibition at the Auckland City Library- now I got to leaf through the whole big work, reading the poems by various New Zealand poets illustrated with Beth's colourful lithographs. It was a luxurious afternoon of book arts indulgence, pleasantly serenaded by Beth's son, Andrew, playing guitar in a nearby room.

I was exhausted and overwhelmed from my intense preparations for the huge journey beginning the following morning, so we spent our last half hour together quietly drinking tea and listening to a tape of Claire being interviewed by Sharon Crosbie when she visited NZ for a symposium in 1993 (the fateful trip that awoke Beth's Vandercook). Two descriptions from Claire leapt out for me, articulating my own feelings about artist's books in a way that I haven't been able to before: "the book as a stage setting for the content" and "the book as a physical facilitator of the meaning of the text".

Counting Down

In less than 48 hours I am flying out of New Zealand on a one-way ticket. I am almost ready. I have sold my printing press, my car and my few pathetic sticks of furniture. My books and winter clothes are in storage. I have farewelled Whangarei and now I am farewelling Hamilton.

With just a few tasks left to do I am starting to normalise from a level of stress so extreme that I had no interest in comfort eating- an almost unheard of experience. The tenuous hold I had on sanity finally unravelled when my carefully packed and weighed suitcase broke in not one but two stress points. My finely tuned schedule had not timed in luggage shopping, and I had to over-ride my inner control freak to make the purchase without intensive prior research.

But with the support of some of the people who love me most in the world and who accept me at my most crazy, my pretty purple new ultralight bags are ready to jet off to Queensland for a winterless winter of paper-making, printing, forests, fun and of course, books!


Among the various projects I have in mind to keep my travels creative is to document bookshelves- those inherently attractive items in any homely home. As a taster, here are just a few of the beautiful books decorating Jo and Cam's colourful Hamilton home, including one of my own Mobius strip books (top).

Daylight Savings Has Been Extended

Daylight savings has been extended this year,
news celebrated with barbeques and evening swims
until the end of March.

But my lark's spirit
cannot contain her sorrow
as she struggles with
dark wakings that stumble into
yawning, sluggish mornings.

Oh, I miss waking at dawn
My spirit rising with the sun.

Two old exhibitions

I was just sorting through some old photos and I found this one which I meant to post at the time of my exhibition, Domestic Pilgrimage, but it never happened. This is what the lantern book, Sky in the City, looked like at dusk, from outside the Yvonne Rust Gallery looking in.

(This was taken on my cellphone, not my lovely new Lumix, but I still think it's pretty despite the blur.)

* * *

Also, while noodling around on the net I stumbled onto this great set of photos by Jay Dee Dearness of an artist's book exhibition in Noosa, Queensland, last year (one of my books, Big Storm, was in it). Books 07: Works of Imagination: The search for the impossible. I didn't make it to Noosa for the exhibition last year (though I will be in Noosa in a couple of weeks) so it was a lovely treat to see the photos. Seeing the work of other book artist's inspires me more than almost anything else, and right from the start my main exposure to other artists' books has been via web photos.

The Book as Art Exhibiton

Karori Sanctuary

Two and a half years ago Auckland City Libraries purchased three of my editioned artist's books for their Special Collection. Special Collection books are available to be viewed at the library on request, so they are not the kind of books that you would find while browsing the shelves. I don't expect many people have requested Waipou Forest, Karori Sanctuary and Wind Talk* and so they are probably not seen very often at all.

Waipoua Forest

Until now. In my Quarry mail slot the other day was an envelope from the Auckland City Libraries with the brochure/catalogue for their current exhibition (10 March to 31 May 2008) called The Book as Art: contemporary artists and fine press books. The exhibition includes 40-50 books from the special collection including New Zealand book artists such as Elizabeth Steiner, Barbara Schmeltzer and J&J Bennett. There are books on show that I have heard of or seen photographed but never looked at in three dimensions, such as the book illustrated on the brochure: Circulus sapientiae by Hildegard von Bingen- A pop-up book by Claire Van Vliet and Katie MacGregor; (Janus Press in 2001),. The exhibition is organised into categories such as Words, Images, Paper, Shape, Dimension, Covers and Structure.

It is fair to say that I am itching, squirming and salivating, to get down to Auckland and see this exhibition for myself. Fortunately, I am passing through Auckland next weekend on my way to somewhere else and I can easily make a detour to the Special Collections Exhibition Room in the Central City Library. I can't wait!

Wind Talk

All photographs by the infinitely talented Katrina Ching of Wellington.

*Additional copies of all three editions are still available for sale on request- contact me at meliors6/at/gmail/com.

Wedding Joy

One of my oldest and most precious friends got married on Saturday to a handsome, decent, dear man. Their small, intimate, relaxed wedding was a delightful balance of informality and sincerity, threaded through with the irrepressible sense of humour they share. They both glowed with the beauty of being in love, the excitement of making commitment, and the pleasure of being with friends.

The ceremony took place in a garden where the guests took shelter in the shade of tall, low-hanging trees while those of us with roles to play stepped out into the bright sunlight to speak. Richard, celebrant and the couple's friend, warmed us up with references to Burnham Woods and other more romantic Shakespearean plays, delighting the many English-teacher and bibliphile guests.

Invited to give the first reading of the service, I chose a poem by Margaret Atwood called Habitation, and managed to say it all without choking up. In fact I managed to stay dry eyed until much, much later in the evening, when after lovely food, bubbly wine and some touching speeches, the ukulele player struck up a waltz while Cam and Jo danced together on their marvelous deck that Cam built, surrounded by a deep circle of joyful friends.

Habitation
by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert

the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Water Rights

Just south in the drought

the river is a sluggish trickle.

You have sucked the water table

to a bitter stain and now your acres grow barren.

Press your lips against damp rock,

licking at a memory of abundance.

There will be no relief for your parched tongue

while your mouth is mumbling

mantras from a foreign climate,

your feet stumbling a rain dance

meant for a different sky.

You can wait with cupped hands

but when it comes, water will spill between your fingers

and wash away the last of your estate like ashes.

In the dry that follows,

you will still be thirsty.

Or,

you can set off to find a fresh spring.

Travel light for a long journey.

Try camping by a small circle of green in the desert

and this time

learn from the land.

Just north in the Wet

rain falls like gravel for weeks.

Roads wash out and trap you on high ground,

drains choke, paper curls,

your clothes grow mold between wash and wear,

your skin prunes to an alien organ, overwhelmed by

too much water for the cleared land where

it pools, then erodes in its rush to the sea.

But the forest soaks it up, lush and glorious,

singing in the mud relentlessly

reaching back towards you generously

growing over the edges you’ve tried to define

and reclaiming territory meant for monsoon.

No mistake.

Whangarei Women-Write On!

I took time off work this afternoon to attend the opening of the latest exhibition at the Whangarei Museum in Manau.

I was honoured to be selected to be one of the local women writers featured in the exhibition including Daphne de Jong, Jane Mander and my friend Rosalie Carey. Several of my artist's books, and the assemblage 'Charnal Grounds' were displayed beautifully in a big glass cabinet (my whole career I've been hoping to have a glass cabinet to myself!). They also had a small wall display of some Mags' photographs of Love Letters at Your Feet, and some printouts of Bibliophilia's more book-related posts for people to leaf through.

Downstairs was a related exhibition on the history of writing with a dozen antique typewriters (and a couple of early 1980's computer keyboards). My favourites were the old portable writing desks, folding out into a sloping felt writing surface and filled with all the accouterments of nineteenth century correspondence: quill pens, pen knife, ink well, blotters, wax and seal as well as other mysterious items like funny tiny trowels.

Throw off Friend

I taught my first letterpress class today. Given that a year ago I was a complete novice, stumbling without guidance up a trial and error learning curve so steep that I should have had crampons and a rope, offering to teach might seem arrogant. But I am going to be leaving Te Kowhai (and Whangarei, and New Zealand) soon, and we want to make sure that my hard won knowledge does not all leave with me.

I had two keen student, both passionate printer-artists with a genuine interest in letterpress. I did no planning or preparation for the class other than decide to lead them through the whole process of composing a few words, locking in, proofing, printing and cleaning up. We managed to complete all this, with a cup of tea as well, in under three (pleasantly exhausting) hours.

Because I was self taught for nearly six months before Jim and the other printing posse adopted me, I knew what bare essentials to focus on for achieving a half-decent print without endangering themselves or the equipment. Some of the things I glossed over (like make-ready) will no doubt come back to haunt my students, but they are experienced enough at relief printing on other kinds of presses to figure it out (I hope). And I will always be email-able.

Among the things I did emphasise was the importance of the throw off lever. The 'throw off lever is your friend' I said, demonstrating its wonderful ability to make or withhold contact between the platen and the type. In the storm of printing jargon I was throwing at them, and with the need to co-ordinate three limbs in different movements and rhythms while balancing on the fourth, they both forgot the name of the lever and took to calling it 'friend'.

I feel sure that Ruth and Jeanine will keep letterpress alive at the Quarry after I am gone. They caught the exhilarating buzz of simultaneously pumping the treadle, sliding the papers, throwing their friend on and off, laughing, talking and admiring their text. Printing on a platen jobber is an exciting addictive activity. They can look forward to fumbling their way to making fine prints, hopefully without all the mistakes I made on my way. I feel relieved to know that my beloved Arab press and the cabinets of type will be used, maintained and appreciated.

I also feel a delicious melancholy to be leaving my friend the Arab. I have never bonded so closely with a machine, never felt such strong sentiments towards an inanimate object, never anthropomorphised a chunk of metal, the way I have my sweet Arab. He has sometimes infuriated, often frustrated, mostly pleased and regularly thrilled me. He has engaged my body, my mind and my soul in a collaborative, creative process. He has inspired new directions for my work and my life that were unimaginable until I stood in front of the feed board, placed my foot on the treadle and spun the fly wheel. The Arab has given me a bigger life than I knew and now I am throwing him off to go live it. All I can leave the Arab is some new friends to engage with, and I have found him two with enough passion and enthusiasm to keep his wheels spinning.

How nuanced is my silence?

After four days with total blogger's block I am resorting to my favourite fallback: the old poem. This is actually a newly discovered old poem, so old that when I found it scrawled in my own hand on a dogeared scrap of paper buried deep in a particularly neglected strata of documents it took several long moments of scanning three decades worth of broken hearts to identify the source of that adolescent angst. The angst is adolescent (yet timeless), the poem isn't quite that old.

How nuanced is my silence?

Each day I ignore you for a different reason.

Sometimes I am sad, sometimes angry.

Sometimes I am scared

of feeding my hopeless infatuation

with your irrepressible charm.

Sometimes I am too busy or

too tired to find the strength to face you.

I lower my eyes

and press my lips together

holding inside me

a maelstrom of disappointment

and desire, love

and hate, humiliation

and hope

all churning indiscriminately

behind the façade of ignoring you.

You know where to find me.

If you approach

I won’t walk away.

Merit Badges

The two talented women of Pod Post make embroidered merit badges for letterpress and bookbinding. I recently estimated my letterpress experience as 300-400 hours which I felt earned me some merit badges for my efforts. I reckon I can probably justify my book binding merit badges after four years making books.

I never accumulated any merit badges during my brief and ignoble stint as a Brownie so I have no sash to sew my self-awarded badges onto. Besides I want to display the geeky evidence of my obscure skills as publicly as possible. So I stitched the badges onto the day pack that I take pretty much everywhere with me. This way, should I ever have the good fortune to be followed down the road by another print/book geek, they will recognise me as a kindred spirit and strike up a conversation about friskets or sewing frames.

As an added bonus, the badges arrived from the USA (swiftly and) in a groovy mail art envelope.

Garden Discovery Tour

I finished printing the back of the bookmarks today. I had done all the composing last weekend so I just had to fiddle about with make-ready and then pull my prints. It was quick and easy and so were all the other little jobs on my to-do list, so after lunch I walked over the hill to the Quarry Gardens where they are having a Garden Sculpture exhibition. It was hot and sunny so I paid particular attention to those sculptures sitting in the shady spots. But there was lots of good and interesting and diverse art to enjoy. It was a great place to play with a new camera.
Because I came over the back way I missed out on picking up a catalogue before I looked at everything, so I can't tell you who made the works in these photos. I don't know who curated, I suspect more than one person since some of the works were placed with exquisite sensitivity and others plonked down in places that did them no favours at all.

The exhibition is on all weekend, so if you are in Whangarei I highly recommend a look. Also, on Sunday there is a art and craft market at the Quarry Arts Centre and I will be selling books and prints and a few other bits and pieces. See you there!

Hot Foil Hands

I've been printing bookmarks again. These bookmarks are for the Centre for Fine Print (University of West England Bristol)'s Bookmarks VI. I narrowly missed out on contributing to Bookmarks V last year, so I'm getting in early this year! The requirement is to produce an edition of 100 signed and numbered bookmarks which will be distributed internationally through art galleries. I am using it as an opportunity to try a new fount, a new machine and some paper I haven't printed on before.

The paper I'm using is old nautical charts which I picked up in an op shop a few years ago. The charts are fascimiles of mostly nineteenth, some early twentieth century, etchings which were offset printed a few decades ago on gorgeous, heavy, smooth paper. I assume they've been made redundant by GIS and other electronic navigational technology. I chose the charts with the thickest paper to cut up into bookmarks (now, don't get all precious on me about cutting up old charts, they are common as muck in this yachties' town). The charts started out as approaches to harbours in Newfoundland, Cote du Norde, Scotland and New York but now as 19x6cm strips most of the bookmarks are anonymous in isolation.

The fount I'm using is Rockwell, which is a bit of a gothic style type, slightly Old Western (as in cowboys) looking, but relatively fine in its serifs. It's old-fashioned looking, yet quite clean and sharp. Te Kowhai has Rockwell in 3 or 4 sizes, most of which appear to have been hardly used- if the pristine shiny state of the type is anything to go by. I'm using the 24pt which is bold enough to be legible when overprinted on even the busiest slip of chart. The text on the plain white back is in 18pt Rockwell with my favourite ornament, the pointing hand.

The new machine is Jim's hot foil press, which is the tiniest printing press I have ever used. It looks like a cross between a sewing machine and a microscope. We spent hours playing with it on Friday afternoon, trying a dozen types of printing surfaces (paper, vinyl, leather) at different temperatures to see what it could do. What it does best is print a brilliant gold foil with a mirror surface and intricate detail onto glossy smooth surface. In comparison, any matt or textured material takes only a dull and patchy print like unpolished brass. Sadly my beautiful charts are not glossy enough to do the gold foil justice, but happily my clear vinyl bumper stickers work a treat. So today I printed a hundred tiny golden hands onto sticker paper, which I will cut out individually and and stick on the front of the bookmarks, thus satisfying my persistent desire to make things as fiddly and complicated as possible.

Samples of hot foil on different materials.