Into the printer's den

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So apart from the pottery (and discussions around artificial intelligence) that I mentioned in my previous post, another interesting aspect to my past week was that the workshop was held in a building (actually an old motor garage) that is more usually used for printing of all kinds. And most of that stuff was still going on there, in other rooms where the doors were left ajar and from which mysterious clunking and hissing sounds would sometimes emanate. So naturally I stuck my head inside to see what was going on and who was responsible. And in one room I found a man you might describe as an archetypal English eccentric. A tall older man, with spectacles, white hair and a beard, wearing jeans, shirt and an ink-stained apron, who spent some of his time working with old-fashioned printing machines and the rest of his working life as a librarian at a prestigious academic library. I was welcomed into his ‘den’ which was filled with old printing machines, trays of type and devices for folding and cutting paper. But far from being simply a rusting collection of old curiosities keeping an old man happy tinkering with them, this was a working production site, carrying out hand-set letter-press printing on vintage machines. The one in the photo is called a platen press, and is about 100 years old but in regular use. When it’s working it makes a distinctive noise that was akin to the sound of ‘Ivor the Engine’ in the children’s TV programme of the 1970s, so a bit like a small steam train due to the vacuum system used to move the paper. You might wonder who would want it when you can have any size or font of type you want these days at the push of a keyboard, but apparently there is demand for printing posters, record labels, books, packaging and artwork. Who knew? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.