IT IS a safe bet that at least one Christmas card you receive this year will be printed in the old-fashioned manner, by letterpress. You'll recognise it by the way the letters are pounded deep into the paper, like some kind of reverse braille. The point, for a new wave of hobbyists around the globe, is the ostentatious tactility. On Etsy, the online crafts marketplace, there are 33,154 makers of such cards and prints and posters.
For all the fetishising, this turn back towards hand printing is real and widespread. In the past few years a new generation of artists, graphic designers and others accustomed to digital life has rediscovered a process barely changed since its invention by Johannes Gutenberg over 500 years ago. Letterpress is "so old it's new", writes David Jury, whose book on the topic is subtitled "The allure of the handmade". Even MOO, an online maker of business cards, has just unveiled eight letterpress designs.
It's a far cry from the 1980s and 1990s, when photo-offset printing, then computers (remember “desktop publishing”?) shunted cast-iron presses and drawers of lead type into storerooms and, eventually, municipal rubbish tips. Industrial letterpress printing was dead; training courses worldwide were dismantled. The only printers left standing were private presses, modeled on 19th-century English presses, which made handmade books for bibliophiles.
Fast forward 20 years, and the platen and cylinder presses that went for a few hundred dollars now sell for up to $10,000 on eBay. Vast numbers of people are keen to dirty their hands: the Briar Press online community boasts 70,000 members, 3,500 of them running printing shops; hugely popular centres in San Francisco, Minneapolis and New York teach book-making to tens of thousands each year. In Britain, a dozen studios have recently opened, including the London Centre for Book Arts. European fine printers convene their own international summit in Italy, and top practitioners have long since booked their spot for the largest book fair in the world, Codex V in Berkeley, California, in February.
There are two main reasons for the renaissance of old-fashioned printing. One might be called digital fatigue—a yearning for individualised products and hands-on experience. The other is the paradoxical fact that technology has made it easier to print letterpress than ever before. No longer must an apprentice spend years learning to set metal letters into rows; a computer design can be turned into a plastic printing plate. For both hobbyist and professional designer, letterpress—whether old-fashioned metal or new-fangled plastic—has become the latest, coolest tool.
"Digital kids are sick of sitting in front of screens pushing buttons all day," says Erik Spiekermann, a world-renowned typographer who returned to letterpress after decades in digital font design. He likens digital designing to fast food. Those who return to the source at his Berlin letterpress studio rediscover the fundamentals of typography. Indeed, it is mainly graphic designers, followed by fine artists and illustrators, who are propelling this revival.
A third of those using letterpress have been doing so for less than five years, according to a survey by Angie Butler at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England. Some just crank out cards; others seek a deeper knowledge of the craft. Among artists, the book is increasingly seen as an interesting physical medium in which to create, says Ms Butler, herself an artist-turned-book-artist. More are thus learning printing and binding, and public exhibits of "artist's books" are on the rise. The physicality and beauty of letterpress books is also attracting new collectors among those who made their fortune in the virtual world of Silicon Valley, says Andrew Hoyem of Arion Press, whose most recent $1,250 volume speedily sold out. The Folio Society too has just introduced a Letterpress Shakespeare; each of the 28 plays sells for £295.
Achieving real skill, of course, takes time. Those willing to invest it will gain a technique that can be fruitfully blended with digital and other printing processes, predicts Simon Goode of the London Centre. Simon Cutts of Coracle, a printer-publisher in Ireland, agrees. "The best people have learned to use the old technology and bring it into the digital realm," he says.
Jan Vost, for 30 years the proprietor of Boekie Woekie, an artist bookshop in Amsterdam, has been watching it all unfold. "It's incredible how in each country there are young people making books," he says. Self-expression through blogs has spilled into an "avalanche of print products, because once you have a website you want the real thing."
