Print making during the pandemic

To set the scene, I am an artist printmaker. I specialise in linocuts and Japanese woodblock: figurative landscapes with the focus very much on light, weather and empty space. Mostly I work with reduction linocut: creating the print from one piece of lino which is cut away as layers of colours are printed, the block gradually destroyed as the print emerges.

I was slow to realise what Covid was going to do to my business plans; probably we all were. As the pandemic spread and lockdown began, it slowly dawned on me that it would be more than a couple of weeks. Perhaps a whole month? Maybe the spring shows would be delayed, possibly I’d have to shift my summer school? That my comfort eating and wine-every-evening was becoming more of a lifestyle choice than an emergency measure.

Feeling pretty down and panicky, I decided that every day I’d post a short film, inviting people to join me while I made a reduction linocut. The premise was simple: share my skills, welcome people into my studio and encourage printmaking. That was then. Fast forward to now and we’ve made over a hundred films and advanced from a wobbly phone camera taped to my Albion, to decent lighting and some proper kit (thank you crowd funders). My husband’s lockdown learning transformed him from photographer to cinematographer. We even own a clapperboard.

I’ve always enjoyed sharing my techniques with others. Far from keeping them secret, I’m delighted to tell people just how astonishingly sensitive and adaptive linocut printmaking can be when it’s pushed. My greatest pleasure in making these films lies in explaining my thinking and technique layer by layer as each print comes to life. Cutting traditionally steals the show with a linocut (the clue is in the name), with inking more a matter of getting good coverage and the right colour. In my landscapes, the aim is to catch transient light and a sense of weather and I spend most of my time dodging the hard edges and the graphic quality usually celebrated as a strength of linocut. It’s the inking, not the cutting, that’s really key in my linocuts.

Reviewing the films, I see how much inking I do compared to cutting. For every layer I cut into the lino, I may ink and print the block in two or three different ways, often varying the pressure too. I work with very thin layers of ink, sometimes smooth, sometimes textured and rely very much on the underlayers showing through and affecting later inking. I also see, having made a short film series on using a coloured paper, that I depend on the white of paper for brightness much as a water colourist might. The coloured paper pushed me into a change of approach as we filmed, surprising me probably more than the audience. I’m also pleased I got to share the need to use good soft rollers and why I think traditional artist’s lino, the sort that snaps at the end of every cut and comes with a hessian backing, is so much better to use than plastic easy cut products.

I’d love to say this was a project carefully planned from the start. It’s true that it’s kept us grounded, raised my profile, print sales have resulted, the business is afloat. In reality it came from being adrift and a nagging feeling I’d be judged by what I did during this pandemic. Looking back, I’m am proud we followed our instincts to open the studio and welcome people in to watch me print, and I think we’re happy to be judged on that.

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Layout before computers

By Sal Shuel • February 3, 2021

Sal Shuel recalls t he working life of the layout artist in the 1950s

Covid and Brexit - A Perfect Storm

By Kate Grimwade • December 17, 2020

We want this blog to cover the ups and downs of printing and publishing. Welcome to Kate Grimwade, Production Director at The Folio Society, our first contri butor . As I write, London has just moved into Tier 3 and fragile Brexit talks continue. Reflecting on an extraordinary year for book production, it feels a little like Groundhog Day as we continue to work with and adapt to continuing uncertainty. The nature of a Folio book, each one unique and most involving complex product development, relies on team work and collaboration between the production and design teams, usually crowded around the plan chest in our office, sifting through drawers full of material swatches, foils and so on. However on 18 March, I left our Bermondsey office in an Uber packed to the roof with boxes of cloth and leather swatches, folders full of coloured paper and text paper samples, foil and Pantone books, to set up a Folio production department at home. From that point on until lockdown lifted, it was ‘design by iPhone’, specs designed via Teams with reference to photographs and videos of cloth, paper and foil combinations sent via WhatsApp. Once the publicity dummies arrived – I’m on first name terms with our local DPD and DHL couriers as a result of their daily deliveries of proofs and dummies! - I’d photograph each using a pop-up light-box bought online and circulate for approval. This was where the responsibility felt particularly heavy. In normal times, publicity dummies are presented at a meeting with the art directors, editors and marketing department present, all of whom handle and critique them before they are approved for manufacture. Now all anyone had for reference were photographs. Th e Folio office opened on July 1 st and since then the production team have been in twice a week. It has been such a relief to see colleagues and to work alongside each other again. We are lucky, I understand that very few publishers have reopened their offices and are instead waiting until the new year. Our suppliers have been nothing short of magnificent. Our initial concerns in January were focussed on whether the books we produce in China would deliver on time, but of course this concern spread to our suppliers in Europe as the situation worsened in Italy and Germany. In most cases our account controllers were working from home too and communicating with their factory via Skype or Zoom, which made product development particularly difficult and slow. Despite all these challenges, since March we have taken delivery of four limited editions, forty new titles and numerous reprints. Alongside this, product development for our entire spring and summer 2021 collection is complete. This achievement is credit to our suppliers’ skill and dedication to our books As for Brexit, who knows? I am clinging to the rumour that the negotiations ‘have legs’. None of our European suppliers have been able to make significant preparations as, like us, they are unsure of what they are preparing for. We have pulled forward delivery of as many of our Spring Catalogue titles as possible, to minimise delays should there be a ‘no deal’, but like everyone else, we are in the lap of the gods. In addition, we have had to make contingencies for the delays at Felixstowe which look unlikely to be resolved soon. Here’s looking forward to 2021. Compared with what we’ve had to overcome during this past year, it should feel a breeze!

Typography 1. The Shenval Press, November 1936

By Phil Abel • February 8, 2020

I had the good fortune to grow up in a house where there were complete sets of Typography and Alphabet & Image . My stepfather had subscribed to both. They were published by Shenval Press, printers in Hertford run by the Shand family. James Shand, who was behind both those titles and two others - Image and Motif - was apparently a complex character. Ron Costley, who worked for him in the early 1960s, later remembered that ‘James was always upsetting people by wanting to get things right.’ Ruari Maclean, who edited Motif, saw him as ‘a man of distinguished creativity both as a writer, talker, and designer, who had been forced to stifle these gifts in building up a commercially successful and famous printing business, the Shenval Press. A magazine gave him an outlet, besides being a showpiece for his firm’s printing skills.’ Typography was edited, and no doubt designed, by Robert Harling , typographer, designer, editor, journalist and novelist, who lived a long and colourful life in London’s art, advertising and newspaper worlds. His style in both design and writing was lucid and entertaining. Typography was a quarterly. An editorial on the first page of issue 1 sets out its aims, originally stated in a prospectus: ‘ “The sponsors of Typography believe that fine book production is not the only means of typographical expression or excitement. We believe, in fact that a bill-head can be as pleasing as a bible, that a newspaper can be as typographically arresting as a Nonesuch. This catholicity will show itself, we think, in the contents of the first issue… and in future issues which already engage our time and tempers.” ‘That was, and is the, the extent of our manifesto. We are neither atavistic nor avant garde , neither traditionalists nor traducers of tradition. We are, quite simply, contemporary.’ When I decided, at the end of my twenties, to try to earn my living as a letterpress printer, these were exciting and inspirational words. They still are. The eight issues of those two journals, published either side of the second world war, were an important part of my education. I find it remarkable that more than eighty years later, that feeling of being contemporary still shines through.