Hand Printed Letterpress & hot foil stationery

Did you know that everything I print in-house is printed by hand? Yes that’s right, every individual piece of luxury paper stock is hand fed into 1 of 3 of my printing presses. This truly means that each piece of stationery I work with you on is truly a labour of love!

OUR HOT FOIL PRINTING PrESS

Let me start off with talking about my hot foil printing press. This was the first press that I purchased and it was a great way to kick start my letterpress learning. Letterpress printing originated properly in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. However hot foil is a more modern way to print and originated in Germany in the 19th century. I bought my wonderful KSF-3 hot foil press from Metallic Elephant in March 2020 (luckily just before lockdown). This is a table top press weighing about 80kg and plugs into the electric. It has to heat up to around 100 degrees Celsius to allow the adhesive on the back of the foil to stick to the surface of the paper you’re printing on.

I place each piece of luxury paper stock onto the bed of the press and pull down on the lever at the front which closes the bed with the paper lying flat on, into the printing plate. This motion sandwiches the foil between the paper and the printing plate. So the design that has been made into a magnesium printing plate will be left in the foil on the paper surface. Like with any type of printing there are some combinations of paper and foil that work better together than others, so test printing is always carried out before printing the final stationery.

OUR 1920’S LETTERPRESS PRINTING PRESS

Then my other main press, is my letterpress printer. Its a Vicobold, which were made in the UK by Frank F Pershke. This printer dates back to the 1920’s and weighs just under half a ton! Lettepress printers aren’t manufactured anymore, so to be able to get your hands on one you have to wait until one comes on the market. This press works in a similar way to my hot foil press however instead of foil, I ink up this press by hand. There’s a main rotating cyclinder, plus 6 other rollers that all work together to distribute a thin layer of ink across them all, plus your photopoylmer printing plate.

Then in the same way as my hot foil press, I also hand feed each piece of paper into bed of the press and then this gets pushed into the inked surface of the photopolymer printing plate. Leaving a beautiful tactile impression of the design into the surface of the paper. Then this piece of paper is removed and I feed the next piece in and repeat until all the stationery is printed.

If you want to find out more, please do drop me an email! I love chatting all things paper and print and would love to answer any questions you may have!