An Education in Letterpress: Charting the History of Letterpress Education in the United Kingdom and Ireland

This 8,000 word chapter in an edited volume outlines the current breadth of letterpress practice within contemporary art and design pedagogy across the UK and Ireland. It is developed from a previous research project that identified all institutions with functioning letterpress workshops — both their scope and the nature of their use. The authors were on the Advisory Board for the AHRC Funded Research Network that gave name to this book. 'Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future' brings together scholars, curators, collectors and printers to assess the current state of letterpress printing. It acknowledges the decline of letterpress as a commercial printing technique and considers the risks this poses for letterpress’s future. However, in describing the many uses to which letterpress is put and the diverse communities of printers who still work with it, the book celebrates the tenacity of letterpress as a process which continues to thrive despite such challenges. Letterpress Printing examines the continuing life of letterpress and applauds its revival through describing the circumstances in which it flourishes and the many ways it is now used. By setting this revival in the context of its ostensible decline, the book sets out the ways in which current practice draws upon and preserves the history of printing while taking it in new and unexpected directions.