Also during the Summer 2022 “printcation” I was fortunate to spend some time in London, and while I was there I was able to visit New North Press and meet two of the partners, Richard Ardaugh and Graham Bignall. I “know of” New North Press—but we had never met in person—as it was New North Press that put on the letterpress exhibition, Reverting to Type, a couple years ago, and they included some of my work into the exhibition.

It was a lovely visit, a delicious lunch ensued, and always grand to see another print shoppe. Graham mentioned that they had “about 700 typefaces” in the shoppe, and I think he meant mostly in wood type. They had a really great technique of proofing the typefaces on long cards with a random word or two that went well with that particular typeface. Sort of like “magnetic poetry” but for letterpress. I already told Graham that I am going to have to “borrow” this technique for our shoppe here at Base Press. Graham and I got to set up a rather large print on his Colmbian iron press, and I got my first chance to print with this kind of press.