Sometimes we opt to add some colour to pieces by hand. In this case, the colours added are Windsor and Newton inks and highlight a small part of the pictures. The addition of colour adds a distinctive touch to each piece, making no two pieces exactly the same.
Hand colouring is quite meditative and something we enjoy doing on hot summer days.
Some time ago, we were contacted about an old etching press that was about to be sent to scrap. It had been in use for many years at the Epsom Teacher’s College in Auckland, New Zealand but had since been moved around and left out in the elements as a piece of “visual art”. Not really knowing if we could use it, we decided to at least grab it before it was smashed up.
TH Pullan & Sons were an engineering company in Glasgow that specialised in printing machinery and proof presses. They went into liquidation c.1906, so it is difficult finding any actual information about the company or their products.
This press is a wonderful example of industrial revolution engineering. Fully hand crafted and even after years of misuse and neglect, is still completely flat and square.
There is something meditatively satisfying when manually treadling a small letterpress, feeding in and removing individual sheets.
