Monday 13 April 2015

Book Review: Ladies of Letterpress

Today I'm reviewing a gooooooogeous book: Ladies of Letterpress.


Ladies of Letterpress "is an organisation that champions the reviving craft of letterpress, and seeks to showcase the work of women printers". This book is a collection of that work - from greetings cards to posters and from calendars to coasters.


This is a big book! Here's one of the pages next to a biro, to give you an idea of the scale.


The book is a cross between a stylish coffee table book and a poster book, as all the pages are perforated so you can (should you wish) tear out the pictures you like the best and put them up on your wall.

Over 80 different printshops are featured, with one main image then (overleaf) a selection of smaller images of their work. So, when you tear out a page all the info about the printer is on the back.

 

There are also short profiles of each printshop...


... and details of the paper, inks and press used for each piece:


The book also includes five interviews, with printers chatting about how they fell in love with printing, their favourite tools, business tips, etc.


There's a wide mix of different styles represented, and dozens of pages that I wanted to tear out and put up on my studio wall immediately.


My only niggle about this book is that the info about the main "poster" image is always printed in the gutter of the page (so it's quite hard to read) and on the "wrong" side of the perforations (so if you tear out a page then the information about that design is left behind). Honestly though this doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of this book as I'm not a printer myself or a student needing to know that info... I just want to ooh over all the lovely designs!

This is a beautiful book whose contents would look equally great on your coffee table or your walls, and it would be a great buy if you're looking to decorate a space on a budget.

Ladies of Letterpress is published by Ivy Press. RRP £24.99. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other bookshops.

Please note: I was sent a free review copy of this book. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.

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