Wednesday, February 23, 2011

National Print Museum





Went to an open day in the National Print Museum in Beggars Bush last weekend where they demonstrated various old printing presses & printing techniques.
I got them to do the letters of Tinderbox on the Linotype hot metal press, which was really interesting to watch all the intricate workings of it and amazingly fast as it takes a cast of a row of individual letters and injects molten metal into it to form the line of type, all in about 20 seconds!
Anyway, here's some photos of it for a possible new banner, take your pic!

8 comments:

Claire said...

Woaaaaaaaa. Theses are fantastic! Good on ya Damo.
1 and 3 are my favourites, but all 4 are really strong.
Did you get to make any prints?

Damien said...

Didn't get to do any prints, they had a few pre-set things that they would print for people, the linotype was the only thing you could get custom things done, they were doing people's names.
The letters are only about 4mm high in this, so it probably wouldn't look as impressive printed. I liked that the D is a size smaller than the rest of the letters too!

Brian Stapleton said...

I've been out there a couple of times and really enjoyed it. Great photos Damien!

noirin said...

Number 1..really love this.

Yellowhammer said...

very cool... have they any other days planned?

Damien said...

not sure about other open days but they do do workshops throughou the year, you can find dates here - http://www.nationalprintmuseum.ie/workshops.html

Esther Moliné said...

That's brilliant, love the new banner, great photographs too!

Jane O Sullivan said...

its a place I would like to go to ,to think so many of those beautiful types have been thrown out !
Its good to know we can see them in the museum ,I have a few real old pieces and they have a poetic feel to them for sure .
Your work as always is class Damo x