Holiday Greetings

Arriving today is this wonderful "trade" greetings from M&H foundry San Fransisco. We buy type from them and the Dale Guild Foundry, our main fonts coming from M&H. 

 Its ideas like this expressed simply and so imaginatively that impresses me with the whole experience of dealing with suppliers in the US. Their products are great, prices right, and delivery swift, (no more than 10 days). You can find them in our links, please, have a good look at their downloadable catalog.  Its a tough monotype metal, very durable for our hand platens. If you are not a letterpress printer yet, this catalog might do it! Then check out their start up fonts and prices!

Busy With Photography and Printing

December has started with us both just flat out doing some interesting studio work. I have been processing and printing some pinhole photographs in the darkroom. I always like to tone a little just to warm the prints. For years I split toned to have nice deep blacks from the Selenium and the sepia gave a beautiful mid/highlight colour. Well sepia is getting a little hard to locate in any quantity, so I have opted for mixing my own. In Australia, Vanbar.com.au has everything you need online except the old Sulphide toner ingredients (which stank anyway), so I had great joy taking the pinholes through to final stage. My flattening press is a very early kodak job of cast iron and it requires care. The idea I think is to heat it up and then turn it off. It then flattens prints successfully for about half an hour. If you leave it on it just gets hotter. No thermostat at all.

The camera is a 120 roll film job that cost $5.00 some years ago, and I removed the lens and put a pinhole (F262) in place. I like this camera as it is roll fed and has a B setting. you need it as most exposures are 3-6 seconds long