Letterpress Monoprinting Resources

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The information below:

• Wood Type
• Moveable Type Studio
• The Printing Museum
• Ink

WOOD TYPE

I bought and collected my type collection over several years. If you are interested in building your own collection, below are some links to get you started falling down that rabbit hole.

Letterpress Things in Massachusetts.

eBay and Etsy are good places to search.

McKellier in the UK and Virgin Wood Type in the USA make and sell NEW wood type.

You can come across collections at vintage fairs in and around the region.

John Collier is a retired letterpress printing machinist who collects and sells a wide variety of type and letterpress items. He doesn’t have a website, but will sell via Marketplace. He is based in the Redland Bay area south of Brisbane.

MOVEABLE TYPE STUDIO

Moveable Type Studio has a home base in Brisbane and offers Print and Sip evenings and weekend workshops. Join their mailing list to keep up tpo date with upcoming dates. They also travel the region, spreading the letterpress love far and wide.

THE PRINTING MUSEUM

Based in New Zealand, The Printing Museum, house a lot of operational letterpress equipment. They run classes and workshops and will cast lead type. Have a poke around their website – www.theprintingmuseum.org.nz

INK

For this workshop we print with oil-based inks — I use Sakura relief and Cranfield etching/relief oil printing inks. Printmaking inks are formulated for particular processes: relief (surface) inks suit linocut and letterpress work, while intaglio/etching inks are softer and designed to be worked into recessed lines. For letterpress monoprinting I use both types interchangeably depending on the effect I want, and I sometimes use oil paint in the same way.

Oil-based printmaking inks can be harder to find locally on the Sunshine Coast; they’re more readily available in Brisbane and very available online. I recommend shopping around and comparing prices (including sale periods). If you’d like, I can share the suppliers I use.

Sakura Oil Printing Ink from the Art Shed Brisbane – this is what I use for my linocut printing.

Cranfield oil inks from Senior Fine Art Supplies in Brisbane, just down the road from the Art Shed – my favourite etching ink.

Melbourne Etching Supplies sells a range of different oil printing ink brands.

CLEAN UP

Oil ink needs a solvent to clean up. I use Citro Clean to clean the ink off the type, and vegetable oil to clean the rollers.

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