What inspires your printing?
The Bodleian Libraries are home to a letterpress workshop for teaching and experiments, and a place for drop-in printing throughout the year at the printing press in the public foyer of the Weston Library. These activities are integrated with teaching at the University of Oxford, outreach to higher education, schools, and the public, and with the library’s continuing interest in creativity in the book arts.
Art
Inspiration comes from extraordinary works, like artist Ana Paula Cordeiro’s book, Body of Evidence, made at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. A copy is now in the Bodleian Library! In July 2021 an online event and recorded conversation between Cordeiro and Merve Emre linked the Bodleian Bibliographical Press with the CBA.
Nature
Inspiration also comes from the world around us.
Artist printmaker Graeme Hughes etched a plane-tree leaf onto the wood of a plane tree, and printed this on the Baskin Albion Press.
In September 2021, Bodleian Visiting Fellow Georgina Montgomery, historian of science, led a walk-and-talk in Wytham Woods, culminating in a collaborative poster of an ash-tree leaf. See the film explaining how Montgomery’s work led her to Oxford’s research woodland, Wytham Woods.
This print by a visitor to the workshop is directly from a slab of wood.
And see the film of making intaglio plates from a leaf