A hobby letterpress room off a Vilnius courtyard
Specimen sheet no. 01 · Press notes
Notes from a small letterpress and printmaking room in Vilnius: a second-hand proof press, flea-market type, linocut and drypoint, and ink mixed by eye.
The case
Five filled boxes and a great many empty ones, which is an honest picture of a small case. The filled boxes are the notes; the rest are sorts waiting for a line that needs them.
Standing galleys
Each note was written at the bench on the day it happened and typed up in the week after, with the guesses left in as guesses.
Two hundred cards in two colours, done for nothing, for people I like. What I agree beforehand, and every way a free job still manages to go wrong.
Pulled 15 Jun 2026Revised 24 Aug 20269 min at the bench
October turns a ground-floor room into a cellar. How a paper stack behaves, how damp a drypoint sheet should be, and why metal type wants paper dry.
Pulled 9 Nov 2025Revised 13 Feb 20268 min at the bench
No scales and no formulas: a glass slab, a palette knife and a habit of writing things down. Why red is hardest, and how little ink a sheet actually needs.
Pulled 22 Mar 2025Revised 30 May 20257 min at the bench
What is actually in a flea-market crate, how long the sorting takes, which incomplete fonts earn a drawer, and when to leave the lot on the table.
Pulled 27 Oct 2024Revised 15 Jan 20258 min at the bench
Moving half a tonne of cast iron through an old-town arch, levelling it on a floor that slopes, and learning what a ground-floor room does in January.
Pulled 18 Apr 2024Revised 2 Jun 20247 min at the bench
Standing rules