NEW PRODUCT - Letterpress Prints

The history of Handover regularly brings up some beautiful objects, old labels, discontinued brushes, but nothing quite like these letterpress plates from the late 1940s. Found by our brushmaker carefully wrapped in paper - including some advertising window posters from both King George and Queen Victoria's corronations.

These are the original blocks used for making early catalogues, back when the customer base was built by going door to door with a case of brush samples and catalogues in tow.

The plates are stunning to look at, as a collection they are a mix of illustration and photographs and the detail in them is incredible. As lovely as they are, I was very excited to see how well they would print after all this time. Out of all of the plates we only have one example of how they were originally printed, that is these two plates small plates shown printed together below.

I reached out to local printers New North Press who shared my excitement for these plates and kindly offered to proof them so we could see how well the plates had held up.

Fittingly, the plates were inked up and set into a press dating back to the 1950s, the results were fantastic. The knowledge and expertise of printing at New North Press is astounding and its always wonderful to meet people who share an appreciation of the traditional and the handmade.

Letterpress printing is a type of relief printing where the raised surface of the plate is inked and paper is pressed against it to transfer the ink from the plate, which creates an impression on the paper. The process is entirely manual and so each print will have slight variations.

Despite their age the plates produces beautiful images! Following the success of these proofs we have so far printed 3 of the plates, in a limited initial run of 50 of each print. Printed on heavy weight paper with a small letterpress description of the plates origin, these would make a perfect gift for any letter lover or fan of brushes. These are now available online! Shop here.