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A series since 2020

Metal and ink

Letterpress, proofing and the printing trade, mostly as it survives in small shops that were never modernised.

3 pieces · about 7 minutes from start to finish

Most of what I know about screens I learned from metal. This series is the metal: presses, type drawers, ink tins, the proof pulled before the run, and the people who still do this for a living.

It is not nostalgia. Every piece ends somewhere near a screen, because the old trade solved problems we are still solving badly, and it wrote down how.

Start with “A drawer of wood type in a Belfast basement”
An open wooden type cabinet drawer holding ornaments, numerals and blocks of old letterpress type

In reading order

  1. Essay · Start here

    A drawer of wood type in a Belfast basement

    What was in the fourth cabinet, why the incomplete fonts are the interesting ones, and the split W I will not repair.

    3 min read Members

  2. Essay

    What a proof is for

    A proof is not a preview. It is the only place certain mistakes are visible at all, and the second one matters more than the first.

    3 min read

  3. Note

    Ink

    The one material in printing that nobody photographs, and what it does to a press day.

    1 min read

New pieces in Metal and ink arrive with the letter.

Free, every second Thursday. Members also get each series’ next piece a week early.

The other series