The Recession Approaches

The Libre Livre workshop, freshly cleaned and tidied, is in Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. A little further up the line towards London lies the commuter town of Haywards Heath, where we happened to find ourselves last weekend. A salutary walk: we counted getting on for 20 empty shops, and there was office space galore available to let.

Workshop Tidy-up

We've been doing a spring clean of our workshop over the last few days. Although we have only been there for a year it is surprising how much junk has built up - old corks, wooden spatulas and some rather oily spare parts for various presses. Still, its more or less done now and we are spruced up and ready for our next customers.

Letterpress Revival

At Libre Livre we believe in supporting traditional crafts, not just out of sense of history, but because we think they set a standard that has never been matched - but don't just believe us, read this article in Forbes: Letterpress Revisited

Children's Books

At Libre Livre we are passionate about books, buying them, borrowing them, making, holding & mending them; and above all, reading them. We believe that life without books would be much the poorer for it, and are shocked to read from time to time how many people do live virtually book free. A love of books cannot be started too young. A few of my early favourites were:

The Little Grey Men by BB
Jennings and Derbyshire by Anthony Buckeridge
Just William by Richmal Crompton
Five Children and It by E Nesbit
Biggles by Captain W E Johns
Billy Bunter by Frank Richards

before I moved on to Wodehouse, John Moore's Brensham trilogy, Kipling and so on.

But, that's nothing. A favourite posession of my 2 year old nephew was, long before he could read, "The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde"

On the Road

The Libre Livre team hit Oxford this weekend. What a fabulous city. And what a wonderful literary heritage it has. Binding and printing have been carried out here for generations. At one stage Oxford was more or less the only city in the country, London apart, in which the mysteries of book arts were part of regular city life. Certainly some of the earliest printing houses in Europe were based here.

On Sunday we headed back Lewes-wards where we attended AS Byatt's talk at the Charleston Festival, an afternoon not to be missed. Her latest book is based around the production of Children's literature a topic which will be addressed more fully in this blog in coming days.

Spot the Head Marbler

At Libre Livre we try and imbue our work with a spirit of fun, but our Head Marbler pushes it to the limit sometimes. This picture was taken on the way to a recent "board" meeting; wood'nt you know?

A Shadow World

The problem of turning a 2 dimensional image into functional 3 dimensional form is in a way the essential challenge of bookbinding. Over the years it has generated myriad solutions, many of great artistry, ranging from scrolls, clay tablets and slivers of birch bark through limp vellum and gold tooled leather to mass produced "case bindings" and paperbacks. The variety of materials used has been enormous, all designed to protect the content of the written word, and in many cases to illustrate and illuminate. There is no perfect solution. Books do not last for ever, though many have survived hundreds of years in astonishing condition.

These days so much of the written word is in the form of computer file, or electronic mail. Well suited, perhaps better than the solid 3 dimensional book, for the purpose of preserving and allowing access to script. But how lamentably functional. It is hard to imagine a computer file viewed 1,000 years hence being seen as a beautiful cultural object.

A Test Site

At Libre Livre we, not surprisingly with name like ours, adore France. Why not visit our test site at "A Small Town in Normandy" to see some images of this delightful part of northern France and to get an idea of how we can help you to market your image, personal or corporate.

Adana Leaflet

Still on the subject of the Adana publicity leaflet referred to in yesterday's entry, another interesting item is the list of suggestions for suitable subjects ofr the "Five-three" press ("five-three" incidentally refers to the size of the chase in which the type is held for printing). Here goes:

Admission tickets, Business Headings, Club Cards, Greetings Cards, Invoices, Postcards, Private Notepaper, Visiting Cards, Wedding Stationery, Menus and "numerous other items".

At Libre Livre we welcome customer enquiries for any of these items, all of which we can produce in a wide range of colours and fonts.

Adana Presses

At Libre Livre we have over 20 presses, many of them made by the Adana company, whose most popular models were the "Five-three" and the "Eight-five" - table top presses about the size of a sewing machine.

One of our equipment suppliers recently gave us an old brochure for these fabulous presses. It is not dated, but was almost certainly produced in the mid-1960s. At the back is a list of some of the organisations then using Adana machines including British Railways, Glaxo Ltd, Marks & Spencer Ltd, C.Nestle & Co Ltd, Royal Ordinance Factories and a number of universities; Bristol, Cambridge, durham, Glasgow, London and Oxford to name a few.

Seems like we are in good company.