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otley crew

on previous occasions i have paid great testament to my complete lack of geographical knowledge, insofar as the actual location of the grand depart in early july was a complete mystery to me. being aware that yorkshire is in englandshire is one thing, but just where in englandshire is a whole nuther bucket of longitudes. it turns out, for the benefit of those similarly challenged, that places such as leeds, harrogate and the like are in the north of the country, just up a wee bit from huddersfield and manchester. i hope i do it no disservice by referring to it in the past tense as the industrial north, where some of the world's finest and cleverest machinery was born to offer us necessities such as steel and, perhaps dependent on that, printing presses.

almost midway between york and skipton is the town of otley, lying in the wharfedale valley, named after the river wharfe which meanders through the vicinity. once a market town, it is also, for our purposes, the home of the wharfedale reliance stop cylinder printing press originating in the early 1800s. the stop cylinder press, so named due to the printing cylinder remaining stationary while the forme (containing the type and illustrations) moved beneath it, was indirectly invented by william dawson, a joiner from otley town. his entry into the world of print was almost accidental when he made a ruling machine from wood in response to printers' demands.

meanwhile, in the lake district town of ulverston, a fellow by the name of soulby patented a printing press rather unimaginatively named the ulverstonian which worked in the opposite fashion to that of the wharfedale reliance. in the ulverstonian, the cylinder rolled over the forme which remained stationary, but despite having patented the process, the press proved largely unsuccessful. soulby was put in touch with dawson in otley who suggested reversing the process, resulting in the genre known as stop cylinder presses which included the wharfedale reliance.

the first machine left otley on the banks of the wharfe for the princely sum of £60, proving itself capable of printing 500 impressions per hour. subsequent wharfedale presses delivered between two and three thousand impressions per hour. its unique selling point, if you like, was its ability to apply pressure across a thin strip of the stationary cylinder allowing considerable precision in comparison with its peers. due to their particularly impressive registration capabilities (the ability to accurately print separate colours over thousands of sheets) and sizeable printable area, the wharfedale was employed predominantly in the newspaper and magazine arena.

innerleithen, several miles south of edinburgh and barely a stone's throw from peebles has been home to robert smail's printing shop since since the latter part of the eighteenth century. in commercial operation up until 1986, the print shop was taken over by the national trust for scotland and is still the only jobbing printers of its kind in the country. an 1886 version of the wharfedale reliance stop cylinder press is currently installed in the premises.

machinery such as this exemplifies the qualities and ingenuity of victorian engineers, for such a press is still in perfect working order today (when was the last time you heard that said of an acer laptop?), offering up impressive letterpress printed matter such as that shown above. and this is precisely where bicycles come into the picture, not only for the salient advice described via some wonderful wood type, but because this years tour de france grand depart passes close to the home of this press in otley.

chris sleath, he of edinburgh's dynamoworks designed the 33cm x 44cm poster you see before you, printing it on the wharfedale reliance utilising vintage wood type at smail's of innerleithen on 200gsm stockwell off-white paper. each is numbered, signed and retails at a hand-crafted £60. the copy i have in my possession will be framed and hung at debbie's cafe in bruichladdich. you owe it not to chris sleath, not to the tour de france and perhaps not even to the bicycle itself to immediately order one of these masterpieces of letterpress art. do it for the right reason, in honour of the engineering heritage that allows mr sleath to make such excellent use of a technology from two centuries ago.

round about the time the bicycle was invented.

dynamoworks | robert smail's print shop

sunday 25 may 2014

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