Our motive to print is our own pleasure. We use both ancient and modern processes. Glassware, boxes, fabrics & paper. books, manuals, signs & vehicles. We love to publish your own works for you. This is done not for profit. Craft and technology in harmony.

T-shirt designs and manuals for Ferguson tractor owners

Graham Pressman Master Printer Cart Gap Road Happisburgh Norfolk NR12 0QL Telephone 01692 582 292 e-mail by clicking here

"Paper for Printmakers" Here in Happisburgh we like to make hand-made paper and card. Papermaking is a very old skill, which came to this country centuries ago, and was soon mechanised as the demand for it raced away. Printing brought with it a demand for ever increasing amounts of paper to feed the presses. In general terms, the cheaper the paper, either the greater the amount of some kind of bleach is needed or the darker the paper. Paper was, for a long time, in England, made mainly from cotton fibres, with a suitable size, which came from very used cotton clothing; often from the meagre estates of the dead. In order for the common man to be able to read the new printed words, it was necessary to produce paper at low cost. Hence the huge demand for paper milling and miller. Papermaking soon became one of the new industrial revolutionary products, spread throughout the British Empire by sailing ship. In more recent times, paper has been more and more industrialised. The older mills have closed and new, high speed and excrutiatingly accurate mills have been developed. We now all use much the same, rather limited range of perfect papers, from decreasing numbers of very high speed mills. I'm afraid it really is a case of getting what we pay for. The more we read from screens and the less we read printed text, the less demand there is for a variety of paper types. Simple writing paper is almost out of production. Hand made paper is now pretty-well only made commercially in developing countries or by enthusiasts, like ourselves. We make a paper, which can readily be printed using the letterpress process. In this process, the indent of the letters or image, can well be seen from the front and, given the normal skill of a letterpress printer, cannot be detected from the rear, without holding it up to the light and peering with great care. From the back, it should not be detectable that it is letterpress, but from the front it can be seen, a little. It takes a good and well made paper, to achieve the best results. our paper is also well appointed for the use of pen and ink. The natural deckle remains to be seen around every edge of every sheet. If we need to make card for printing by hand, we make each card, with it's own deckle. None of this, frequent and dishonest, tearing-the-edge-to-simulate-a-deckle nonsence for us! It never passes careful inspection. Sadly, making paper by hand takes time. With Government taking so very much of our income in taxes one way or another, those 3 hours every day, making 15 or less sheets at a time, the stuff has to cost £3.00 a sheet. The answer is simple - demand less service from Government and you will get more for your money in every other way and earn more for your work. We may want all these services, but the big question is,'can we afford it?' I, for one, cannot (or at least, prefer not to), yet I still have to pay for it, because the majority demand it. Simples! Back to hand made paper! A4ish, £3.00 per sheet or £30 a pack of 10 sheets! What quantity discount? 15 sheets is 3 hour's work. £10 per hour plus materials and equipment. Oh! By the way! It's more like 40 hours in the making, we are just not actually doing anything for all the time it's under the presses.

Canon EOS Rebel