The Bodleian Bibliography Room
Courses in hand-printing
TEACHING IN THE BODLEIAN’S BIBLIOGRAPHY ROOM
The Bodleian’s Bibliography Room was founded in 1949, and has had various homes, originally on the ground floor of the New Bodleian, later in the Clarendon Building and, between 2003 and 2011, in the basement of the New Bodleian. In the autumn of 2011 the Room moved to the Story Museum in Pembroke Street, where it will remain until the Weston Library opens in 2015. While in Pembroke Street it will be known as the Bodleian Hand-Printing Workshop at the Story Museum.
Classes in hand-printing and bibliographical theory are held for students of the English Faculty during Michaelmas Term, and for University staff and visiting groups on an occasional basis. Recently a successful series of family printing workshops was held on Saturday afternoons, aimed at children between eight and sixteen. At the Story Museum this programme will be continued and expanded, with further family sessions as well as other courses, workshops and one-off demonstrations and displays. Students usually hand-set a short text and print it as a page in a pamphlet or as a single-sheet, using techniques and machinery that have not changed since the early nineteenth century, and have their origins in mid-fifteenth-century Germany.
Printing tutor Paul W. Nash
© Paul W. Nash |
An Albion Handpress.
© Paul W. Nash |
The top part of a Columbian Press.
© Paul W. Nash |
Detail of a Columbian press.
© Paul W. Nash |
A forme of wood type, ready to print.
© Paul W. Nash |
Type cases (upper case, and lower case) full of moveable type.
© Paul W. Nash |
Inking type before printing (members of the MSt class, 2010)
© Paul W. Nash |
Mulit-coloured, hand-printed poster, created by a printing student
Photograph © Paul W. Nash |
Printing students marbling papers
© Paul W. Nash |
Marbled papers hanging up to dry.
© Paul W. Nash |
The Printing Room at the Story Museum, 18th-century wooden common press in the foreground.
© Paul W. Nash |
The equipment of the Room has recently been expanded by the generous gift of a Vandercook proof press by the family of the late Printer to the University, Vivian Ridler, and it is hoped to add further type and equipment to the Room while it is operating at the Story Museum. In addition to the new Vandercook, the Room contains four Albion hand-presses (one recently acquired from Leonard Baskin's Gehenna Press), a Columbian press, a wooden 'common press' of the eighteenth-century and several small Adana machines. There is a range of sizes of Caslon and Bell types, plus some other faces in smaller quantities. The oldest major items in the Room are three composing frames which were originally made for the University Press by a local Joiner, John Rainsford, in 1669. The room also includes specimens of printing and typefounding equipment and numerous relief blocks, many originating from the Samson Press archive (which came to the Bodleian around 1970).
Those wishing to arrange or attend classes should contact the Story Museum (see www.storymuseum.org.uk) or the chief tutor, Paul W. Nash (paul.nash@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).
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