The Pathfoot Press
The University of Stirling's Centre for Letterpress
A New Chapter
How many letterpress printers does it take to maintain a web presence? The answer it would appear is n+1 where n is the number of people working at the Pathfoot Press. Despite this, we’re going to try to do better in 2024, inspired by the far more professional web and social media work of our director’s other half at the Crail Press.
Since re-opening our doors after the pandemic, we’ve moved house – our new room, still in the Pathfoot Building, has an actual window! – and have gone from strength to strength with two generations of enthusiastic interns and a series of exciting pamphlets and broadsides to our credit. Collaborations in recent months have included working with the Leighton Library in Dunblane and with Professor Katherine Halsey’s Books and Borrowing project amongst others.
We finished the autumn semester with a series of fantastic projects by students on ARTU9EC (Pen, Print, and Press in the Eighteenth Century) – well done to all of those who took part! Below you see can see some pictures from the final, mad week of student work, which saw a delightfully busy and chatty press room as well as some excellent printing.
Going forward, we’ll be folding, sewing, and binding a poetry pamphlet by our interns and laying the foundations for a major new book project in 2024. Stayed tuned, here, on Twitter, and on Instagram, for the latest. If you’re a Stirling student who’d like to work with us or just an interested private individual, don’t hesitate to drop the director a line at k.j.williams@stir.ac.uk.
(c) 2023 The Pathfoot Press
After the Pandemic: The Press Reopens
It’s been too long! In early 2020 the Pathfoot Press, like the rest of the world, closed its doors, hunkered down, and waited for the storm to pass. We’re delighted to announce that now – after two years gathering dust – we’ve reopened and are looking forward to getting inky once again.
We are also excited to announce that the press is moving . . . again, but hopefully the last time for a while. Our new home is A55 Pathfoot Building and we’re currently in the middle of the move, but will be fully open by the end of the month. We look forward to welcoming you back!
(c) 2022 Pathfoot Press
Dae ye ken yer ane leid?
The Pathfoot Press has had a quiet summer, due in large part to its director and lead designer welcoming their daughter into the world in June. As term draws nigh, however, we’re beginning to brush the dust off the quoins and blow cobwebs out of the type cases.
Our first project has been a small one. Printing produces many scraps of paper, some too small for anything but the recycling bin, others of a size to be creatively reused and this afternoon we did exactly that, taking off-cuts from a project undertaken early in the year and turning them into some – we hope! – thought-provoking bookmarks.
After years of campaigning, the 2011 census was the first to ask residents of Scotland whether they spoke Scots. 1.54 million people, or 30% of the population aged three and over, responded “yes” (see the analysis of the responses here). On the one hand, that’s a huge number, far larger than had often been assumed before. On the other, that means that 7 out of 10 residents of Scotland don’t speak the language of Burns and Dunbar, Henryson and MacDiarmid.
Since it was founded, one of the goals of the Pathfoot Press has been to support Scots-language literature, whether that means printing new work or reprinting old classics. But, as the statistics show, that literature isn’t fully accessible to many people and it’s that paradox which this small project reflects upon.
These bookmarks will be available at all Press events in the 2019-20 academic year (while supplies last).
What about you? Dae ye ken yer ane leid?
(c) 2019 Pathfoot Press
Christmas at the Pathfoot Press
Staff Art Tour and Pathfoot Press Open Afternoon
Wednesday 12th December
12.30pm – 1.30pm Staff Art Tour (meet at Pathfoot Reception)
The Art Collection curators are offering a free guided tour for University staff in the Pathfoot Building. The tour will include information about the history of the Collection, key artworks and current exhibitions including the Experiences of Exile exhibition which focusses on the issue of refugees and migration. If you would like to attend please RSVP to: art.collection@stir.ac.uk
1.30pm – 3.30pm Pathfoot Press Open Afternoon (C7B Pathfoot Building)
The Pathfoot Press is opening the doors to visitors on 12th December. The Press was founded in 2016 as a centre for letterpress printing, teaching, and research. Come and meet the team and see our working press room with its own Columbian Press. The event includes the opportunity to print your own keepsake Christmas card.
Letterpress: Art or Craft?
Some thoughts by our director on the art vs. craft debate as it applies to letterpress. What do you think? Is it an art? A craft? Both? Neither?
Anyone who has spent much time in the world of visual and material culture will be familiar with the so-called “art vs. craft debate”. Rooted in early modern and modern western European distinctions between (fine) “art”, e.g., Michelangelo’s David, and (not so fine) “craft”, e.g., a Toby jug, this perceived duality continues to echo through the contemporary art world despite repeated attempts to destabilise it, recalibrate it, or simply ignore it altogether [1].
As a printer, I only began to think about where letterpress might fit into all of this last year when a glass maker of my acquaintance asked me, did I think of myself as an artist or a craftsman? At the time I off-handedly said “craftsman”, but in reality I don’t think the answer can be quite so simple.
The problem is that both “art” and “craft” come with their own cultural baggage. When we…
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