Amberley day trip!

It's quite rare to get time off from this lark, well, for me anyway. But sometimes an excuse to take time comes up that you just can't say no to!

One of our regulars, Anne, is a volunteer in the print shop at Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre, and offered me and Rachael a chance for a behind the scenes tour of all the print machines and the workshop...

Of course I had to take a lot of pictures to take home, although it would have been nice to lug some of the machines home too..

As it was the easter holidays, Anne had to keep stopping to help the visiting children with their printing - it was really good to see them getting enthused by such an old process.

Printing posters for Amberley print workshop - check out the amazing print blocks below - and they had roomfuls of different fonts and typefaces.

A slightly newer machine - Anne said she had to print all the museum's paper bags with this one - and it took a fair bit of muscle no doubt

would you believe that this was created by laying out all the blocks and plates, creating a plasticised paper mache mould, then casting these cylinders, which then printed our national newspapers - and this was still happening in the mid '80's? The process was recyclable too, as both the paper moulds and the metal casts could be reused for the next edition!

I'm not sure what it says about me - but this was one of my favourite bits - beautiful drawerfuls of fonts - I just want this in my living room...