Tom Paine Printing Press

THE TOM PAINE PRINTING PRESS is now at 151 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1XU, UK. It is Peter Chasseaud's project for a working 18th-century ‘common press’ in the environment of an 18th century printing house, with type cases, cabinets, frames and the compositor’s ‘stone’. Posters, broadsheets, pamphlets and books will be printed on the press, which will also be used to show the complexities of letterpress technology and the crucial importance of the printed word in disseminating ideas.

Monday, 14 June 2010

East London Line typographic / cartographic print

This is a proof of my new East London Line typographic / cartographic limited edition print. I set the type on Friday and Saturday, and proofed it on Sunday. It's also a typographic experiment towards my East London Line book, which I will launch at the Whitechapel Art Book Fair in September.

This print celebrates the reopening of the East London Line (which has now been subsumed into the 'Overground' system), but is also intended to preserve the memory of the old East London Line, as well as the London, Surrey, West Indai, East India and other Docks and the working class communities of the areas covered. Action by government, local authorities and developers (nowadays called 'regeneration') has, since the war, erased whole areas of the old London. They have done more damage than Hitler's bombs.