Peter Chasseaud on the Bowling Green, Lewes Castle, 4 July 2009

Photos courtesy of Andy Gammon

Thanks to those who posted helpful comments about correcting the colours, and to Andy Gammon who re-sent the images.

Tom Paine and Lewes Festival, 4-14 July 2009

The Tom Paine Printing Press during the Thomas Paine and Lewes Festival, July 4th to 14th, 2009


The Festival finished today, so I'm just posting these initial statistics and comments.
 
The Tom Paine Printing Press was open for the whole 11 days of the Thomas Paine and Lewes Festival.
I demonstrated the press for 7 hours every day, to a total of 1,148 visitors, giving 96 complete demonstrations to individuals and groups.

Average number of visitors: 113 per day.

Average number of complete demonstrations: 9 per day.
 
Public comment was extremely favourable, and children and young people were particularly impressed.

Older visitors were very interested, and many related the Press to their own lives and memories.

It was particularly rewarding to meet so many retired compositors and printers who had worked at local printing companies - Baxters, Farncombes, Lewes Press, Barbican Press. They thought it wonderful that their own trade was being commemorated in this way.

Many of the visitors were clearly day-trippers and tourists from the UK and abroad (France, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, USA), and thought the Press was a great attraction. These were people who were not necessarily in Lewes for the Tom Paine Festival.

Those who were in Lewes just for the Festival were particularly interested in the Press as representing the key engine for the production of printed material and the dissemination of Paine's ideas (and ideas generally).

Many visitors suggested that the Press could produce printed material appropriate for other Lewes commemorations and events. This is one of the aims of the Press, and I have several plans afoot.

Finally, thanks to Andy Gammon, Peter Flanagan, Les Ellis and others, for their help and support.

Tom Paine Press arrives in Lewes

Stop Press -

The Tom Paine Printing Press will be brought to Lewes by its builder, Alan May, on Monday 22nd June, and should be fully erected in the Market Tower, and tested, by the following day. It will be open to the public to view, with demonstrations of letterpress printing, during Lewes's Tom Paine Festival, 4th to 14th July. Tom Paine was closely involved with both the American and French Revolutions, hence the dates:
4th July 1776: American Declaration of Independence.
14th July 1789: Bastille Day - the start of the French Revolution.

Nearing the Tom Paine Bicentenary Festival in Lewes

Tom Paine Bicentenary Festival, Lewes, 4th to 14th July 2009

There've been a lot of delays in moving the Tom Paine Printing Press from Alan May's workshop near Stafford to Lewes. These have been caused by problems with finding suitable vacant premises, but it now looks as though the Market Tower will be available from mid-June, so there should just be time to get the press in there and in working order, with type, paper and ink. Watch this space! I plan to be running a series of letterpress printing workshops, talks and school visits to the press during the Festival.

With all the scandals about Parliament at the moment, Tom Paine's radical views about 'old corruption' are again being aired. I can hear his bones (wherever they are) rattling.

It's interesting that politicians are using the parliamentary expenses scandal to float yet again many constitutional reform projects - and about time too! Many of these, or variants, were proposed over two hundred years ago. We're clearly a Burkean nation, with such a snail's pace rate of reform.

It's also interesting to see the Conservatives, under David Cameron, ahead of the game with firmness of treatment for parliamentary offenders and with constitutional reform proposals.

Now what about the bankers? Everyone's taken their eyes off the ball here! When are we going to have some powerful effective reform of the system of banking regulation, and indeed of corporate governance.

Tom Paine's Birthday; ringing the Lewes town bell

Tom Paine's birthday was 29th January 1737. This year is the bicentenary of his death (8th June 1809). John Crawford, the chief executive of Lewes District Council, agreed to have the town bell rung on 29th January 2009 to commemorate both Tom Paine's birthday and the bicentenniel year. The Tom Paine and Lewes Festival will take place in the town between 4th and 14th July.

This is probably the first time the bell has been rung for Paine's birthday!

Andy Gammon, watched by Mike Chartier, the Mayor of Lewes, rings Gabriel, the medieval town bell in the Market Tower, Lewes

The Market Tower (dating from the 1790s) during the bell-ringing

Andy Gammon preparing Gabriel to be rung

Phil Abel and Hand & Eye Press

Last Friday (23rd January) I visited Phil Abel at Hand & Eye Press under an old railway arch at Pincin Street, just north of Cable Street, in London's East End. His Heidelberg letterpress machines are very different from most of the presses featured on this site, although the principle remains the same.

Hand & Eye Press letterpress publicity poster

Phil Abel operating the larger of his two Heidelberg letterpress machines

Tom Paine Press nears completion; Taking Liberties

Yesterday (28th November 2008) I took the train from Euston to Stafford (along the old LNWR route - see my Euston Arch book) to have another meeting with Alan May and have a look at the 'Tom Paine' common press as it nears completion. The day was cold, damp and raw, but I was warmed up by Staffordshire oatcakes and onion soup thoughtfully provided by Alan's wife Judith. The press was in Alan's garage-workshop, where the 'Gutenberg' one-pull press made by Alan for Stephen Fry's TV programme was constructed. Here are some photos I took of the common press, which is modelled on the so-called Benjamin Franklin press dating from the early 18th century.

Last week I went to see the wonderful exhibition Taking Liberties - The Struggle for Britain's Freedoms and Rights - at the British Library (www.bl.uk/takingliberties). This is on until 1st March 2009, and includes iconic documents from the BL's collections - from Magna Carta, through the Declaration of Right, Colonel Rainborough's Leveller statement during the Putney Debates, Tom Paine's The Rights of Man, May Wolstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, to the Bill of Rights, the Chartists, the Suffragettes to the Human Rights Act.

The exhibition includes a great deal of original printed material - books, documents, posters, etc. - which gives an insight into a wide range of letterpress and relief printing.