British Letterpress

Tag: Library

  • St Bride Re-Opens!

    St Bride Re-Opens!

    A great relief — St Bride Library will re-open once a month from 06 April.

    There are some con­di­tions: includ­ing the request that you are booked in a week in advance, have a list of the things you want to refer to, and pay a fee to retrieve books; but a great step in the right direc­tion.

  • St Bride Library Closure: Update Roundup

    St Bride Library Closure: Update Roundup

    On 31 July I post­ed that the Library at St Bride’s was to close, but noth­ing had been pub­lished on the Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

    Around the same time Print­Week report­ed that the Library was being ​‘restruc­tured’.  The Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Muse­ums said –

    Giv­en the cli­mate of uncer­tain­ty which has sur­round­ed the future devel­op­ment of the St Bride Library in recent years, these announce­ments can only add to the anx­i­ety felt by the many schol­ars, typog­ra­phers and design­ers world­wide for whom St Bride’s is one of the fore­most inter­na­tion­al resources in the field.

    On 06 August the Foun­da­tion made a state­ment to clar­i­fy the posi­tion.  I’m rather selec­tive here in my quote, but I find this remark­able –

    Many of you will have heard wild sto­ries about the clo­sure of St Bride Library and the Work­shop. I am also aware that some peo­ple are under the impres­sion that the whole Foun­da­tion is clos­ing with­out fur­ther ado and that every­thing will be sold or giv­en away and that will be the end of the sto­ry.

    This is sim­ply not true.

    Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, the wildest sto­ry — that the library and work­shops will cease — is true.

  • Closure of St Bride Library

    Closure of St Bride Library

    Ter­ri­ble news this after­noon: after 123 years St Bride Library will close.  The web­site it not yet updat­ed, but this mes­sage was post­ed to the LETPRESS list today –

    St Bride Foun­da­tion Update

    We would like to bring to your atten­tion that due to fund­ing con­straints the Foun­da­tion regrets that it is no longer pos­si­ble to keep the print­ing work­shop and library open in the cur­rent for­mat.

    This has meant that the employ­ees work­ing in those depart­ments have had to be made redun­dant.

    St Bride Foun­da­tion remains com­mit­ted to the care and con­ser­va­tion of its col­lec­tions and con­ser­va­tion work will con­tin­ue.

    If you have made book­ings for vis­its to the library or print­ing work­shop we shall be con­tact­ing you in the near future.

    The ​‘Shepherd’s at St Bride’ cours­es and our series of lec­tures will remain unaf­fect­ed.

    All the oth­er activ­i­ties that take place with­in the Foun­da­tion, the Bridewell The­atre, the Bridewell Bar and venue hire all remain vibrant and ful­ly active, which includes our cur­rent exhi­bi­tion ​‘St Bride Unveiled’.

    For any fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact the Chief Exec­u­tive glyn@sbf.org.uk

  • St Bride Library

    St Bride Library

    The St. Bride Foun­da­tion is home to the renown St. Bride’s Library, a won­der­ful col­lec­tion of let­ter­press (and gen­er­al print­ing) resources.

    Ben Wein­er from St Bride Library out­lines the class­es avail­able:

    In Autumn 2010 St Bride Foun­da­tion began to run reg­u­lar class­es in relief print­ing tech­niques at the Foun­da­tion build­ing in Bride Lane for the first time since the 1920s.

    We launched the new work­shop with a range of short cours­es that teach basic skills and give famil­iar­i­ty with some of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy, equip­ment and activ­i­ties essen­tial to let­ter­press work. These cours­es run in the day­time and dur­ing evenings and week­ends. Par­tic­i­pants get to use some of the press­es which form part of St Bride Library’s col­lec­tion as well as oth­er equip­ment includ­ing an Adana and a Van­der­cook press.

    We plan to cov­er the kin­dred trades, espe­cial­ly linocut­ting and book bind­ing. We also plan a range of more advanced cours­es that will give par­tic­i­pants more scope to cre­ate and ful­fil their own briefs work­ing with the guid­ance of an expe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­er.

    We wel­come enquiries about our cours­es and hope to become a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the let­ter­press print­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Full details of the work­shop are online.