drawanyway.com

Computers have changed everything, and not least the old skills like letterpress printing, in which letters were carved onto wooden blocks and arranged by hand into words and sentences. Fortunately, the craft has not entirely died, since many printmakers and fine artists continue the tradition, seeing real beauty in non-uniform letters and shapes, and the variations that are brought about by differences in pressure or the amount of ink used.

There’s one interesting side-effect of the sad decline of letterpress, and that is that wooden printing blocks often show up at car boot sales and flea markets. For the interested artist, these can be a cheap source of some unusual materials. Apart from anything else, the sets are often beautiful objects to have around the home: some come cased in their own custom boxes, and they all have the appeal that for some reason always seems to exist in matching sets of small things. And then the actual physicality of holding the wooden stamps and pressing them down on the paper is very pleasing. As an added bonus, they are a fairly mess-free material for small children to play with.

You can use them with ink pads or with paint. Letters, even mismatched ones, are fabulous for making quirky labels for gifts or envelopes. Keep your eyes open, and see what you can pick up for a song.