16. October 2022

I’m taking a break from the anguished tales of my printing retrospective to tell you the story behind a little studio shadow-companion of mine.

25. August 2022

Part five of The Harebrained Press' retrospective is about the most personally difficult time I went through on the project, when, over two-thirds of the way through my print run, the whole operation ground to a halt.

17. June 2022

Part Four of my retrospective is about taking my project from a Melbourne warehouse in the back blocks of West Footscray to a new studio at the top of the Great Dividing Range where I tackled completely new and novel problems. Things like being ‘out of sorts’ and printing in the snow.

28. August 2021

Part Three is about the torture and delight I went through as an amateur printer in May through to August of 2017. It’s about fighting my way through an abyss of ignorance, technical difficulties, fear and fatigue and as I laboured to print page numbers one through to twelve.

23. July 2021

Part Two of my five-year retrospective is about the extremes I had to go to in this convenience age to get set up for building a book the hard way.

09. June 2021

Part One of my five year retrospective is about the motivation behind my project and my initiation to the printing world—one of ‘utter dismay’. It’s also about how, three weeks into my project, I suddenly went ‘down the rabbit hole’.

21. March 2021

I've finally leapt into the first stages of binding my books. Having cut and folded and glued my way through the challenges and the fun of building up skills, I’ve now chosen a book design that’s strong, pleasing to the hand and eye, and made from materials that will last. 2021 has been all about bringing together fifteen years of work.

03. November 2020

Yes, I’m still at it: folding press sheets, sewing pages together and testing materials—inching my way towards a finished book. I’ve come to realise that creating an edition completely by hand isn’t just about bringing together thousands of materials in a very particular way. As if that's not enough, I’ve found that even before you begin you must undertake an elaborate science experiment: testing the pH levels of paper to see whether each will last for the long haul; putting materials...

26. July 2020

I’m excited finally to move on from the strenuous work of printing and start on the gentler (seated) bookbinding pursuits.

29. February 2020

After three years dedicated solely to printing, the last page of my book has come off the press.