Stichill Marigold Press has been producing small-scale artworks for three decades. Using two vintage Adana eight-by-five hand presses and two ten-by-eight Ayers Jardine (Adana) flatbed presses, together with traditional metal and wooden type, printing blocks and unique hand-cut lino and wood blocks, the press was founded with the aim of maintaining and developing the creative aspects of printing by hand. As always in the trade, when practical problems arise the press responds by making a new tool or improvised device to obtain the desired result.

The hand printing process is time consuming, and the output is inevitably small in scale and quantity. The visual appearance of letterpress work, with its subtlety and textures, is increasingly being appreciated in contrast to the ever more sophisticated but uniform appearance of computerised printing. Perfection, to which traditional printers aspired for over five hundred years, is now attainable, but imperfection and the human elements of hand production have their own appeal.

The studio