Commissions

I work with my collection of metal and wood type to create bespoke letterpress designs to your specification. Your piece will be typeset by hand, letter by letter, then hand printed on one of my vintage machines.

I’ve printed business cards, social stationery, invitations, moving cards, promotional prints, violin labels, coasters, greeting cards, commemorative prints and more. If you’d like me to design and print something unique for you, please get in touch to discuss.

You can see examples of previous commissions below (I'm working on adding to this, there are lots more projects to show once I've fished out all my photos and written up my notes). Below that there's some FAQs too that should hopefully answer most of your questions.

By commissioning me, you’re not only getting a beautiful, unique and tactile piece of print; you’re helping to preserve the endangered heritage craft of letterpress printing. Thank you!

Selected commissions

Poetry commission

A hand-set letterpress poem printed on gorgeous deckle-edged cotton paper for poet Anna Woodford to give out at book launch events.

Ornamental origami

A commemorative letterpress print for Poppy Wilde on the achievement of her PhD. Classic typography, beautiful ornaments and origami.

FAQs

There’s not really a minimum order, but it’s worth bearing in mind that letterpress is time-consuming so although I can print anything from one item up to hundreds, it usually makes more sense to do a run of something as there’s so much design and setup time involved.

A description of what you'd like including quantity, size, number of colours, design style and wording.

If you’d like your piece traditionally printed from hand set wood and/or metal type, the limitation is the typefaces, font sizes and ornaments I have available, and the quantities of each.

If you want to print a logo, or to match the font on your website, then we’ll need to create some computer artwork and get a plate made to print from.

Size-wise I can print anything from tiny tags or labels up to A2 posters.

I print with metal type most of the time, and aim for there to be enough impression so that you can tell it’s letterpress, but not so much that the type gets worn down. A happy balance.

If you’re looking for a heavy impression, with a deep indent into the paper, we would need to get printing plates made from computer artwork.

To print onto a textured handmade paper, we would need to get printing plates made from computer artwork. Any harder bits of material in the paper can damage metal type.

All of them! Seriously though, I have a full range of standard Pantone colours and mixes as well as gold, silver, copper and fluorescents, plus random cans of pre-mixed ink from days gone by. I can also mix specific colours to order.

Better than that, you could come for a 1-1 workshop over a day or two and be involved in designing and printing it yourself. I’m in Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire near the Shropshire border.

I always take photos of work in progress which I can share with you if you're interested.

To give you a very rough idea of price, commissions usually range from about £250–£1000, but they do vary. If you have a budget range in mind and an idea of what you’d like, please let me know and I can advise you on what’s possible.

Anything from a few days to a few months depending on my availability and the scope of the project. Please get in touch as soon as possible if you've got a deadline; I'll always do my best to help.