Bill Moseley of Hill End Press launches his 8 x 10 tin type exhibition called Nightshade.

Amongst printing our beautiful letterpress stationery, 

very busy Bill has also been working towards his exhibition which is opening 

at the

Dubbo Western Plains Cultural Centre

14th December 2013 at 2.00pm

on till 2nd February 2014

called 

NIGHTSHADE

Tin types and wet plate collodion photography.

(Here's an insight to this extraordinary antiquarian photographic practice)

Discovered by Frederick Archer in 1851, became the most popular technique for capturing an image well into the 20th century. These images are 'tintypes' which is a variation of the wet plate process, where a thin negative is created on a glossy black surface. The image 'reverses' itself on viewing under direct light, the deposited silver reflecting the light and appearing as 'white' in the image.

Quiet Entrance - Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tintype 2013

Also known as 'ambrotype', this process brings back the magic of surface to an image and has attracted many adherents dissatisfied b the ubiquitous inkject imagery that floods exhibition spaces. As well as the rich and unusual tonality, there is a sense of random unpredictability (at least to the practitioner) who must transport his or her portable darkroom to the subject. From the coating of the plate, exposure and development, there is a maximum interval of around 10 minutes. Each plate has it's own signature of how the collodion was poured and sensitised. An historian could discern whether a photographer was right or left handed.

Remembered Fragment - Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tintype 2013

There is a different way of looking at cllodion (tintype) photographs. The familiar tonalities of a black and white image are upturned, red are seen as greens as black, blue disappear, and one is forced to engage in an all-over way with the image. That is to say, that familiar foreground, middle ground and distance tonal values are subverted somewhat, creating an uncanny sense of timelessness.

Not unexpectedly, the art of wetplate photography has been greatly revived not just by artists, but by history enthusiasts concerned with the American civil war. Civil war reenactment photographs (even aerial ones!) have been deliberately staged to create a suspension of disbelief.

Early tintypes had no such artistic pretension, they were the cheap polaroids (remember them?) of the day. They could be produced quickly and cheaply on blackened iron, the fixing image could be trimmed with scissors and placed in a cheap folded card frame.

Owl - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

For all that, it's a difficult technique to master and the chemicals are harder to obtain now than in the 19th century, (they're all 'dangerous goods'). But there are some modern refinements, the plates no longer have to be laboriously 'black japanned', as gloss black 'trophy' aluminium is available, as is acrylic sheet.

The exhibition has been inspired by the landscape at Hill End where Bill lives and Oberon.

By the bridge - By Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

A closed room - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Early birds - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin types 2013

As it is - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Momento - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Lost jetty - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Remembered fragment 2 - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Wanderer - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Waterhole - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Visitor - by Bill Moseley 8 x 10 tin type 2013

Tin types are for sale, please contact for further information www.hillendpress.com.au

33 images in the series

Bill Moseley 2013



What is letterpress printmaking?

Ummm... to explain the  e v o c a t i v e   w o r l d   o f   l e t t e r p r e s s   printmaking in a nutshell. 

It's a metamorphis of highly trained skills, then and now, trying and failing, patience and determination, 

a crisp and luxurious impression,

within slow cook printmaking.

H e r e' s  a   q u i c k   l i t t l e   h i s t o r y   l e s s o n..

Moveable type was first developed by Bi Sheng in 1040  in the Song Dynasty in China. Although Sheng was progressive with getting the word out it involved a lot of labour in their extensive alphabet system so on the other side of the world a Johannes Gutenburg invented the printing press and independent movable type system...and a smaller anglo saxon alphabet.

A different cleverness Johanne knew that it would create a renaissance in spreading the thoughts and intellectual ideas to the world, rather than time consuming hand writing.

It meant the monks in monasteries could have 

more time to tend their medicinal gardens.

W h a t' s    m o v e a b l e   t y p e   y o u   a s k?

Well it's the individual letters and numbers that are either made up in wood or metal and assembled to create your dialogue and held in place by gadgets called coins and popped into a metal chase, then popped again into the press.

It all has to line up elegantly, be spaced beautifully and be enticing to the eye. 

It takes time and a whole lot of practice and patience.

Nowadays letterpress printers combine this with photopolymer plates, which means we can use our drawings and artwork, simply by making the plates in our darkroom.

You can see our tutorial on how we make our own plates

because we believe in thoroughly understanding our artisan industry as a whole.

T h a t' s   h o w   d i s c o v e r i e s   a r e   m a d e.

How to make a photopolymer plate by Bill and Genevieve 

Our Gordon Platen Press is then set up with ink, all portions of the printing surface will strike the paper with the proper pressure, which gives a crisp, luxurious impression embedded into the paper 

on our 100% eco sustainable cotton german 600gm board.

This is where the patience and determination comes in, because no matter how

many times you have this experience of printing and your skills are honed in, there more than

often is troubleshooting, which ask any letterpress printer and they will nod 

their head in an agreeable smile.

The alignment of plates and equal pressure of the ink placement can try and undo you some days and it can be like a disagreeable teenager, only you can't send the press off to the bedroom, it's having the years of experience behind you to sort it out.

After inking up...

Paper is then hand fed one invitation at a time through the press and at the same time pedaling the foot up and down, concentrating while the large flywheel spins 

until the desired number of printed copies are obtained 

with crisp lines, patterns and typography.

One has to watch their fingers and it's all in the  r y t h m n.

 To bring out the best attributes of letterpress printmaking one has to have a full understanding of the capabilities and advantages of what can be a very unforgiving medium at times.

But  w e   a r e   i n   l o v e  with the process,

(custodians of the authentic)

both its cranky, frustrating and the seamless happy days of printing.

SLOW COOK PRINTMAKING

HILL END PRESS

There's a toffee moon in the night sky

I'm sitting here looking out the window

and the moon is the colour of toffee.

The bushfires in NSW, all up and down the coast

have been horrific. Many people have lost

their homes. 

My brother at Mt Tomah is ready to go,

the fires are hovering a few kilometres at the

back of their land.

He has cleared as much as he can the land

around his very special property

where he has developed and bred rare

 irises, camelias and many

very rare plants from China.

Craig has the patience of a saint, sometimes waiting

years to see his achievements in

developing new varieties of plants.

Fingers crossed they and others will be safe.

For myself today,

I got stuck into painting my still lifes.

It helped to distract myself from

the fires.

It's the perfect meditation.

And ate broad beans on toast.

Working Spaces

Hey, we are pretty excited.

Australian photographer Martyn Thompson whom has lived in New York for the past 25 years

has just launched his new book called 

Working Spaces

and he has included Hill End Press

in it.

We haven't seen or got our hands on a copy yet

( oh for living in the country)

we are  i t c h i n g  for ours to arrive in the mail.

So it's so lovely to have this acknowledgement 

of all our hard toil,

putting back together our

delightful little 1872 cottages & studio

here in

Hill End

*

Drunken Bees on the Landscape Floor is coming home soon

The paper mache was still trying to dry

Winter is almost over

It's now just the August winds to blow their way through our

 landscape and then Spring is just around the corner.

The first trees to blossom are the Wattles and the peach tree

and no socks in the bed.

My exhibition is very near at Dubbo Western Plains Cultural Centre.
Saturday 24th August  2.00pm opening
The artwork I have created is all about the plight of bees and their
existence, they are struggling with pesticides, mites and exhaustive pollinating
schedules due to mono culture.
It's a very serious problem that if something is
not done very soon, our bees will no
longer be.

Here is a poem I wrote about bees

THE BEDSPREAD OF NATURAL HISTORY

a bees' lament

S U M M E R
My mouth is full of the honest primrose night
With a slowing clock
delicate and accomplished
cross pollinating

A U T U M N
I imagine ticking soft shadows of air
with coarse black wings
While grass persists to remain
awake for an hour

W I N T E R
I did not imagine this slow frost stone
sustaining a secret
Strategic terrain
the crinkled spark
My thoughts are walking round the exhausted table

S P R I N G
Curvature of drunken bees on the landscape floor
Time lays in a short line
my only familiar scent is that of a flowering curtain

hillendpress.com.au

Misty morning

Woke up to this beautiful mood.
Fluttering of snow the day before and today a beautiful foggy mist.

The new camera has arrived!

It makes me sigh.

Bill's new 8 x 10 timber and brass camera or very old one I should say that we picked up on good old ebay.

The next couple of months will bring some gorgeous morsels of tin types 

into the Hill End Press Studio for Bill's exhibition at Dubbo.

Meanwhile we are still setting up and kicking on the wedding stationery, just about to load up the new website for my artwork that I've been working on, learning quick books for dummies and setting up a new accounting system (not exactly an enticing part of the business but seriously must be done) organizing Open Studio Day Sunday 22nd September and I'm close to my exhibition at Dubbo Project Room, Western Plains Cultural Centre.

Busy busy busy
but in the best possible way.

Had to take mental time out last week and rake some elm leaves to mulch the top garden and put heaps of organic chook poo.

Always centres me.

Woke today to find snow fluttering past the window and through the day my first glimpse of the red robin sitting in the rowen tree.

How especially beautiful is that!

Ladies of letterpress

  It's arrived.    

My ladies of letterpress 

iron on badge.

It's official

I'm a member and a  lady of letterpress

Ladies of letterpress is an international trade organization  

for men and women

in America.

It's one of the best resources www.ladiesofletterpress.com

Where letterpress printmaking is in their bones.

In America it just doesn't cut the mustard if you don't use letterpress for printing, the same

understanding is growing here in Australia.

Remember to check out my
 pinterest.com/genevieveca/

for art/stationery and lots of delicious morsels

Go to our website www.hillendpress.com.au

The wedding stationery range is ready!

Long long days of sisyphus work and eating tons of chocolate in all forms is starting to pay off and we woke this morning to realize I had dreamed, all will be fine and it will be all worthwhile, I won't go into my other dream, crazy.  

I feel really good about our efforts, mainly because its all come from us, our drawings, designs have all been incubated here in Hill End, its very much our own and I feel really very proud of that.

Bill and I would wrestle about clip art, me wanting to have reprieve and from the creative endeavour and sneak a clip art in, but Bill would say no no no, do your own ideas. Make it our own. For my part it was keeping up the creativity, which usually is fine but our workload this year was phenomenal with our art exhibitions, building the studio with the help of our friends ( We are forever grateful guys) Swinging from fine art to design, but what I did in the end was just let it all merge and brought in lots of in the moment thinking, no plans, just one step in front of the other.
  
The idea of  a plan or a future from the word go was thrown out the window, this sounds crazy, as they are useful its true, but I've learnt it only makes one more concerned about the future and comparing to regrettable past events. Always aiming to make things better the next time.

This only makes it all the more harder to enjoy the fully satisfying brief moments which when we look back on our lives will probably be the most important ones.

What this did was calm everything and kept my and our thinking strong, I am such a meditation addict now, its all our talk about besides the garden.

So I have just finished photographing the designs and now for the last big slog with a quick dash is our website, which I have worked on in increments as I've gone along, just to glue it all together and our date of completion is this Friday, so the last push of this stage.

The we can socialize! Not that we don't but more and I oh so want to go to the theatre which is  one thing I really miss living in the country.

So for all our family, friends who have supported us 100% through all of this new adventure, thankyou from the bottom of our hearts. We love you.

Speak soon

All is well in Hill End

We've started making the photopolymer plates in the new darkroom.

Our studio is up and running, yes you thought this day would never come, but it has and it's so nice to work in. So nice in fact that today I put on Arvo Part  (sublime) and just danced, well kind of did some Genevieve style ballet, the style that you do when know one is looking.

Our underfloor heating is not hooked up yet as our electrician has gone to Russia for seven weeks but promised to return. But we have cocooned the space in so much insulation under the slab, around the slab, up the side of the walls and the roof that we just have had our little panel heater on and it's so cosy inside.

So this afternoon we have been up in the darkroom making the first photopolymer plate for the wedding invitations. We have three weeks to get a range together, its all designed just now to make plates and print. It's rush hour here in Hill End but that's ok as it's all very exciting, so exciting that we jumped out of bed this morning around 6.00pm, still dark and Bill jogged off into the early morning with Tango, came back and we have been on the photopolymer case since.

Photopolymer plates are what is used now for letterpress printmaking. They are light sensitive and come in a sealed pack that only enjoys the darkroom. We don't have a machine to make our plates we are very hands on and want to know how to do it ourselves, to be totally thorough in what we are achieving with our letterpress stationery. I guess it's in the artist psyche to want to know more in whatever we pursue.

The beauty of the photopolymer plate is that we can use a magnetic base in our press and it just snaps on in  position which is very different to years ago when you would handset rows and rows of all the type. We love to handset type too for our arts practice  but for the stationery this is a quicker way to go with very good results.

I draw up the designs, scan them into the computer, take them into Indesign and then we have a little wrestle on which way the fonts sit well (its our process) then Bill produces them into a negative on our Epson stylus pro 3880 printer with the aid of our computer, I love the old method with the contemporary technology.

Then off to the darkroom and exposed in Bill's handmade vacuum box ( his a handy chap, very clever) for 17 minutes, don't forget to take the clear cover film off the front of the plate before going into the V box, then into a bath of thirty degrees for 10 minutes of washing with a terrific little sponge brush Bill found at Bunnings.

This is followed by drying the plate in front of a blow heater and if its a sunny day, it sits on a window ledge sunbaking for a little while, then it's all done.

I also made delightful, just could keep eating them till the cows came home Olive oil biscuits with fennel seed from our garden, so so good just out of the oven.

how to create a photopolymer letterpress plate

A room of ones own stuff

Yesterday I took great delight in nestling into my studio, just that feeling of making it me.

There is still stuff everywhere, OMG which really does my head in, I just want it organized in a flash. (mind you I'm perfectly ok with my studio full of stuff) The fact that our home had been washed over with stuff from the move didn't help either. So a big throw out is on its way, like living on a boat, one thing comes in, one thing goes out. Or whatever you keep is only known to be beautiful or useful
( depending upon ones definition of useful, that can be a broad evaluation).

At the moment it looks like a sea of misplaced thoughts, well not quite, you can see it has some direction but I'm just trying to be in the moment and one step in front of each other.

Mindfullness.

The elms in the avenue are just perfect at the moment and I have used them as floral arrangements through our home.

My Remedy for chaos: Just a jug of flowers in our home gives me a spring in my step.

Bill's built the mezzanine level for storage of all the artworks and now is onto the darkroom and that will be built by next week, which will enable us to get all the wedding stationery samples ready for photography and develop the new website. Meanwhile we are sorting out new invoicing do it all finance systems, anyone out there have an idea, apparently Myob is a good option. We have always done it manually before but we are ready now for some sophistication.

Fine tuning for the wedding stationery launch, which I am so itching to launch...itching itching itching with excitement and a few nerves.

Our Gordon Platen press is together, it made my heart ache to see it all in pieces on the floor, so that's been a relief and back on track feeling. All the presses are put back together.

Big bonus is that Bill's toe is now a beautiful pink colour and the doctors are happy how the operation went, so all is well there.

We had Open house day today, a lot of the heritage homes open their doors every year here in Hill End  and ours included.

We have conserved her rather than restore her. Our home didn't need a personality change just propping up again and a bouquet of flowers, re instating the garden, she was happy being a grand old lady.

It was the thought of cleaning up that was daunting with our move, but the spare back room has more stuff crammed into it and our home came up like a dream, some window dressing came in handy.

The vacuum cleaner went into overdrive and three goes of emptying it into the paddock next to us, Tango's dog hair forming its own carpet. I'm really not into cleaning at all it takes me away from my creativity, but when it's done, I feel really centered and calm.

 I decided to cruise today, no high performance tours, just chill and chatted to a few people, most were just directed through.

It's always really rewarding to do this, just reminds you how far you have come, I can tell you we have come a long way. Our home was a romantic ruin and the visitors encouragement makes it all worthwhile.

We are getting there, it's all very close.

Oh! do not attack me with your watch.
A watch is either to fast or slow.
I cannot be dictated by a watch
Jane Austen

Genevieve X
hillendpress.com.au

You begin with a laugh but end up just wanting to be cosmos blowing in the wind

We have started to move into our studio all the printmaking equipment.

The presses are cumbersome, large and very heavy, one walks around pondering how this is going to turn out, goes without saying, anxieties levels are high. One to just get them out of the door of our old studio to the new location about one kilometer down the road, all going in a box trailor.

Bill decided to dismantle the Gordon platen press, its top heavy and sitting on an insecure floor made of timber, this has to be well thought about, the navigation of this one out the door, it's our baby and our business. I can't bare this stage, wish I could wave a magic wand and it was all assembled in its new environment.

But it's not the case.

So here we go, 6 friends and a heave ho, only for me to catch my hand between the press and the door, doctors and bandage, I'm ok but just very sore, and lucky not more damage to my hand was done.

The platen all in pieces arrives at our new space happy and settled.

No 2, the etching press.

Six friends again lifting it off the stand it was on, fine, shunting it out the door takes many angles and enquires, but it's through, now onto the trailor, one big heave ho and its shunted onto Bill's foot causing incredible pain.

Bill keeps going with the move only to find the next day that he has shattered the big toe bones and the wound is open.

Two days later, our new studio lies dormant, we ended up going to Hospital for two days, Bill having his big toe operated on, all the bones are shattered and there is a gaping wound down the side of his toe.

An open fracture.

We both look at this as a forced rest, we have being going flat chat on the buildings works for six months now and even though its been an exciting process its has been demanding on us juggling everything else that goes on in our daily lives as well.

So I get stuck into my reading, finishing off books that have been piled high beside the bed and Bill dreams his on an island with a blue cap on.

It worked, we feel relaxed by just changing our thinking. Mindfullness. 

We return home with Bill now wearing a boot that would be very fashionable in Japan and vowing never again to move the presses.

At the moment it could be nice being cosmos blowing in the wind.

hillendpress.com.au

Tabi or not tabi

Steady on, forward....

The studio is really coming on now, last week saw us lining the ceiling with ply board, insulation and its big silver blanket to keep us warm.

This week was the serious task of putting the iron up on the roof, so much for my humor Bill got out his Tabi shoes that we got in Japan. In Japan this is their normal workwear for building sites, or so we were told, I'm a bit dubious, maybe a hundred years ago, but maybe not.

They are perfect for the roofing as they are flexible on the ladders and roof and the big toe has a large advantage of clinging on like a monkey. So instead of using them as a fashion statement as Bill usually does he has put them into action in their right place.

Anyway so far they have been a big success and Bill is thrilled to be using them for what they were designed for. Building sites in Japan used bamboo poles as scaffolding, these shoes made men's feet sprightly spring around from one pole to the next.  Nothing like looking cool on a building site.

You must remember to buy the socks when you purchase a pair.

inky spinky spatty day

 

All the grapes are coming on now, there's plenty for the parrots and us.