It’s publication week for The Book here in the UK, and so things are a little busy. For the third part of my “Booking It” series, then, on the arts and crafts that go into bookmaking, I’m cheating a little and republishing a post from November 2012, when I visited Robert Smail’s Printing Works in the Scottish borders. I hope you enjoy it!
So: you’ve made some paper, and now you need to put something on it. Some text would be nice, but what about illustrations? For a thousand years, first in China and later in the West, the best way to do just that was to make a woodcut print — to carve out an image on a wooden block, apply ink, and press it onto the page.
Did I mention that my second book is coming out next month? I did? In the course of writing it I interviewed a whole host of people involved with the arts and crafts that go into making books, and the run-up to the publication of The Book seems like an apt time to share some of their experiences and knowledge.