The Fork and Broom Press

Our time travel draws to an end, we have arrived at our destination: the here & now, the year 2024.

Many a situation cannot be pinned to one particular year anymore.

In the early days master lithographer and colleague Hans Ulrich passed on a type case to me containing Garamond. It had been saved from a place that had been damaged by flooding. He also gave me a hand with dragging a type cabinet (containing various sizes of Folio Grotesk) out of a basement. We had to manoeuver a staircase which luckily was wide enough to get round without us scraping the skin off our hands along the rough walls.

At a village flea market I spotted that huge paper bag at the side of a table on which there were pewter plates, mugs and collectibles. That bag was stuffed with various large size wood type specimens of some Black Letter typeface.

Over all those years I have met countless people. Many of them generously passed on their knowledge, or gave me a hand and helped to drag and carry heavy loads such as presses, metal type and furniture. One haulage contractor whom I rang when I needed to move my studio to the north said his fleet was all low loading vehicles not suitable for the task, but then got me in touch with one of his colleagues who had the expertise and vehicles to move my printing presses and type cabinets safely.

And even though I cannot name you all, a huge and heartfelt thank you! goes out to everybody, who over these 25 years helped with advice, lended a hand or two or were of assistance in their very particular way with their individual means. Which, of course, includes my dear husband, who was the one I so often could fall back on and who, having gone through a metal worker‘s training, could fix quite a few problems with presses and tools.
All your help is treasured and will be so.

The year 2024 is all about the jubilee. The special work to be published this year will be „Schmausbuch No. 2“. Like the first Schmausbuch, which was published in 2002 and has been out print for many years, this new one, too, will be a typographical collection of recipes.

This time those typefaces will be used, that became part of the studio‘s stock after the first Schmausbuch was published. Both books are a very special sort of specimen book. Add to this, Schmausbuch No. 2 throws the bridge between garden and kitchen and the diversity in both. Thus it is part of the project „Giving Diversity a Home!“

There will be, as some sort of Sneak Preview, a few recipes available at the jubilee exhibition, which is to start this evening. The recipes will be pamphlet stitch-brochures, each brochure with one recipe. The cloth bound book with the complete collection of recipes will be presented at the Biennale Buchkunst Weimar on 7 + 8 December. It will be a limited edition and bound in well chosen fabric.

Colleagues in Britain are currently working on an antholgy about „10 Years TurnThePage Artist‘s Bookfair Norwich“, where I have exhibited a couple of times, having been one of the Book Prize Nominees in 2016.

 

In the garden Broad Beans and peas are standing strong promising a good harvest – and in every corner stories grow to be told in future art work.

But for now the message is:

You are cordially invited to the
Jubilee Exhibition for which our old barn is turning itself into that bespoke gallery space again:

Opening on Friday, 21 June 2024, 6pm

Open on the Saturday, 22 June 2024 from 11am to 7pm
Open on the Sunday 23 June 2024 from 11am to 6pm

During opening times visitors can have a go at pulling a print themselves on the old printing press built way back in 1952.

Save the date: 9th BiennaleBuchkunstWeimar 7 + 8 December 2024

 

Featured Image by Michael Trappmann (2023)