Pat Randle of Nomad Letterpress
In today’s interview, we have the pleasure of speaking with Pat Randle, a master of the traditional art of letterpress printing and friend to Collectible Book Vault. Pat has carried forward the time-honored techniques and tradition of his father's press (Whittington Press), while exploring new creative avenues in the craft. Nomad Letterpress, known for its unique, hand-printed editions, has captured the beauty of tactile design and remains a beacon for bibliophiles and printing enthusiasts. Pat’s deep commitment to preserving the heritage of letterpress, combined with his passion for the evolving print landscape, offers a fascinating insight into the world of modern fine press books and printing. Join us as we delve into his journey, his passion for letterpress printing, and the future of this timeless art form.
Q: Your parents, John and Rosalind Randle, started Whittington Press in 1971 originally as a hobby as a change from their busy London publishing jobs, but it soon became so much more than that. What was your own experience seeing Whittington Press develop and how engaged were you with the craft as you were growing up?
I was born in 1982 by which time the Whittington Press was the full-time occupation of my parents. We lived a mile or so from the Press and spent much of our childhood there. My Dad erected a playpen at the side of the Heidelberg and he would feed us wooden reglet through the bars whilst the noise of the machine sent me and my bro, Frank, to sleep.
They both worked in London publishing jobs, my Dad at Heinemann and my Mum at Ernest Benn, and began the Press part-time in 1972 when they published their first book, A Boy at the Hogarth Press. Following a review in the Sunday Times sales were good and enabled my folks to consider developing Whittington Press into a full-time venture rather than a part-time hobby.
My early memories of the press mostly involve heavy machinery, as it was the time when my Dad was accumulating discarded equipment. I think I just about remember the Heidelberg being craned into position, a wondrous thing for a 4-year-old boy to watch, and the excitement of riding in the front seat of a rented Luton van that went round a roundabout (in the UK we use these as an alternative to traffic lights) fast enough to leave the top half of the Monotype machine it was carrying pierced through the side wall. I imagine the deposit wasn’t reclaimed.
Q: The Matrix series from Whittington Press was one of its crowning achievements, and many of the older editions are highly sought after. What was the original inspiration for the first Matrix edition, and why do you think it holds such an important place in the evolution of the modern fine press movement?
The Matrix series has recently come to a conclusion with Number 36 (though the Index is in the works), and there have been recent reviews in Parenthesis, The Book Club of California Quarterly with the forthcoming issue of Private Library devoted to it.
My Dad writes in Quarterly:
The seeds of Matrix were sown by two items which needed to be published, but would not in themselves stand up as individual publications: the diary of a pressman at the Shakespeare Head Press from 1928, and Brocard Sewell’s recollections of working with the printer-engraver Edward Walters at about the same time. It occurred to me that if we were to put these two together with a few other items, the result may have a wide enough scope to interest people in investing in the result. Matrix was chosen as the title as the 72-point Caslon swash M would look good on the masthead. To keep costs down and keep it all under one roof we brought a Monotype caster and keyboard, some ingots of lead and a 12-point Caslon die-case (all for less than the local typesetter’s estimate for doing the whole job), and Matrix became the first hot-metal job to be cast at the press.
It was subtitled A Review for Printers & Bibliophiles: “Review” because it suggested echoes of reviews such as the infamous Little Review which flourished in Chicago from 1914-26, and could claim Pound, Eliot, Joyce & Hemingway between their brilliant Dadaist covers; “Printers” because this was to be a review for printers, from printers, printed from type on a 1936 Double Crown Wharfedale; and “Bibliophiles” because it was also aimed at those interested in books and their content.
As many have discovered, editing a small review is a rewarding experience. Everyone enjoys being associated with it: readers enjoy being entertained, and people like to see themselves in print. As long as the initial effort of getting the flywheel turning proves productive, and worthwhile continue to flow in, a momentum is generated that carries the whole circus forward year on year.
In many ways, what you are doing with this blog shares similarities with Matrix - a recording of events, people and works by those involved in the world of fine press publishing. Indeed, some of those, Gangolf Ulbricht and Phil Abel were both featured within its pages, with the advantage of it being published in book format that their text could be featured alongside alongside some examples of their work. One of the main attractions of Matrix is that whilst reading about Gangolf’s paper-making activities, you can be leafing through various samples of his paper, bringing the whole experience into reality.
Q: Can you tell us about how you moved into a full-time letterpress printer role? Was there anyone outside of your parents that had a pivotal influence on this and what was your first project that you took lead on?
I am not sure if there was a pivotal moment, but I began to print Matrix for my Dad at Issue 31. I had been working in London and by the time I left I was managing a homeless hostel in Soho having worked part-time for printers Phil Abel (at Hand and Eye Letterpress) and also Alan Kitching at his Typography Workshop. The printing of Matrix was the only project during the year that my Dad and I worked on together, it usually took about 3 months on the Heidelberg and we worked well as a team. I organised the more physical side of imposition, make-ready and running the sheets through the press whilst my Dad would examine the 8pp’s as they came off the machine, eager to identify typos & issues with spacing.
Outside of that, I worked under the banner of Nomad Letterpress. I began to publish some books and a magazine, Double Dagger, both of which ran alongside the “jobbing” side of printing - the taking on of commissioned work - which my Dad avoided like the plague. I learned a lot from Phil, who was patient with me whilst I was busily smashing lay pins into polymer plates, and I imagine, through osmosis, picked up his techniques for calmly dealing with Bridezilla’s wedding invite demands. As well as the art of dealing with customers, jobbing work forced me to confront jobs that I wouldn’t or couldn’t have thought up myself, on various paper stocks, requiring the operation of different machinery, accurate guillotining and working to unreasonable turn-around times. It gave, and still gives, the place a discipline and a sense of immediacy that can be lacking when working on book projects that can sometimes be 3-4 years in the making. It also provided me with a valuable regular income that just isn’t there from publishing one or two books a year and no definite end point in sight.
At the other end of the spectrum is Alan, best known for his playful use of wood type, a collection that he rescued from a Somerset Barn in the early 1990’s (see Matrix 26). Alan’s work has inspired a generation of young designers to fall in love with letterpress printing, but those bold expressive posters and broadsides that fool many into thinking they’re easy to construct, are all underpinned by a strict typographic discipline that Alan learned having completed one of the last letterpress compositors apprenticeships in the 1950’s. Alan’s son Robert and myself are members of an exclusive club whose Dad’s thought it a good idea to give their sons the middle name of their favourite typeface: Caslon.
Q: Being a full-time letterpress printer is obviously a job that involves a level of artistic ability as it is a skill set that taps firmly into the arts. On the other hand, you are dealing with more than century-old equipment that needs to be finely maintained on a regular basis. Is there a part of the job that draws you in more than the other or do you find the balance between the two is what is appealing to you about it?
Whilst we tap into the arts, I would take issue with describing ourselves as artists. We are, first and foremost, printers and designers, and interpreting these roles through some sort of artistic lens will lead to problems. Our role is to render and then reproduce the work of the artist as best we can onto paper. I see our job first and foremost as problem solvers, both in helping the publisher/artist/designer to achieve their desired outcome and then again in the manipulation of this often cranky machinery to behave in the way that it’s supposed to. There is a place in the world for the printing by letterpress of uneven, hand-inked, distressed wood type, but it is not here.
Part of our role is to maintain these machines, and it’s an admission of defeat if we ever need to get an engineer out to sort a problem. Ellen is currently undertaking her semi-official Monotype apprenticeship, under the guidance of Neil Winter, who has now turned 70 years old. Part of that apprenticeship is the ability to be able to strip that Monotype machine down and rebuild it. In theory, it’s like looking under the bonnet of an old car, and much of our Monotype room is filled with shelving full of spare parts for the eventuality that they may, one day, be called upon.
Ellen is getting a unique crash course in this formidable technology, a few years later and Neil would have found a way to retire. And we try not to be too romantic about this old machinery: the Welliver system, a computer interface developed by Bill Welliver in the US, has now replaced the spool paper on one of our casters meaning that we can now cast directly from a word document, bypassing the time-consuming keyboard stage and cutting out the inevitable resulting human errors. Neil refuses to acknowledge this white box’s existence, but the rest of us have been converted.
It’s easy to get romantic about all this old machinery; it’s heavy, noisy and smells great. But we are not steam train enthusiasts. The bigger picture is that these machines output a superior product to more modern means of reproducing the printed word.
Q: At Nomad, some of the projects are done using hot metal monotype and created on site, while others are printed by plates that are created before your part of the printing process. Letterpress printing can mean a lot of things, from individually handset type to the much more mechanized plate printing. What is your preference and what advantages and drawbacks do you think each type presents?
Printing from movable metal-type, as invented by Gutenberg, and from plastic-backed plates are two completely different methods of reproducing the printed word by letterpress. All of our Nomad Letterpress publications are printed from hot-metal type, and are usually accompanied by wood engravings, linocuts, woodcuts, or any artwork that has originated from the human hand.
The ideal companion to the artwork that has been engraved is printing from metal type, that itself has begun life as an engraving — the punch-cutter having engraved the punch that’s been struck into the matrix which in turn has had the molten lead pumped into it to form the character or piece of type.
We would love for all the projects we do to be printed from our own hot-metal type, but I can see why the plastic plates are attractive: the files are generated directly from an adobe file, as opposed to being keyed in by the human hand, meaning that the time-consuming proof-reading stage doesn’t need to be repeated after setting. We also do not have the capacity to be casting more than one book at a time, whereas we can have multiple books at the plate-makers at any given time. Another limitation of the Monotype process is the limitation of typefaces: we have to restrict ourselves to pre-1960’s faces when the technology determined that new typefaces would no longer be used for hot-metal setting. We are happy with the limitations imposed by our range of typefaces, but I realise that today it’s fairly easy to commission a custom typeface.
Q: In the last 10 years, there has been a huge boom in new presses using letterpress printing methods in their productions and you have seen a large part of that business. Has it surprised you how in demand this has become and the kind of titles you are seeing, come across your desk over the past few years?
There are certainly a few new small presses to have emerged over the last few years that are prepared to lift production values to the highest possible standards. But I don’t believe this to be a new phenomenon. If you were to look back to the “Golden Era” of small/fine presses in Britain, the inter-war period, you’d see parallels to many of these newer presses of today. In fact, I would argue that the production standards of that period, and the originality of the books produced, are yet to be surpassed.
Those publishers went to great lengths to both build their “house style” and ensure they were producing work of the highest standards, be it in the commissioning of in-house typefaces or the range of hand- & mould made papers that they used, and many published work by the leading authors of their day.
Pages from Presses 2 (Whittington, 2022) by David Butcher provides a survey of the work of these private presses, complemented by original leaves from the books that they produced. The leaves in this book show to their best advantage the range of type designs used, the formats and typographic design of the pages, the quality of inking and impression, the initials and decorative devices employed, and the way in which wood engravings and other illustrations are combined with the texts of the books. I hope one day (eyes on you here Zach) someone will produce a survey of today's fine presses — the technology has moved unrecognisably over the last 100 years, but the one common denominator between the two eras is the fact we’re all agreed that reproducing the printed word by letterpress is yet to be surpassed.
When we are all 6-ft-under, lying horizontal in a wooden box, the small edition publishers of today will sit within a canon that contains fine presses since the time of Kelmscott, and it’ll be up to tomorrow's bibliographers as to judge how they compare.
Q: Of these presses creating modern small/fine press editions, you have worked with so many of them that our readers would know including Curious King, Conversation Tree Press, Suntup Editions, Nepenthe Press, and even larger outfits like The Folio Society and Fablelistik Editions. Their publications include horror, fantasy, science fiction, weird fiction, classics and contemporary. This obviously varies significantly from the typical type of productions that Whittington Press/Nomad has done throughout the years. How do you view this evolution of the industry and do you have any reservations about it or just excitement about the constantly changing and novel work?
Yes, we’re always grateful to have a full order book, and have enjoyed working with these new publishers, all of whom bring something new and fresh to the table. As an example, on press this month we have had Nepenthe Press’s The Fall of the House of Usher (now being bound by Roger Grech), in which the artwork, three linocuts, were engraved by the publisher himself.
But you’re right, I’d describe our interests as centred around the publishing and printing of books, and we don’t tend to stray into the re-printing of pre-existing texts. As touched on earlier, the majority of our books are accompanied by artwork that has originated from the human hand, be it wood engravings, linocuts, pochoir … . By comparison, every book that we have ever printed for one of these presses you mention has been a re-print of an existing text, and many of the texts are accompanied by offset litho reproductions. There are obviously exceptions, I thought Chris Daunt's engravings for Suntup’s Yellow Wallpaper were wonderful (not printed by us!). I’m not sure I’d describe what these presses are doing as an evolution, they are following a long-established tradition — as touched on previously, those publishers featured in both volumes of Pages from Presses worked with both classic texts, alongside the contemporary authors of their day. And on occasion even published new material (my favourite example being Hazlewood Books Sailing Ships and Barges of the Western Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas [1926] with hand-coloured copper-engravings by Wadsworth).
At the moment it’s hard to ignore that “blingy” bindings are in vogue. Whilst I can appreciate the craftsmanship, I feel sorry for the poor goat or cow who sacrificed his skin so that half a dozen shiny foil blocks can be smashed into the lovely leather. From a printing perspective, I believe that the collaboration between the capabilities of letterpress printing and digital technology are yet to be truly explored, and many of these new presses are run by those with plenty more years in the tank, so what the future holds is something to look forward to.
If there’s one thing I’d like to see from these presses is the willingness to venture into publishing new material. I realise this is certainly more risky as a business model, but I’m of the opinion that’s where the excitement in publishing lieu — the release of completely new material into the world, with no way of being sure whether it will swim or sink without trace.
Q: Over your many years of printing at Nomad, you have created so many beautiful productions that have become representative of the care you put into your work. If you could name just a couple of projects that exemplified your body of work and what you hope to produce, what would those be?
Well, as with life, what’s current is most exciting, at the moment, we have Paul Kershaw’s engravings of Skye on press. Paul is one of the most innovative and original wood-engravers of his generation. For twenty years he lived on the Isle of Skye, walking and climbing throughout the seasons on the Cuillins, one of the most dramatic mountain ranges in the British Isles. His images of the mountains and the sea around them, many using the multi-block techniques he has pioneered, are a testament to his love and understanding of that challenging landscape.
The majority of Paul’s blocks are being printed by Helen Hillman. Helen joined us three years ago and is now proving herself to be an excellent printer of wood engravings (having printed Hilary Paynter’s Moving last year), which requires a different skill set to printing on a production machine (such as a Heidelberg). Paul is able to achieve misty greys and multiple perspectives from the same block, often by the use of complex make-ready systems and inking strategies that he himself has worked out. Paul is himself an accomplished printer and is a master of messing with the process in order to suit his own ends. This book has been on press for 6 months already, and I expect we will be working on it for another 6, that’s before we begin the binding, but I really think it will be one of the most exciting projects to have ever come from the press.
We have worked with Paul before, he was featured in our 2020 Vision publication, and also The Collector’s Cut which accompanied the A edition of this volume. 2020 Vision was an important project for us, the blocks having been beautifully printed by the brilliant Anna Parker, as it featured engravings by 20 of the leading wood engravers of that moment who brought with them all the peculiarities that their various engraving styles entailed. We were exposed to the ink recipes of Richard Wagener, the complex make-ready techniques of Abigail Rorer, the difference between the much-loved boxwood block and the resingrave preferred by Pete Lawrence and the subtle 4-block-colour techniques of Neil Bousfield. These skills Anna has passed onto Helen and Ellen who now possess unique skills in the printing of wood engravings, and it helped us establish relationships with the leading wood engravers of their day, many of whom we have worked, or are planning to work with since.
Q: I asked this series question of Phil Abel of Hand and Eye Letterpress last year and I’m interested to get your perspective as well. Naturally, the art of letterpress printing is not as common as it was a century ago. Do you often think about the preservation of the craft and is this something you actively pursue or simply hope that by putting out all the work you do it will inspire others to potentially follow a similar course? Do you think it matters if this art is sustained?
Well, I can see both sides of the argument; to be preserved, things need to be looked after, but shutting everything off behind a glass cabinet is a surefire way to sterilise.
As I touched on earlier, the point about what we do is not simply one of preservation for history’s sake, or for the love of this old machinery. It is because we believe absolutely, and we prove with the work that we produce each day, that our way of printing, from Gutenberg’s technology, is yet to be surpassed by more modern techniques of printing.
We run workshops and I do some teaching from time to time. I am also Dad to three kids under 10 years old and witness every day the problems that the screen induces on the mind . . . the creative possibilities of working with ones hands are the antidote to “screen time,” and setting type by letterpress in a composing stick is a different way for those who concern themselves with letters and text to engage with their subject.
Q: Your role has evolved during the years at Nomad and now you have very qualified people doing much more of the day-to-day work than you used to. Having someone like the talented Ellen Bills apprenticing and some of the craftsmen you still have helping with the monotype puts you in a position to consider some of the bigger-picture ideas facing the future of Nomad. As you look forward, where do you see the current trajectory leading you in the next 10-20 years?
Has Ellen written this!? . . . Well yes, I feel very fortunate to have Ellen, Helen, Neil (& previously Anna) running the place, but my first love is printing and I like to be hands on with all the work that we do, I do not see myself as some kind of factory manager in future years. I think any more than half a dozen people working here and that’s what I would become, and I am sure the quality of the work would suffer as a result.
The workshop, and the people associated with it, are a priority over the coming months, as we look to move premises. In my opinion, the creation of a team of people who all enjoy being a part of a workshop team and take pride in what they do is as big of an achievement as any of the work that’s produced here, and I am more and more convinced that if you get the first part correct the high standards of output will surely follow.
My focus at the moment is to get the next book off the ground — it’s the life’s work of Gaylord Schanilec’s Midnight Paper Sales Press. Gaylord is renowned for his multi-block, colour wood engravings and the project will feature leaves from publications past as well as illustrations printed from the original blocks. It’s likely that myself and Ellen will be spending time with Gaylord in the coming months (/years) printing the blocks at his press in Wisconsin. He will have been printing for 50 years in 2029, which is the kind of timeline we enjoy inching towards. We are also hopeful of publishing Peter Allen’s pochoir book, Oiseaux de France, which we have been working on since 2018, later this year and have books with illustrations by Harry Brockway and Jo Sweeting ready to go on press after that.
I do not have any long-term plans, our daily aims are simple: we strive to create and have a hand in some of the finest books that will be produced during the 21st Century — if a companion to Jerry Kelly’s A Century for the Century was to be produced in 2099, we strive towards believing that some of our printing would be included.
Q: If there was one word or phrase that was used to describe Nomad Letterpress, what would you hope that would be?
Well, I like to think “rush-job Randle” is consigned to history. How about one from my 7-yr-old Lenny: Team-work makes the dream-work.
Q: Can you give us an outlook for 2025-2026 and what projects you have in collaboration with other presses as well as your own work?
We always tend to have projects on with Anthony from CK and Tony from Conversation Tree. Both of these guys started working with us about 3 years ago when printing from polymer was a fairly infrequent thing for us to be doing, and it is amazing for us to see them doing so well, and growing in confidence and pushing boundaries with each project that they undertake. They have helped us out hugely along the way - always ready to supply jobs during quieter spells, and have become real friends of the press during this time.
We have a hot-metal one for Paul Suntup about to go on press using one of our favourite typefaces Walbaum with hand-made paper from the Czech Losin mill and another for Nepenthe using the rare Haarlemmer hot-metal face (designed by van Krimpen, it only exists in 14-point) in combination with linocuts from Vladimir Zimakov. We hope to begin printing with Fablelistik soon, again with books on our favourite paper Losin, and have one for Books Illustrated nearly ready too.
The aforementioned understandably tend to approach us with spreadsheets and timetables, the antidote to which is our own work. The Paul Kershaw and Peter Allen projects have been going on for years and we can thankfully afford to be relaxed about that, knowing that the priority in our own work will always be the final outcome of the book, as opposed to hitting some kind of self-imposed deadlines.
This interview was done in a series of communications back and forth with Pat and a visit in person and we want to give our sincerest thanks for all his time and openness. If you want more information on his work and where to get his paper then check out their website or follow them on Instagram.
Interview by: Zach Harney co-founder of the Collectible Book Vault
A noble calling.
Very insightful and great interview.
Great article! Their pairing with small/fine presses has produced some excellent books. Looking forward to many more to come!
This is an inspiring story of a great artisan. I hope to follow in his footsteps as a amateur book binder. God bless u
Very interesting