Celebrating women in printing and the graphic arts

The distaff side: women as printers from the fifteenth century to the present day

Exhibition, Wednesday 8 March to Thursday 27 April 2006
Preview: Tuesday 7 March, 5.30–7.00pm

Working in a thin space: Harrington & Squires

Lecture, Tuesday 7 March 2006, 7.00pm

Lecture, Tuesday 7 March

Working in a thin space. We begin in the Exhibition Room with a preview of ‘The distaff side’, our concurrent exhibition (details below), from 5.30pm. We will move upstairs to the Bridewell Hall for the lecture at 7.00pm.

Harrington & Squires was founded in 2002 by graphic designers Chrissie Charlton and Vicky Fullick to bring letterpress printing and hand-made graphics into contemporary use. With an emphasis on traditional letterpress printing and beautiful paper, it is their intention to produce products which feel and look different from the mass-produced.

In this talk Chrissie and Vicky will further explain their rationale for setting up their workshop and describe how they approach the work they do.

Exhibition, 8 March to 27 April

The distaff side. The history of women in printing – in industry, as printmakers and as operators of private presses – is the history of a minority. The earliest women to work with type, ink and presses were members of religious communities or the heirs of men who had died without male issue. In England the Stationers’ Company and the printing unions made it very hard for women to establish themselves as printers, and it was only in the twentieth century that it became generally acceptable for those on the ‘distaff side’ to enter the trade. Even then it was not easy, and the majority of those working in the industry today are male. Nevertheless, throughout the history of printing in the West women have worked as printers. Some have attempted to storm the walls of the traditional industry, some have quietly joined the family business, while others viewed their work quite differently: as therapy, as rebellion, as a genteel hobby, as an educational tool, or as a means of creative expression.

The exhibition attempts to represent the different kinds of women printers, and the different work they did, between the fifteenth century and the present day.

Exhibition curator Paul W. Nash works as a freelance bibliographer and printing historian. He was formerly a rare books librarian at the Bodleian Library and the Royal Institute of British Architects. He is editor of The Private Library and Printing History News, and has written on private presses and architectural books.  He is currently researching a book on the Samson Press, which was operated on a commercial basis by two women between 1930 and 1967, and on which he spoke at the Hidden Typography Conference at St Bride in 2003.