Hand-printed books of poetry,
Plus tips and supplies for fellow letterpress printers.

Block Makers

Nylon or Metal


If you are new to this area, you will definitely need advice from your supplier regarding the preparation — and suitability for blockmaking — of ‘artwork’ (i.e. the original you have to hand). The original you want to reproduce has to fall within certain limits for the supplied block to produce anything like a satisfactory result. This particularly applies to fine cross-hatching on drawings to become line blocks, and to the ‘contrast’ of photographs, intended to become half-tone blocks.

Since Mr Sparrow retired from block making (he may still have some film available – edward.sparrow@btconnect.com, we usually deal with the Block Shop, the only remaining large-scale blockmaking business that we know of, supplying the full range of nylon, and metal (zinc and magnesium at different prices) line and half-tone blocks. No longer in Manchester, see new address below:

The Block Shop
Photocast Products Ltd
78, Venture Point West
Speke
Liverpool
L24 9TB

Tel: 0151 486 2821

photocastproducts@btinternet.com

A smaller outfit offering nylons (polymer) is:

Peacock Blockmaking Ltd (Mr Guy)
6, William Street
Berkhamsted
Herts
HP4 2EL

Tel: 01442 872956

There are others, often involved mostly with making dies for gold foil blocking.






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