Cycling / Features
Travelling printer to cycle to libraries across UK
A Bristol artisan is currently planning his latest adventure that will see him cycle his custom-made printing bike from library to library across Britain making bespoke bookmarks along the way.
Each bookmark design by Nick Hand of the Letterpress Collective in the Old City will be inspired by the words and images of writers and artists he meets in order to help support the UK’s public libraries.
Nick will be cycling from Bristol to as far as Orkney off the north tip of Scotland, with a limited run of unique bookmarks made for each library which will all printed on the back of his bike at each library.
is needed now More than ever
Nick, 67, who lives in Redland, has previously cycled 6,500 miles around the coast of Britain and Ireland recording the work and lives of crafts people, as well as having further adventures in the Hudson Valley and Naples.
This latest adventure could be his last. “I just feel that dragging a printing press up a hill might be beyond me in a year or two,” Nick admits over a coffee at Small Street Espresso, a few hundred yards from his studio on Leonard Lane.
He looks after his three-year-old grandson, Harry, every Wednesday, and it was their weekly visits to Henleaze Library that first prompted the idea behind what Nick is calling ‘Press On’.
“I was interested in people’s connections with libraries,” he says.
Nick plans to make some art-based and some typographic bookmarks, including one for journalist and author Gary Younge at the library in Stevenage.
At the moment, Nick has got a rough journey planned “and I’m going to fill in some gaps”.
“These adventures are live adventures. People have contacted me saying things like, ‘We’ve got a little community library in Northumberland, will you be coming near here?’
“And then I’m thinking, ‘well I might do now’.”
Nick says that people and libraries are intertwined: “Without people in libraries, then the library will shut. So I want to remind people how important libraries, how brilliant they are, and what a cultural refuge or literal refuge they can be.”
Meeting people is the aspect of the adventure that Nick is most looking forward to. “And I’m looking forward to being on the road and the excitement. There’s a wonderful thing on a bicycle when you head off, you have your clothes in a bag, I have ink in a bag as well and some cards, and everything you need for the next however long is on that bicycle.
“We live such complicated, mapped-out lives, that just to head off into the blue yonder with everything you need to survive is just brilliant. It’s very John Steinbeck. You’re just on your own and I love that. I love that thing about a journey and an adventure.
“And the other thing about being on a bike is you never know how far you’re going to go because you might just be knackered after half an hour. I might end up in Bath or I might go all the way to Oxford on the first day if I’m feeling great.”
People across the country have offered to put Nick up for the night including friends he has made on previous journeys.
Nick Hand is a journeyman printer who is about to set off on his latest adventure – photo: Daniel Bird
Nick is currently running a crowdfunder ahead of beginning his Press On adventure.
Rewards that can be chosen if you donate include letterpress workshops in Bristol, an Alan Bennett book about libraries that has never been printed before and a complete set of bookmarks from the upcoming journey.
The money raised will go towards texts, illustrations, printing materials and overnight stays to make the journey possible; with any money left at the end staying in the letterpress to keep the presses turning on Leonard Lane.
For more information and to donate to Nick’s crowdfunder, visit www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/press-on
Nick Hand is calling his latest adventure Press On – photo: Nick Hand
Main photo: Nick Hand
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