Traditional Crafts in the 21st Century with Nick Hand - a podcast by Mark McGuinness

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative Podcast is Nick Hand, founder of The Department of Small Works and The Letterpress Collective, where he does amazing work with antique letterpress printing technology.



He talks about the relationship between old and new technology, traditional crafts and the modern world, in an interview that draws on his own experience as well as the many makers and craftspeople he has interviewed for his books Conversations on the Coast, Conversations from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and Conversations on the Hudson.







In the first part of the show I give an update on the book publishing side of my own business, including the paperback edition of my latest book, 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives, which has been beautifully designed and typeset by Irene Hoffman.



I also recently took delivery of my author copies of the Russian edition of my book Motivation for Creative People. It’s the second of my books to be translated into Russian and published by the Moscow publisher Mann, Ivanov & Ferber. So if you are a Russian speaker and would like a little extra motivation for your creative career, you can find the translated book here.



In the coaching segment, I share some thoughts on what the effect of the pandemic means for us specifically as creatives, and how we can make a creative response to the fact that the normal rules are suspended.



Nick Hand

Nick is the founder of The Department of Small Works, an amazing company here in Bristol where I live. Because Nick was just down the road I went to see him in person to record the interview in his workshop, and I was really glad I did.



As you’ll hear in the interview, it’s an Aladdin’s cave of printing technology from yesteryear, with printing presses, typefaces and other gadgets dating back to the Victorian era. So it’s a really atmospheric space, that I entered with something akin to reverence.



As we talk, you can hear clicking and tapping noises from time to time – that’s Ellen Bills, the printer, assembling a block of text by hand, individual letter by individual letter.







The results are stunning – the workshop wall and Nick’s website are covered in beautiful prints, posters, cards, books and booklets. And Nick has created an amazing business around this – printing to commission, creating his own products, and running workshops where you can go and learn to print on a letterpress machine yourself.



So once Coronavirus has receded and we’re allowed to get back to workshops, I shall be attending as a student and printing one of my poems.



Another reason I wanted to talk to Nick, and why he’s got such a deep knowledge of traditional crafts, is that he has published a trilogy of books featuring interviews with makers of all kinds who he met while cycling around the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as along the Hudson River in New York State.



So I was very keen to talk to Nick about the state of traditional crafts and manufacturing in the modern world, about what we can learn from the past and also how we can combine it with new technologies and opportunities. I was rewarded with a captivating conversation, as Nick shared stories, learnings, as well as some amazing new words from the printer’s lexicon.







Nick Hand interview transcript

MARK: Nick, we are sitting in the most extraordinary room. This is one of the days I wish I’d done this as a video podcast because we are surrounded, dear listener, imagine, if you will, a room full of antiquated printing presses, shelves of type... I think that’s metal. Is that some of it? Is that wooden type, some of it?



NICK: It is wood type.



MARK: There are some big blocks of wood type over there.

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