The Bodleian Library
The Workshop
The equipment and machines of the Bodleian Bibliographical Press are distributed between a workshop in the Old Bodleian Library and the public area of the Weston Library, the Bodleian’s library for Special Collections, where exhibitions are open to the public. The workshop is used at least four times a week for a range of regular activities: evening courses for adults, workshops for schools and for university classes from Oxford and elsewhere, open sessions for individual projects, and public open days. In the public spaces of the Weston Library, close to the café and exhibition rooms, presses enable drop-in public printing
An early donation of printing equipment to the Bodleian was the Albion machine used by the Daniel Press, given to the Library in 1915. Other presses, which now number ten (not counting Adanas), have mostly come as gifts or bequests from private presses including the Samson Press. A rolling press acquired from music publisher Victor Hope enables demonstration of the crucial difference between intaglio and relief printing. The Bodleian workshop has acquired metal type from Oxford University Press and also bought a large fount of type in the 2000s from Offizina Parnassia. Enough 14-point Caslon to fill eight pairs of cases enables a group of up to twelve students to set a text in parts. The teaching collection moves with the times, so typewriters, both manual and electric, are now among the antique machines which can be used at the workshop. To support creative printing and hand book-making, a Risograph machine is one of the newer acquisitions, and is much-used by fine arts students, in workshops for schools and community groups, and for zine-making and poster-making.
Within the workshop we keep specimens helpful for explaining the history of printing, such as a hand-mould, examples of woodcuts and wood-engravings, stereotypes, engraved copper plates, and a Monotype matrix and punched paper tape.
