The Bodleian Library
Education
Educating undergraduates and postgraduates was the original purpose of the Bodleian's printing room. These students will have been prepared for their visits with reading and discussions about the importance of the history of printing to their subject, whether literature, astronomy, or history.
Each year the workshop hosts six public evening courses, of six to eight weeks, in letterpress, linocut, and making a book.
The workshop is open to schools and hosts school visits for active printing of posters and keepsakes.
Teachers at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press have come to printing from different backgrounds and see the craft of printing through different lenses: fine art, librarianship, publishing, and history of typography. The Press has recently advanced a former student to a role as a teacher.
Engagement
Printing is always about ink on paper, but experiments and bespoke workshops on special themes and processes help to expand the boundaries of what the workshop can do. One such can be seen in the film, ‘Printing a line,’ showing the replica wooden press converted to printing onto a roll of paper. https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/printing-line-bodleian-weston-library-printing-press
Other specialist workshops have included replicating the extraordinary printing and book arts elements of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, mezzotint and wood-engraving workshops, and a print-a-thon honouring Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press.
Online, information about the Bodleian Bibliographical Press can be found at: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/book-arts
