Letterpress printing dates back over 500 years, and was commonly in use even during the early 20th century. Eventually newer, faster printing process’s overtook letterpress’ slower and much more labour intensive methods.
Today letterpress survives as an artisan printing craft, yet it continues to trend and gain in popularity because of it’s unique appeal to the eye and hand.
Letterpress printwork is very tactile, every character creates a slight impression in the card stock as it’s printed, which gives it a unique look and feel.
Letterpress fascinates all the more so because of it’s contrasts, hulking vintage presses capable of 100’s of tons of pressure, creating the most delicate effect of sculpting your words in paper.
Photogravure, much like letterpress, has many unique and remarkable features. Developed in the 1800’s as one of the pioneer photographic printing methods, photogravure is a technique that requires considerable skill and mastery of several process’s and materials.
Photogravure is an etching technique where the image is etched into a plate, then inked by hand, and printed using a hand operated etching press.
The image is pressed into the fibres of the paper, leaving a tell tale mark of impression, gravure is much more rare today than even letterpress.
The prints, especially portraiture, have incredible emotional power, and as no two are exactly the same they are singular pieces of fine art.
The crossover between fine art and print is at its sharpest with our digital reproductions and editions of original art. In stark contrast to our traditional print, we have a state of the art digital image capture and large format print capability.
There’s always been a constant thread of creativity throughout Noble, and a question around art or artisan. Decades of experience in creating original fine art and associated crafts, exhibiting our work in premier London and international galleries or local church and village fundraisers, has shown us that quality still matters.
So we continue to do what we do, whether it’s an original painting or letterpress fine art greetings cards, printing photogravures for an exhibition or making one off hand made books, wedding stationery or business cards it’s all about caring about what we do.
