About the Film

In 2020, I made this letterpress documentary film for Northern Print, following printmaker Nick Loaring as he created new work for the Lumen Print Collection. Curated by Northern Print around the theme of light, the collection brought together six selected artists from across the UK, and this is one of a small series of artist films I made for the project that autumn.

Nick works mainly in letterpress, using a huge collection of wood and metal type built up over years of collecting. As he puts it in the film:

“It’s a really hands-on DIY type of printmaking, if you like. You’ve got millions of letters, some of them really tiny, you can hardly see them, and others that are so big. What can you do with them? What’s possible?”

That question, what’s possible, runs through the whole letterpress documentary film. Nick treats each letter, block and colour run as an open problem rather than a fixed piece of equipment, and the film follows him working through exactly that kind of decision as a new commission takes shape.

Three Prints Become One

Nick’s initial plan for the Lumen commission was three separate prints exploring light as a theme. Partway through, the idea changed. Rather than three disconnected pieces, he decided to make one large, unified work built from three interlinked prints, a much harder problem to solve.

“It was like, right, okay, what can this do? And then how am I going to make this work across three prints? How am I going to control this across three prints?”

That kind of live problem-solving, worked out at the bench rather than planned in advance, became a central thread of the film. Nick was clear that this was new territory for him, a much bigger and more technically demanding piece than anything he had made before.

Making a Letterpress Documentary Film

Filming a letterpress documentary film meant following a process that moves constantly between digital precision and old, tactile machinery. Nick starts by designing a composite image on screen, working out how to divide it across three prints. Each section is then laser-cut and mounted onto wooden blocks, which become the actual printing plates.

Once the ink and colour are involved, the process becomes far more intuitive. Nick layered four separate colour runs for this piece, mixing and testing combinations by eye rather than working to a fixed formula, since keeping the colour consistent across three prints that need to sit edge to edge is a genuinely difficult problem to solve by hand.

Some of the machinery in his studio has a working life stretching back decades. At one point in the film he casts new letters from molten lead, using equipment built for exactly that job, and he is just as particular about the parts of a layout that never appear in a finished print, like the blank spacing material, known as furniture, that holds everything in place. It’s the kind of quietly obsessive detail that makes this letterpress documentary film worth spending time with.

Filming Nick Loaring

What I wanted to capture here was not just a finished print but the uncertainty involved in getting there. Nick is candid about not always knowing whether an idea will actually work once it’s underway, and that honesty runs through the whole film.

When the three prints finally came together and the layered colours resolved into new shades, blues shifting into greens, pinks into purples, the effect was genuinely striking on screen. Nick’s own reaction, captured in the film, says it best:

“When you bring the whole thing together, that’s when it works. It’s absolutely a gobsmacking piece of print.”

There’s a quieter theme underneath the practical filming too. Nick works with genuinely old industrial equipment, and thinks carefully about what that means for a craft some would consider outdated. He is equally relaxed about not fitting neatly into a single definition of letterpress, treating the machinery as something to be used rather than preserved behind glass.

Working with Artists

Films like this one are part of a wider pattern in how I work with artists and makers, whether that’s a printmaker, a bookbinder or a millwright. The approach barely changes from project to project. I try to spend real time in the studio before I start filming properly, enough that the person I’m working with stops performing for the camera and just gets on with the work.

With Nick, that meant being comfortable standing back while he worked through a problem out loud, or in silence, without needing every moment to lead somewhere. Craft-based work rarely happens in neat, filmable beats, and pushing for that can flatten exactly what makes it worth documenting in the first place.

I’m also careful about how much I ask someone to explain. Nick’s own words carry the film. My job is mostly listening, choosing when to be in the room and when to let a process run without commentary, and trusting that the interesting part of a craft is usually the bit that looks like nothing much is happening.

About Northern Print

Northern Print is a printmaking studio and gallery based in Newcastle, supporting artists and audiences through exhibitions, studio access and education. The Lumen Print Collection brought together six UK-based printmakers around the theme of light, and this letterpress documentary film is one of a small series I made documenting that project in 2020. You can find out more about their work at northernprint.org.uk.