Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future

在利兹大学英语学院的地下室里，有从零开始制作一本书所需的一切，包括造纸设备、印刷机和铅字机，以及装订机。这个设施是在50多年的时间里零零碎碎地发展起来的，然而，随着学术时尚的改变，这个房间就不再使用了。在其他地方也可以找到类似的设备，例如，在不再教授参考书目的其他英语系，或者在不再教授凸版印刷的印刷系。它们也可以在博物馆和画廊中找到，代表了一种复制被新技术冗余的文本的方式。这个研究网络将那些拥有或正在使用凸版印刷的人聚集在一起，探索这种印刷技术在数字时代的相关性。该网络由利兹大学印刷比较历史中心、伯明翰城市大学和伯明翰大学印刷历史与文化中心牵头，汇集了来自不同学科的策展人、印刷商、艺术家和学者，共同研究历史上今天印刷的位置。这样的网络是特别及时的。随着目录学和文本研究的衰落，许多印刷室都被废弃了，而数字人文学科的出现促使人们对模拟媒体形式及其产生技术的兴趣重新抬头。印刷术和书籍艺术也发生了类似的变化，因为从业者已经转向旧的实践来告知和补充数字媒体的工作。同样，在学院之外，作家、艺术家和小型出版社继续使用凸版印刷，无论是有意控制印刷品的生产，还是作为对历史印刷文化更广泛投资的一部分。然而，正当凸版印刷的重要性正在被认识到的时候，接受这种技术培训的人数却在减少：参考书目很少作为英语课程的一部分教授；在艺术流派中，凸版印刷从属于其他技术；印刷工人不再将凸版印刷作为正式培训的一部分（那些曾经学习过的人现在都退休了）。网络的目标有三个方面。首先，它是保守的，利用参与者的各种专业知识来记录幸存的印刷机和类型，同时交流关于凸版印刷及其许多历史的技能和知识。鉴于其构成，该网络将塑造学术界以外的印刷方法，而学者则反过来向网络中的从业者、策展人和艺术家学习。其次，它将开发基于实践的研究和教学方法，可以将凸版印刷置于一系列学科中。这将使我们能够确定这些技术在知识和文化生产中的持续作用，同时也将学术本身与其印刷遗产重新联系起来。最后，网络展望未来。虽然我们认识到，如果我们要充分理解活字印刷术塑造西方文化的方式，参与历史印刷是至关重要的，但我们希望用历史的方法来探索这些技术在数字时代的知识生产方面能教给我们什么。我们将探讨旧印刷技术支撑新方法的方式，无论是印刷、数字排版和设计的发展，还是我们理解数字文化影响的方式。我们认为，只有通过研究历史印刷，我们才能开始理解今天文本复制的政治。

In the basement of the School of English at the University of Leeds is everything required to make a book from scratch, including paper-making equipment, presses and type, and a bindery. This facility was developed piecemeal over fifty years, however, as academic fashions changed the room fell out of use. Similar sets of equipment can be found elsewhere, in other English departments that no longer teach bibliography, for instance, or in printing departments that no longer teach letterpress printing. They can also be found in museums and galleries, representing a way of reproducing text made redundant by newer technologies. This research network brings together those who have, or are working with, letterpress to explore what relevance this print technology has in the digital present. Led by the Centre for the Comparative History of Print at the University of Leeds and the Centre for Printing History and Cultures at Birmingham City University and the University of Birmingham, the network brings together curators, printers, artists, and scholars from a range of disciplines to investigate the place of historical printing today. Such a network is particularly timely. While many print rooms fell into disuse with the decline of bibliography and textual studies, the emergence of the digital humanities has prompted a resurgence of interest in analogue media forms and the technologies that produced them. Similar shifts have occurred in typography and book arts, as practitioners have turned to older practices to inform and complement work in digital media. Equally, beyond the academy, writers, artists and small presses continue to work with letterpress, whether in a deliberate attempt to take control of the production of print, or as part of an investment in historical print culture more broadly. Yet just as the significance of letterpress printing is being recognized, the numbers of those trained in such techniques are declining: bibliography is rarely taught as part of English programmes; letterpress is subordinated to other techniques in schools of art; and printers no longer learn letterpress as part of their formal training (and those who did are now retired). The aims of the network are threefold. Firstly, it is conservational, drawing upon the varied expertise of its participants to document surviving presses and type while exchanging skills and knowledge about letterpress printing and its many histories. Given its constitution, the network will shape approaches to print and printing beyond the academy while scholars, in turn, learn from the practitioners, curators, and artists in the network. Secondly, it will develop practice-based methods of research and teaching that can situate letterpress printing in a range of disciplines. This will allow us to set out the ongoing role for such techniques in knowledge and cultural production, while also reconnecting scholarship itself with its printed heritage. Finally, the network looks to the future. Although we recognize that engaging with historic printing is fundamental if we are to fully understand the way movable type has shaped Western culture, we want to use historical approaches to explore what such technologies can teach us about knowledge production in the digital age. We will interrogate the way that older print techniques underpin newer methods, whether developments in printing, digital typesetting and design, or the ways in which we understand the impact of digital culture. It is only by engaging with historical printing, we argue, we can start to understand the politics of textual reproduction today.