Processes - The origins of designs and how final products come to be. 


VPCo crafts products with roots in printmaking and bookbinding.

We make a wider variety of products than just books and prints but bookbindng, and printmaking are at the heart of them because we're curious creatures and we want to see where we can go on this journey.

Just as importantly, our boredom threshold will not allow us to make the same product month after month, which means our past product history is diverse and some might think, quite rightly, ridiculous too! 

At VPCo, our key tenets are:

1. Properly Made

"Properly Made" means traditonally made, by hand, where the quality of product isn't compromised by shortcuts, quality of materials or time.

2. Made in Scotland.

We lament the loss of manufacturing knowledge and skills in Scotland, the UK and the western world in general.

Be it industrial, handmade, artistic, engineered or otherwise, almost all skill and knowledge has been lost in the west pursuing the lowest cost at the expense of retaining vital knowledge and experience.

It's relatively easy to be a "designed in the UK, made in China" business, but this has no interest to me. It's clear why other businesses go down that route and in most cases, it's probably quite sensible, but to me, the key, the challenge, is making that product from beginning to end in Orkney or mainland Scotland, not simply drawing it and sending the diagram to an OEM factory in the East for it to be made by someone who doesn't really care. 

Everything VPCo makes (with the exception of VPCo Handmade Paper) is made in Scotland by hand because I want to prove that, with through research, experimentation and finding the right people, making beautiful products by hand locally is still possible and incredibly fulfilling. 

3. Limited editioning and small batch manufacturing. 

Our products are made by hand in very small batches. All of our Properly Made Books are unique, one-off items. We NEVER make the same book twice. 

Our prints are, in various ways, unique, each with the tell tale signs of being handmade. 

Our other, non book and print products, such as brass pencils, bags etc, are made in numbered series, normally no more than 20 at a time. 

Where possible we engrave or stamp serial numbers onto these products, giving the owner a genuine sense of the handmade nature, and care and attention put into that piece.  

HISTORY

Vintage Paper Co (VPCo) began life as specialist paper merchants, supplying artists and craftspeople with unused, blank, antique handmade papers (for watercolour, printing, publishing and writing) made anywhere from the 1680s through to the 1980s. 

This bundle of rolled up paper was made in the late 1600s and found in the attic of an old stately home in Scotland. We acquired it, sold some of it to artists around the world. and the rest we kept to be used in future book projects. 

From being simple paper merchants we graduated into becoming decorative paper printers and from there, manufacturers of Properly Made Books, specialist tools, homewares, and more besides.

This print was made on a sheet of the 17th century antique paper from the bundle above. The surface of the paper was painted with walnut dye and mica dust, the print made in metallic copper.

All of these diverse products were and are driven by my interests and reflect my ambition simply to see if what I dream of making can be done locally. 

I want to learn from and work alongside highly skilled artisans on ongoing products or ridiculous one-off projects, all of which which have their roots in printing, and bookbinding.

ORIGINS OF DESIGN

My initial passion was paper, made in the golden age of hand papermaking, before machines came along. 

From here my nerdy interests grew to collecting full and partial sheets of historical c18th European decorative hand printed papers and somehow, I'm not certain how or why, c19th Japanese hand cut patterned stencils called Katagami. Katagami were used to apply patterns onto kimono fabrics.

European Printed Paper

The European decorative prints were generally used on the covers of antique books and made on the type of paper I was selling - old and handmade. I fell in love with the slightly imperfect nature of the patterns and the printing process itself so I bought a manual, antique printing press and taught myself how to print. 

In the beginning of our printing venture, our aim was to make patterned paper for ourselves and other bookbinders which is why some of our patterns do not deviate far from original, historical patterns.

This book, from the 18th century features a printed paper made in France. 
Sometimes we take an historic pattern, draw a newer version, make a printing plate and faithfully reproduce it, even down to the original colours.

The imperfections of the original patterns came from the hand cutting of the wood printing blocks, it was very human and natural. The imperfection in printing came from the rushed nature of the printing process - in those days printing by hand was a just a job, not an art. They needed to make prints at a fast rate to make it cost effective and this can be seen in some of the finished product; the human touch, the imperfections, the salty ink coverage, the not-quite-perfect registration. These imperfections are what floats my boat and excites me!

Those qualities, the perfection found in imperfection, informs what we do now, beautiful products made with an obvious human touch.   

The same 18th century print, made in gold on a paste printed paper and used in a handmade drinks coaster.

In terms of design, our archive of old European patterns have allowed us to make lots of different prints, which range from faithful reproductions to brand new designs which contain many elements of age compatible imagery - flowers, animals, heraldic imagery etc.

Whatever the end result, a replica or a new pattern, the inspiration stems from my love affair with 18th century European prints.

PROCESS

In my journey of love with these old European prints, I began to reverse engineer some of these subtle imperfections and how they may have occured during manufacture. I expermented with techniques used to create texture and depth I saw in the prints, I looked at the translucency of the inks, the common repeat patterns, the motifs, scales, colours and so on, and all of these details have developed into our own design language. 

Sometimes we draw these patterns out, transfering the drawing onto lino and cutting the block by hand, or, on other occasions we digitise our drawings and make polymer, zinc or brass printing plates.

If the patterns are not hand drawn and carved into lino, we draw the patterns in Illustrator which works very effectively for certain patterns, especially if we want to create it in a range of sizes.  

Some of the patterns are made as complete prints, such as this one, which measures about 18 x 15 inches.

Others are smaller, hand cut lino blocks, which can be printed as a repeat.

 

This is the above block, repeat printed in black and subsequently coloured by hand using the stencil technique which is explained below.

Above is solid brass block which was machined by CNC. We made the pattern using flowers typically found in 18th century German prints and amalgamating them into a new pattern. 

We made this plate in brass because we were experimenting with an old, lost, print technique called Dutch Gilt where the pattern is printed using metal leaf instead of ink and we thought heat might have been used in the process. It turns out that is probably wasn't, however it's a beautiful plate and has hundreds of years of life ahead of it!

Here is the Ausberg print made using the brass plate printed in a single colour on off white paper.

Here is the same print made in black and then hand coloured using stencils. We use stencils widely to colourise our prints.

A stencil is cut for each colour - in this example there are quite a few stencils made, one each for yellow, blue, green, pink and orange.

For example, to colourise the yellow, the oiled manilla card covers all of the print except for the 11 places where yellow is to added. We make a pigment using acrylic paint and wheat paste and gently stab the colour on using a flat faced stencil brush. The wheat paste mix allows the colour to be translucent so that the black of the original print isn't lost. When dry, a separate stencil is used, one at a time for the other colours until the print is complete. 

Above is an inverted version of Ausberg where instead of printing the blank space (as we do with the brass plate), we print the actual flowers. 

This allows us to print in one colour and adding interest by treating the surface of the paper in different ways. 

For example - the print above is made on white VPCo Handmade paper, the same as we used in the lilac version a few pics above but we treated the surface with a pigment made from walnut dye and gold mica dust to give a rich finish to the print made in metallic gold ink. We use various surface treatments and will make the print in dozens of combinations of colours.

 

The business has developed from being a materials supplier to an artisan maker of many different and diverse products, some of which are shown below. 

The key to everything we make is governed by a few simple principles by which we stand. 

 

STUFF WE MAKE

Hand printed decorative paper - we have an archive of hundreds of patterns printed in Europe hundreds of years ago, primarily made for bookbinding and associated paper crafts. The patterns we make are inspired by or even copies of 17/18th century wood block prints found on antiquarian books.

Our prints are made in small runs of 10 or 20, and rarely numbered.

The print above, one I use very often is called Vintage Flowers. It was inspired by a pattern I saw on an 18th century French journal, printed in blue on white paper. We redrew this in Illustrator because I wanted to be able to create a larger repeat pattern in the future and this seemed like a good way to achieve that.

This print was made on a type of paper made in 1969 in Kent, England, called waterleaf paper which is fine art grade printing paper used for etching and which contains no resistance to waterbased media. I printed this in black before applying a thermo plastic coating to make it gold. I then turned the paper over and applied liberal amounts of blue and red drawing ink which seeped through to make the multi colour background and the thermo coating acted as a resist. 

 

Properly Made Books - highly collectible handmade books for drawing, painting and journal keeping, these are crafted beyond the highest standard. Whilst designed to be used, we find that they are mainly purchased as objects to be admired. 

Made in the same way as books were made in the 17/18th century and often filled with rare handmade antique paper and decorated with gold tooling and/or our decorative hand printed paper.

These are sold in collections of 30 - 100 bindings, released six times a year. No two books are ever the same.

Properly Made Books are a key product line for us and normally sell out in 30 minutes. They are in notable collections including the Met Library, Yale, Harvard and Miami U not to mention hundreds of private collections too. 

You can see many of our Properly Made Books in our online archive here.

Fabric bags - hand sewn in Stromness, Orkney. This range of bags feature imagery from our hand printed papers - in this instance, the Stromness Mackerel.

This bag is one of 16. Each one has a serial number on machined brass inside and laser cut and etched leather.

We also make a range of letterpress printed cotton bags which we use for packaging or given to our favourite customers! 

The Huntsman Book Bag - a limited collection of 18 leather bound books in handmade leather bags.

This is a new product which I aim to release in November and introduces our foray into leather goods. 

The bags and books are entirely handmade and the quality is supreme. Each bag also comes with a leather crossbody strap, and one of our new Orkney-made brass pencils. 

handmade lampshade

Lampshades - made once a year, these lampshades are made by hand in our workshop using fabrics derived from our vast library of hand printed papers. 

Traveller Book Wallets - little hand bound books in leather or goatskin wallets. The wallet above is made from goatskin vellum which like leather is an animal skin product but processed differently to have a papery finish. Indeed, vellum (aka parchment) is a forerunner to paper, being widely used in medieval times as a writing surface for expensive books. 

This piece of vellum was dyed in brown and then letterpress printed using our first ever design, imaginatively called No.1.

Before the ink dried, I brushed it over with rose copper powder which gives that rich metallic finish. To complete, the vellum had multiple layers of shellac varnish applied to the surface before being polished with a buffing machine. 

The book inside it is a very simple notebook, hand sewn and covered with one of our hand coloured pomegranate prints.

Decorative ceramic tiles - we have a huge range of ceramic tiles, printed once a year in our winter workshop (at home when our regular workshop is too cold!).

These are mainly an instore product and wildly popular.  

One of the issues with being a printer of patterns is that whilst the prints are admired by many people, they're not sure what to do with them if they're not going to use them in craft or frame them and so these tiles were devised as a way to utilise our IP in a practical way. 

Letterpress greetings cards - a range of cards, hand printed one at a time on our antique press. These are small prints of large prints.

As with the tiles above, we find that making useful items like cards are a great way to utilise our IP. 

We have a range, so far, of 12 hand printed cards which will be published early 2025. 

VPCo Handmade Paper - a range of handmade paper devised by us and made to replicate older handmade paper. Made with cotton and linen, we use this for printing and bookbinding but it's an excellent paper for most artistic purposes including watercolour. 

As paper experts we became exasperated at the lack of very good quality paper which is why we commissioned this paper in two weights, three surfaces and two colours. As of now we are down to our final 200 sheets from a 10,000 sheet making. Time for more now. 

The VPCO XL Agate Burnisher - a niche tool made in our workshop and used for polishing paper and leather. 

In the old days, paper, especially decorative paper was polished to a high sheen because it looked great and it helped strengthen the surface. 

We decided that we wanted to do this ourselves but discovered that no one made such a tool anymore and so we ended up making these ourselves. The stone is jewel quality agate and works brilliantly as a paper polisher.  

Brass Pencils - Made to accompany the Huntsman bag, these are turned and machined in Orkney.

Each prncil is equipped with a special, "eternal" metal/graphite nib which lasts for a bazzilion years and is waterproof.

Every pencil is serial numbered and supplied in a hand sewn and wet moulded leather holder which attaches to the crossbody strap of the Huntsman bag (above). 

We are now working on a Slim Jim version of this pencil which will be paired with a cool new leather hipster wallet which houses a leather bound notebook. 

Brass Rulers - a one-off limited edition, numbered brass ruler. Each one was supplied in a gold tooled, hand sewn leather sleeve. 

Scarves - Made in limited numbers and packaged in a tin box lined with the paper the print was based on. 

Hand printed home decorations - a set of hand printed and hand coloured angels made on VPCo Handmade paper. Each angel is mounted on a gilt beechwood backing. Made in a set of 24.

Hand printed coasters - a range of hand printed tiles, made on beechwood and backed with leather. 

Some of the above ranges are current, others discontinued. There may be other products which have slipped my mind but in any event, it gives you an idea of what we do. 

The Process of Print. 

The first decision is to identify what paper I will print on.

Generally we use: 

VPCo Handmade Paper - a range of paper devised by ourselves and made to be as close to historical handmade paper as possible.

Antique handmade text printed paper - we source this type of paper from booksellers who buy old books such as atlas and encyclopedia. They remove the prints to sell and would otherwise discard the text printed leftovers. The qualities of these papers are perfect for print and each print made ends up being unique given the text content on that page. These papers tend to date from the17/18th century

Blank unused vintage handmade paper - our stock of this type of paper is vast and ranges from manufacturing dates from the 1600s through to the 1980s. 

The bundle of paper (below), is something I sourced a few months ago. It was made in England in the late 1600s by an unknown maker. This, and papers like this are an example of the quality and longevity of well made paper. 

Handmade "Penicuik" paper from the late 1600s.  

Most of these types of paper were made in great volume and you can see this in the end results, every print slightly different, with small imperfections, the tell tale signs of handmade - perfection in imperfection

 

 

Our process in creating a print is to take elements from scraps of original printed paper and and use elements we like, such as flowers, animals, birds, geometrics, garden objects, heraldic imagery, historiated letter etc, and make brand new, reimagined or a hybrid.

Sometimes the patterns we find from this era are so perfect, we simply recreate them to be as close to the original as possible. 

Morew often than not, it's a case of making something new using these elements such as stylised pomegranates, fancy blooms, a daisy or a mythical bird found in these older European prints. 

As I prefer to print in European A3, even if we were to copy an old print, we end up making edits to fit comtemporary size paper. 

The most basic print are a single colour on a plain coloured paper. 

From there, we colourise and/or combine prints. 

Ways to colourise

Stencils

Waterleaf dye

Surface colourise

 

Japan influence