Phil Abel & Nick Gill, Two UK Printers Across an Era

Phil Abel is a letterpress printer in London, who started his Hand and Eye Press in 1985 with a modest array of printing gear on the road towards his current set up with Heidelberg presses, and the ability to use both metal and wood type and produce modern photopolymer plates in house. He produces limited-edition fine-art books and we’ll talk about the album business.Nick Gill worked for Phil, and eventually acquired his Monotype hot-metal casting gear to form Effra Press in North Yorkshire, England, where he and his wife are raising their children. Effra is one of the few remaining typefounders in the world. Nick trained at the Type Archive’s Monotype Hot-Metal Ltd operation, learning how to cut Monotype punches and matrices from Parminder Kumar Rajput, the only person ever learned all the jobs in the plant at the Monotype factory. Nick is also a musician, which we’ll get into how print and music meet in modern times.Notes for this episode:The Type ArchiveSix Centuries of Type & Printing by yours truly, composed by Nick and printed by PhilRobert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceWind in the Willows editions from Hand and EyeLondon DocklandsC.C. Stern Type Foundry visitThe C.C. Stern Type FoundryFrank Romano and the Museum of Printing in MassachusettsMartin Zaltz Auswick, the link between Nick and myself, and Helen Zaltzman and her podcast, The AllusionistPneumatic aspects of Monotype casting systemBill Welliver’s CompCAT system installed at Hand and Eye, back in 2013Kumar & the Lost Art of PunchcuttingRichard Ardagh, New North PressSue Shaw obituary“The Vinyl? It’s Pricey. The Sound? Otherworldly. The Electric Recording Co. in London cuts albums the way they were made in the 1950s and ’60s — literally.”