Nathan Sheridan (he/him/his)
With the letterpress printer at the core of my work, I explore the history and speculate on the future of printing and typography through both traditional analogue methods and contemporary digital methods. I enjoy combining letterpress printing with laser cutting, photopolymer plates and moving image. Through the merging of the old and new, I hope to show the relevance of this oft-thought dead medium, not as a way of showing the weaknesses of new ways of working, but as a way of showing how the tried and tested can be combined with the current and new to make exciting and thoughtful work.
My themes and areas of exploration are typically historical, with a focus on people’s history, societal shifts, conflicts and contradictions and how this can be examined via the typography, printing methods and ephemera of a given time and/or place.
One Hundred and Forty-Four
A poem written by me from the perspective of a Prisoner of War during WW2, letterpress printed 144 times, each print representing a single ten minutes to make up a full day. This project aims to put the experience of Prisoner of War, inspired by my own Great-Grandfather’s experience as an Allied POW in Occupied Europe during WW2, into perspective using the medium of letterpress printing to explore the monotony and desperation of a POW. Printed on traditional postcard paper using Gill Sans, with a sheet of medal bronze paper with a description of the work.
The Strike
From 1884 to 1965, the Lanarkshire mining village of Bothwellhaugh housed the families of miners working for the Bent Colliery Company until it was demolished and flooded to make way for Strathclyde Loch. Hoping to celebrate, commemorate and pay homage to this often-forgotten piece of Lanarkshire people’s history, I combined letterpress typography, spoken word and moving image, both modern and archival, to produce a film that explores the then and now of the area.
Type Archive
The establishment of the American Tuscan occurred during one of the most tumultuous and defining moments of the United States of America’s history, the American Civil War. By using an archival typeface from Rob Roy Kelly’s American woodtype, and combining it with song lyrics from each side of the war, with one printed in Red and the other printed in Blue upon White cotton paper I aimed to create an exploded American flag as each layer fights for dominance on the page.
All Which Is Solid Melts Into Air (sic)
A poster made in response to theme of censorship, taking inspiration from one of Marx’s most famous quotes: ‘All that is solid, melts into air.’ Letterpressed with black ink on newsprint with a variation of type weights, registered down the page until out of existence. The change from ‘that’ to ‘which’ in the print was because I ran out of T’s in the case.
‘Banned’ Exhibition Poster Identity
‘Banned’ was a letterpress poster exhibition that explore the theme of censorship. To advertise this exhibition in a suitable way, these posters were letterpressed, then hand-edited to become themselves, censored.
