Thursday 24 March 2016

Printing with the old printing set

I have very fond childhood memories of having fun stamping with my Dad's old printing set. It's a lovely wooden set of blocks with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and lots of symbols and other decorations. A few years ago I rather cheekily asked him if I could have it (sorry siblings!), and I've been keeping it safely ever since until I felt that the children were old enough to use it and respect it.

Child stamping with vintage printing set

The time came the other week! I sorted out some of my coloured ink pads, a big stack of paper, did a quick demo, and then let the children loose to see what they would come up with.

Child stamping with vintage printing set

Harry took it all very seriously. He was quite fascinated as I explained to him how this was the way that books were once printed, and showed him that although it was quite time consuming to print each letter individually, at a printers you could set up a rack with all the letters in place and then print multiple copies one after the other. He tried it himself by holding a few stamps together and pressing them down at the same time!

Child stamping with vintage printing set

He was very interested in using the letters for writing. He also drew pictures of things and used the £ sign stamp and numbers to put down prices for them. Mia was a bit more haphazard in her approach, she liked the symbols and patterns and stamped them over and over in a range of different colours.

Child stamping with vintage printing set

We had a lot of fun playing with these old stamps and I know they'll be coming out regularly now that the children know they exist!

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jen,
    Glad to see the printing set in use.It was my grandmother (Cox)'s when she ran the General shop & post office at 67 Malling street Lewes from about 1908 to about 1917 to produce price labels.

    Luv
    Dad
    Xoxoxoxo

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  2. Hi Jen ( not sure if you got my last comment so may be a duplicate )
    I tripped across your blog by accident looking for a vintage stamp set to do wedding invitations and just love that this has been ( and will be ) handed down through your family for generations. I love that this beautiful set is still being appreciated.. and love that you Dad has commented !!
    Carol

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