Written by
Henrik Solberg
Filed under
Interviews
From
Issue 12
Lies and Marthe Verbeke run a letterpress studio in a former bakery near the Graslei. The ovens are gone, but the building still holds warmth, which the sisters say is good for the ink.
Setting a page
Setting a single page of text by hand takes Marthe about three hours. She reads the letters upside down and backwards, as fast as I read a newspaper.
Digital type is perfect. Ours is honest. You can feel where every letter pressed into the paper.
Why bother
“People ask why we don’t just print digitally,” Lies says. “But nobody asks a pianist why she doesn’t use a recording. The making is the point.”
Inside the studio
A 1962 Heidelberg platen press.
Forty thousand pieces of lead and wood type.
Cotton paper made in a mill in the Ardennes.
They printed my name on a card as I left. I can feel every letter with my thumb.
About the author
Henrik Solberg
Henrik spent thirty years as a typesetter in Bergen. He writes about paper, ink and the tools that outlast their owners.
