Paul Westcott Nash
The Strawberry Press
Whitney, Oxon, England
[Written: November, 2004]
I (Paul Westcott Nash) was born
in 1962 and have worked, for most of my adult life, as a librarian, first at the Bodleian and later as Rare Books Curator at the RIBA
in London. I discovered letterpress in the late 1980s, when working in Special Collections at the Bodleian, where one of my
duties was to keep up a (now defunct) card file of private press books held by the library. At that time Don McKenzie and Michael
Turner were teaching a short course on printing history and technique to Oxford MA students at the Bodleian, and I was able to attend.
This inspired me to want to print with my own hands and I used the Library’s small printing office (more of a teaching tool than a
practical workshop) to print a pamphlet after hours. I had already published one small book using a photocopier (largely because
I had no access to a press), and had used the imprint of The Strawberry Press. So the second SP book was printed letterpress,
and the third, completed in 1990, was printed on my own equipment, a Model No. 4 press bought for an outrageous price from an industrial
printer’s supply warehouse in London.
Thus the Strawberry Press was born. Those lessons with Messrs McKenzie and Turner
inspired me to begin and taught me the basics, but I have learned the rest by trial and error (I am an autodidact in almost everything).
Each year I try to print at least one small book as, for me, printing really means printing books. It has always been a hobby,
but since going freelance in 2003 – as a book-designer, bibliographer, indexer, cataloguer, and any other similar work I can get –
have been intending to take printing a little more seriously as a (modest) means of income. Inevitably time has been short and
little has been achieved on that front so far.
Since 1990 some thirty small Strawberry Press books have appeared, first from
Islip, near Oxford, then from London and, since 2003, from Witney, again near Oxford. In 2000 I acquired a second press, a Vandercook
No. 4, which is a splendid machine. My partner Alison helps with the printing, as far as her working life (also at the Bodleian)
allows; we often share hand-composition, and both produce wood-engravings.
Interest in books and printing has led me to become
involved with a number of Societies, including The Oxford Guild of Printers, Private Libraries Association, Printing Historical Society,
Bibliographical Society, National Printing Heritage Trust, Friends of St Bride Library, Fine Press Book Association and Double Crown
Club. I seem to have been roped-in for something or other by most of these groups, but perhaps my greatest involvement has been
with the Private Libraries Association, for which I help to edit the journal and am editor-in-chief of the “annual” Private Press
Books bibliography (which I shall mention in a separate message very shortly). I have just taken over from David Chambers the
annual review of British private press activity in Matrix, and also compile the UK-based listings for “Parenthesis”. So I try
to keep my eyes open to letterpress printing activities throughout the world, and especially in the British isles.
