Mark+Fold for Community Clothing | Printing & Binding in Suffolk
Our Mark+Fold for Community Clothing collaboration uses a specially-made paper, taking denim offcuts from Community Clothing's jeans factory and turning them into beautiful recycled papers. Once the paper has been made, it travels to our printer and bindery in Suffolk to be turned into notebooks.
We visited during production to capture the process:
Zach quality checking the covers after blind-debossing on the Heidelberg Press.
The covers are blind debossed, meaning that only pressure is applied (no ink or foil). This makes them recyclable, and allows the beautiful material to speak for itself.
A brass die is made with the Mark+Fold for Community Clothing logo, which is attached to the press. After setting up and a series of tests, the machine is set to run until all the covers have been debossed.
The Heidelberg Press is often knows as a 'windmill press' thanks to its long arms which rotate as they collect the flat sheets, press them into the die, and place them down on the other side of the machine after printing.
The books are Singer-sewn down the centre. The printed pages and covers are first collated and creased, then stitched down the centre line using a Singer sewing machine, with a 45-degree feeder bed attached, specially for book-binding.
The threads were chosen to match those used on the Community Clothing jeans.
Vicki and her brother David took over the family bindery when their father retired. And it was her grandfather, an upholsterer, who first taught her how to use the sewing machine as a child. His portrait hangs proudly above her sewing machine in the bindery.
After sewing she carefully quality checks the notebooks, before trimming them flush on the guillotine.
