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Prickle Press

Gee Gee is huge. She tips the scales at 1.5 tons, which is almost as much as your average African Elephant. As well as being over 100 years old, she emigrated from America by boat and has been here ever since. She’s also the daily companion to Rachel Stanners, artistic genius behind Prickle Press - a letterpress company specialising in greeting cards and bespoke creations.

Since 2010, Rachel has used Gee Gee - the letterpress - to print a wide range of designs, from typography to calligraphy to illustration. So it was really exciting to work with Rachel to create a series of exclusive luxury greeting cards based entirely on an Art Deco inspired pattern. Using the letterpress for such a repetitive and intricate design is great - you can feel the indents in the paper where the colour sits so the cards are textural as well as visual products.

Watching Rachel operate Gee Gee was also a lot of fun. It was really quite moving to watch something so majestic and old as this creaking letterpress being brought back to life by someone so dedicated. There’s definitely a knack and a rhythm to successful letterpress printing, and the constant pedalling to get it moving requires some pretty hefty thigh muscles.