About The Gilded Press
A small British press for things worth making properly
The Gilded Press is a private print workshop in Eastbourne, East Sussex.
I work with designers, makers, small businesses who want to turn something on a screen into something real.
You bring the idea. I'll help you work out the paper, foil, materials and production.
It's a workshop, not a factory
The Gilded Press is not an online bish-bash-bosh upload-your-PDF-and-pick-option-B printing website.
There are plenty of those. You can come to me with your finished artwork, or perhaps a rough idea it can even be something between the two.
We talk about and explore what you're making, who it is for and what you want it to feel like when somebody finally holds it. Sometimes the answer is thick uncoated board. Sometimes it's a deep impression, an unusual foil or a paper you had never heard of.
Made to be Held
Good printing is about the paper. The thickness. The amount of pressure.
The way light catches a foil. They are all part of the design.
I work with vintage heavy iron machinery, metal dies, traditional type and materials you can actually feel.
Not because old is better, but because it's the best tool for the job.
Your design. Printed properly.
You don't need to know the difference between every paper stock, foil, die or printing process. That's my job. All you need is an idea. Together, we'll work it out.
Pressed. Kept.
It's Only Human
Old Red doesn't know when something looks right. I have to do that bit.
I print every job. I make the press ready. If it's not right, I have to change it.
There's no glamour to a make-ready. There is quite a lot of fiddling and swearing, but that is where great print lives - in the bits very few people care about.
About Me
I'm Simon.
I started in print in 1987, before artwork arrived by email and long before anybody had heard of Canva. My tools were scalpels, Letraset, darkroom chemistry, an ink knife and a blue Rotaprint.
Later came Heidelberg presses, commercial print, pre-press, computers, vector artwork and all the other machinery that transformed the trade. I've watched printing become astonishingly fast, accurate and disposable.
The Gilded Press is my answer to that. A small private print workshop. No production line. No being passed from one department to another. Just me. One grey-headed printer, a cup of tea. And workshop full of heavy machinery waiting for whatever you're trying to make.