moveable TYPE studio

Printmakers and designers Clint Harvey and Dzintra Menesis visit Langridge Colour in Melbourne to ask what remains of the pigment knowledge that once underpinned Australia’s printing ink industry.

In 2025, as Research Scholars at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Clint and I spent the better part of a year inside questions about the origins of pigments and the realities of access to natural materials in Australia. Our project, Wimbles Inks Reimagined, took us deep into the archive of F.T. Wimble and Co., Australia’s first commercial printing ink manufacturer. Arriving in Melbourne in 1867 with inherited English printing ink formulae, Frederick Thomas Wimble spent his career adapting those recipes to Australian conditions, generation by generation. His 1930s ink recipe book revealed a world where natural pigments and early synthetic chemistry existed side by side.

Wimble’s early ink recipes drew on natural earth colours, such as umbers, burnt sienna and lamp black. Understanding those materials, their origins, their chemistry and their availability, became essential to understanding the printing inks themselves. The further we went into that history, one question continued to arise: what does access to those same materials look like in Australia today?

Letterpress printmaking now sits within the arts rather than the trade landscape, and while small scale boutique inks are still available in Australia, the industrial base that once supported the craft has disappeared. What was a local printing ink industry was absorbed into international conglomerates across the twentieth century, and the manufacturing knowledge that sustained it has largely gone with it. Yet one of the closest contemporary equivalents to that work, practitioners still managing pigment sourcing, binder chemistry and the underlying logic of artists colour manufacture in this country, can be found in artist oil paint production. That realisation sent us to Melbourne, to Langridge Colour, and to David Coles.

Langridge Colour is the engine behind St. Luke Artist Colourmen, and the source of the high-grade oil paints and fine dry pigments that have informed our own studio experiments. We came to discuss our research with someone who has spent thirty years making artist paints in Australia, and to understand from the inside what that actually involves.

What it involves, it turns out, is this: fifty-kilogram sacks of raw pigment lined up like grain in a mill. Vats of turpentine. A giant German cocoa press, retrofitted for paint. Jars of malachite, vermilion, lapis lazuli, sitting on a shelf as though it were perfectly ordinary to have a fistful of semi-precious stone in powdered form within arm’s reach. We left feeling like we’d been handed a set of keys we hadn’t known we were missing.

The Man Behind the Cocoa Mill

David Coles founded Langridge Colour within three months of emigrating to Australia in 1992. He grew up surrounded by the trade: his father a commercial illustrator, his mother running an art shop, his grandfather a sign writer in Wales with barrels of pure pigment on the floor of his hardware store. He trained at Bristol Art School in the early 1980s, where learning to make his own materials changed the direction of his practice entirely. By the time he arrived in Australia, he already had a deep grounding in European artist materials manufacture. What Australia required was that he adapt his approach.

The light here is different in ways that matter to a paint maker. In Australia, particularly outside the coastal cities, sunlight falls on a dry continent with little atmospheric moisture to filter it. Colours that read one way in a northern European studio read entirely differently here: more intense, more direct, with less of the cool diffusion that European painters had spent centuries calibrating their palettes around. David rebuilt his colour range around what Australian light does to pigment. It is a point of difference that no offshore manufacturer can replicate from a distance, and it is part of what makes Langridge Colour genuinely distinct from imported alternatives.

David is also the author of Chromatopia, a book tracing the history of colour across millennia and continents. Anyone with a serious interest in the material history of pigment should have it close at hand. When we met with David, he introduced us to Oli, his lead manufacturer. The culture of the Langridge Colour paint factory was immediately apparent. Everyone on the team is an art graduate or practising artist. In an era where specialist manufacturing knowledge in Australia has been quietly contracting for decades, a factory floor staffed by people who understand the materials they are working with, and care about the difference, is not something to take for granted.

The Golden Thread

The phrase that stopped both Clint and I mid-conversation was one David used almost in passing: a golden thread of knowledge, the practical, hard-won understanding of materials that passes from one maker to the next. It’s a lineage carried through use rather than theory, and one that becomes harder to hold onto as the landscape of art education and industry shifts.

David still makes verdigris from copper and a chemical reaction. He has a private plot for madder growing out the back of the factory. He keeps lead white available at St. Luke’s because restoration conservators cannot do their work without it. This is what it looks like when material history survives through use rather than sitting in an archive waiting to be cited.

The pattern felt familiar. Over a century earlier, F.T. Wimble brought English printing ink formulae to Australia and spent years adapting them to local conditions. A hundred years later, David Coles arrives from England with formulas and experience built in a different hemisphere, and the same process unfolds.

For our historic printing ink research, this framing clarified something important. The Wimbles’ proprietary ingredient names, their adaptation of inherited recipes, their gradual shift toward an Australian way of working: all of it is the same kind of thread. Sitting with David gave us the manufacturing logic behind that transition, something no document could have offered.

Inside the Factory: Pigment, Process, and the Leneta Card

The tour moved through the warehouse, starting from raw materials and working toward the finished paint tubes. Standing in front of the huge pigment sacks, David described the art materials world plainly: ‘A fight for a knife in the mud’, an earnest description of the competitive and deeply technical and guarded territory that serious colour manufacture actually occupies, and a reminder that reputation in this field is built slowly and lost quickly.

David walked us through why the shift away from natural pigments happened historically. Cheap labour, the engine of natural pigment production, was largely gone after World War I. Without it, the arduous recipes of the old world became unviable. Manufactured synthetic pigments filled the gap and in many ways improved on what they replaced. Synthetic iron oxides are superior to natural equivalents for dispersion within polymerised oils: more consistent, more controllable, less variable batch to batch.

Australian earth pigments are worth pausing on here. Ochre has been central to cultural and creative practice on this continent for over 65,000 years, and accessing it at commercial manufacturing scale today is not straightforward. David sources his ochres from Europe, including through direct visits to open-face mines in France. It is an honest response to the realities of responsible sourcing in 2026, and it is part of why the dry pigment sacks lining the Langridge warehouse walls carry no Australian earth colours among them.

The finished result is tested by hand on a Leneta card: a controlled, repeatable substrate with both a white and black ground, designed specifically for comparing paints, inks, and coatings under consistent conditions. Two strips of paint are  drawn across the surface reveal immediately whether dispersion is even and the pigment is reading true. Titanium white is David’s control colour, the fixed reference point against which every other colour in the range is calibrated. But even with a standardised recipe and a consistent process, the source material itself can shift the result. A new batch of imported zinc, a different season’s ochre: the Leneta card will tell you that you are not making the same paint, regardless of what the recipe says.

The cocoa mill sits at the centre of the operation: a fifty-year-old German machine, originally built for chocolate, retrofitted for paint. Before anything reaches it, pigment particles are wetted out in a planetary mixer, so that the pigment is roughly dispersed in the binding oil. From there, the colours go through multiple passes on the mill, ranging from 3 to fourteen passes dependent on the specific pigment.

This is why David is particular about single pigment paints. Artists mixing colours need clean, predictable starting points. A paint carrying shoulder colours, the secondary hues that sit within a pigment’s optical range, will turn grey when mixed rather than producing the clean result the artist is working toward. The recipe is the structure. The raw material is the variable. The Leneta card is where those two things meet.

Oil Paint and Printing Ink: Closer Than You Think

For printmakers, the factory section above is not background reading. It is directly relevant to every ink decision you make. The same principles of dispersion, pigment loading, and binder compatibility that govern an artist oil paint, in part also govern a letterpress printing ink. The variables David is managing in his factory are the same variables Wimble was managing in his, with different chemistry and different equipment but the same underlying logic: get the pigment evenly dispersed into the binder, keep it stable, and make sure what you are putting on the substrate is consistent.

What separates printing ink from artist oil paint is primarily tack: the grab the ink needs to transfer cleanly from roller to type to paper under pressure. Wimble managed this with rosin and heat-bodied linseed oil. Contemporary letterpress inks achieve tack through refined stand oils and carefully selected varnishes, but the underlying principle has not changed in five hundred years. The chemistry inside the system has become more controllable and consistent.

What the decline of Australian printing ink manufacture means in practice is that this shared knowledge base has become far harder to access locally. The people who once understood both sides of that equation, paint chemistry and ink chemistry as part of the same manufacturing conversation, are fewer than they were. David is one of the practitioners who still holds that understanding.

David was also generous in engaging with our specific questions. Natural iron oxides, he confirmed, carry their own drying properties: manganese within black ochre and umbers. For anyone formulating printing inks with natural pigments this matters, because it means the pigment itself is contributing to the drying behaviour of the ink rather than relying entirely on added metallic driers. He pointed to cobalt driers as the preferred option for oil-based work, all key insights for our research.

What Your Materials Are Actually Made Of

I wrote in my notes that day: felt like being inside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Storage rooms filled with rare colours. Lapis lazuli in chunks as big as a fist. Genuine madder root pulled from a pot in the courtyard with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting for the right moment to show it to someone. It was genuinely joyful. But the Willy Wonka comparison only goes so far. That factory was sealed off, a secret. David’s operation is built around transmission. He spent three hours walking us through his operation, moving fast, correcting himself when he thought he had oversimplified, pulling out materials to make abstract concepts immediate and physical.

Many artists and printmakers working today are not in a position to be precious about materials. The economics of creative practice in Australia are not easy, and reaching for the most affordable ink or paint on the shelf is a rational response to real financial pressure.

But there is a different way to think about it. A paint or ink with serious pigment load, formulated by someone who understands the chemistry behind every ingredient, does more with less. You use less of it to achieve the result you are after. The colour mixes cleanly because it is built from a single pigment with no unwanted shoulder colours muddying the mix. It behaves predictably because the person who made it tested every batch on a Leneta card and adjusted until it was right. The higher upfront cost starts to look different when you consider what you are actually buying.

What David Coles has spent thirty years building at Langridge Colour is a manufacturing practice where the integrity of the material is the product. Understanding that changes how you look at what is on the shelf in front of you, and what questions you think to ask about it. We left Melbourne with more questions than we arrived with. Which is, for research like ours, exactly as it should be.

Written by Dzintra Menesis. Photography by Clint Harvey

For more than twenty years, my interest in letterpress preservation has never been just about machines, cabinets, or historical artefacts. It has always been about the people — the printers, compositors, operators, engineers — and the stories that cling to metal type the way ink clings to paper. The industry that once defined working lives across Brisbane, QLD is now mostly memory, carried by the people who built it.

Over the past fifteen years, one name kept resurfacing at the edges of those memories: Keith Williams.

My awareness of Keith came through a long-time colleague, Phil Leonard. Phil and were both in the Graphic Arts trade during the 1980s, and he later became my print rep. Decades on we’re still in touch — one of those rare industry friendships that outlasts companies, technologies, and job titles. In the early 2000s, Phil took the leap into running his own shop and acquired a letterpress business from Keith. The operation ran out of a shed on Robinson Road — a building, I later learned, that Keith’s brother had helped construct in the 1980s.

It was a true working letterpress shop: Heidelberg platens, Chandler & Price platens, cases of type — but one machine dominated the room. A Linotype Electron.

I remember visiting about fifteen years ago. Keith was there, as if he had never fully left the place, demonstrating the Electron with the easy authority of someone who had spent a lifetime listening to machines speak. Matrices clattered, mechanisms engaged, and molten metal — the alchemy of industrial typography — became a line of type before your eyes.

The Linotype was one of the great leaps in the history of printed communication. Before it, every word on every printed page had been assembled by hand. A compositor would stand at an open type case, reading the characters upside-down and backwards, picking individual letters and sliding them into a compositing stick — building a single line of text, one tiny piece of metal at a time. After it, entire lines could be cast at once, transforming publishing, journalism, and the spread of ideas on a scale that is hard to overstate. The Electron was among the last generations of those machines — an attempt to keep hot-metal composition relevant as the industry shifted toward phototypesetting and computers. It incorporated significant electronic controls, bridging two technological worlds. That sophistication came at a cost, though: complexity. By the time Keith urged me to preserve it — “Clint, this is the last of the Linotypes” — knowledgeable friends warned that maintaining an Electron long-term would be far more difficult than keeping earlier mechanical models alive.

Reluctantly, I declined.

Yet Keith never really disappeared. Every so often, his name would light up my phone — a call, a message, a thread of connection that refused to break. It became clear that his relationship to letterpress ran far deeper than a single business sale or a single machine.

Recently, that depth finally revealed itself.

Keith invited us to his home — a house he has lived in for more than sixty years. We sat at the kitchen table while he told stories, the kind that never make it into manuals or museum labels.

His grandfather — William Henry Shaw — had run a small printing operation under a house in Northgate, after an earlier venture with his brother Fred, the Nundah Express, came apart during the Depression years. Keith began working alongside his grandfather at fifteen, hand-setting type. He remembered looking at a Linotype machine with awe and disbelief — convinced he would never own something so grand, so unattainable.

History had other plans. Keith would go on to become one of the last Linotype operators in Brisbane.

He described what he calls “the missing years” — the roughly decade-long gap between letterpress and digital, when phototypesetting systems came and went before desktop publishing changed everything. Keith moved through that transition in his own way. During a Christmas break in 1989, he brought home a new Mac, and his daughter Angela taught herself to use it over the holidays. She came back to the workshop in January and, just like that, they were in a new era. Angela would go on to work alongside him for seventeen years.

The Electron had its own long journey. Keith moved it from workshop to workshop, kept it running long after others would have given up. He showed us a proof of the forme he had typeset on the machine — a Ned Kelly piece, locked up in hot metal, referred to as “Baskerville Bold Times”, his wry name for the bold Times typeface, a nod to to his fellow freind and printer Earl Baskerville. The forme is still sitting on a Columbian press in Earl Baskerville’s house.

The purpose of the visit was practical for Moveable Type Studio: Keith had offered two type cabinets for preservation, including a cabinet of foundry type that had belonged to his grandfather — type from the Depression era, used in the Nundah Express. But what mattered most was not the furniture or even the type. It was the continuity — grandfather to grandson, hand composition to machine composition, cottage industry to commercial print shop, analogue world to digital.

At one point Keith said something that has stayed with me: “People need to know what letterpress is all about because of the terminologies used as opposed to digital. You’ve got to know where typesetting came from, what it used to be called.” He wasn’t being precious about it. He just understood, with the clarity of someone who had lived the whole arc, that the connection matters.

It struck me too, sitting at that table, how many stories like this are quietly disappearing. Not because people are unwilling to share them, but because fewer people are asking, and fewer still have the context to understand what they mean.

Preservation, in this sense, is not salvage. It is witnessing, sharing and human connection.

Keith spoke about entering the letterpress trade at fifteen, about learning by doing rather than by instruction manual. He spoke about selling the business to Phil — an act not just of commerce but of trust. A hope that the work would continue, that the machines would keep running, that the knowledge wouldn’t simply evaporate.

When we drove out with the cabinets, type, quoins and sundries it felt less like acquiring artefacts and more like being entrusted with a chapter of someone else’s life.

If you’ve found your way to this blog, there’s a good chance you already understand something of what drove us to that kitchen table. You know what it feels like to hold a piece of lead type, or to hear a press find its groove. You’ve probably met someone, somewhere, who carries knowledge that exists nowhere else. This is why we do what we do — not just to keep the presses running, but to keep those connections alive.

Machines can be restored. Cabinets can be cleaned. Type can be catalogued.

Stories, once lost, are lost. No press can reprint what was never written down.

Thank you, Keith.

Moveable Type Studio x Shelbyville Bookbinding

Over one hot, stormy Brisbane weekend, Moveable Type Studio partnered with bookmaker Michelle Vandermeer of Shelbyville Bookbinding to deliver a two-day workshop introducing participants to the slow, deliberate craft of letterpress printing and Coptic bookbinding. What unfolded was an ambitious, rewarding, and deeply hands-on experience that reminded all of us why heritage processes endure, and why they’re worth preserving.

Day One: Letterpress with Moveable Type Studio

Saturday was hosted within the Moveable Type shipping-container studio at the Paint Factory. Despite the heat, our participants arrived ready to learn, experiment, and persevere.

Clint led the foundational session on letterpress: understanding points and picas, the differences between wood and lead type, lock-ups, composition, and the realities of setting type by hand. Meanwhile, Barnaby Florence and Dzintra Menesis kept the presses running so participants could focus on making work rather than waiting for ink to dry.

Our aim was ambitious, produce enough prints to give everyone a meaningful selection of colour spreads for the next day’s bookbinding. By the end, we had created around seven print designs, five of which were entirely designed and printed by the participants themselves. Many came from craft-based backgrounds, relief printmaking, quilting, mixed media, and it was inspiring to watch them translate those understandings into compositional and colour decisions in letterpress.

Everyone left exhausted, ink-stained, and genuinely excited to see their work transformed into books the next day. The heat at least worked in our favour: fast drying times meant all prints were ready to cut down and bind.

Day Two: Coptic Bookbinding with Shelbyville Bookbinding

On Sunday, we shifted into Michelle Vandermeer’s studio for a five-hour deep dive into Coptic bookbinding. Michelle guided the group through constructing a seven-section book using the prints from Day One, cut down to size and reorganised into thoughtful sequences.

Her teaching approach, patient, precise, and generous, contrasted beautifully with the energy of the previous day’s printing. For Moveable Type Studio, this was our first time fully participating in the bookbinding process ourselves, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the same people who had printed in the heat with us the day before. It was grounding, humbling, and incredibly informative.

By the end of the session, everyone walked away with a completed Coptic-bound book , and a real appreciation for the slowness of the method. Many of our participants work full-time, some with families, yet they committed to the full weekend. Their dedication reinforced how important these heritage crafts are, not only as creative practices but as spaces for slowing down, focusing, and reconnecting with process.

Why This Workshop Worked:
A few reflections stood out clearly:

Intentional slowness matters.
Letterpress and Coptic binding both demand patience. That patience created the depth of engagement.

Participants were genuinely committed.
The weather alone could have chased people off. It didn’t.

The two processes complement each other.
Printing one day and binding the next created a fulfilling, closed-loop experience.

Michelle’s teaching elevated the weekend.
Her clarity, structure, and experience balanced our more energetic print day perfectly.

We learned alongside participants.
As bookbinding beginners ourselves, sharing the experience strengthened the studio’s connection to the people we teach.

Looking Ahead

This workshop confirmed that there’s real potential for longer-term, term-based engagement: opportunities for participants to visit the studio throughout the year, build a body of printed work, and later assemble it into books with Michelle. There’s scope to incorporate other art forms into these volumes as well, creating multi-layered “creative field journals” that document a year in making.

This two-day workshop affirmed what we’ve believed for a long time: heritage craft thrives when it’s shared, slowed down, and integrated into everyday creative practice. And we’re excited to continue refining, expanding, and collaborating so more people can experience it.

The Moveable Type Studio’s last Flying Arts funded workshop for 2025 found its home at the Toowoomba Art Society. Established in 1925, the Society has long been a cornerstone of regional arts, offering studios, galleries, and workshops that nurture creativity across generations. Toowoomba, Queensland’s largest inland city and the heart of the Darling Downs, lies two hours west of Brisbane. Its streets and surrounds carry a remarkable heritage, making it a fitting finale for the tour.

This stop marked the conclusion of the Moveable Type Studio’s 2025 regional Queensland tour. The journey began earlier in the year at Artspace Mackay, coinciding with the Libris Artist Book Awards. Across workshops and public demonstrations we collaborated with poets and printmakers, while connecting deeply with the local gallery and its community.

From there, we travelled south to Rockhampton, joining the Rockhampton River Festival for three days of music, entertainment, and hands-on letterpress with the public along the Fitzroy River. After returning to our home base at Yeronga’s Paint Factory, the former Taubmans Paint Factory, built in 1957 and now a thriving creative precinct, we prepared for the final stage of our Flying Arts supported regional tour: Toowoomba.

Unlike our Central Queensland engagements, which unfolded in our 40‑foot customised letterpress print shop, Toowoomba experienced the smaller version: our converted tradies trailer. Outfitted with two tabletop Poco proof presses, wood type, and all the sundries needed, it became a mobile studio ready to share letterpress with the people. 

The Toowoomba Art Society welcomed us to Culliford House, its purpose‑built home on Godsall Street, located right beside Queens Park and the Botanic Gardens. We set up our pop‑up press in the courtyard, with leafy views across the gardens and only a short stroll to the Cobb+Co Museum, making it an inspiring setting for the final workshop of the tour.

Ink & Drink Evening

On a warm November Sunday afternoon, we rolled into the courtyard, set the presses in place, prepared the plates, and readied ourselves for the Ink & Drink gathering. Local artists joined us, and photographer John Elliott, renowned for his outback documentary work, swung past during the setup to share a quick hello before the evening began.

Our typographic composition drew directly from Toowoomba’s identity: the Carnival of Flowers, its celebrated botanical gardens and tree‑lined streets, and the city’s reputation as a destination for heritage, vintage treasures, and antique shops. We created a collage of stereo blocks, echoing the finds one might stumble upon in those shops. The poster carried our narrative: *a little bit of vintage, a lot of fabulous*.

Participants worked across the two Poco presses, printing first passes with stereotypes and laser‑engraved plates, then overprinting with traditional wood type. The result was a simple yet striking two‑colour hand‑printed keepsake. Wine, cheese, and conversation under the stars rounded out the evening, everything you’d expect from the Toowoomba Art Society. 

Sunday Workshop

The next morning began with breakfast at Ground Up Coffee, a place of beautiful textures and the kind of café you return to day after day. By 10 a.m, our full‑day letterpress workshop commenced in the courtyard and studio spaces, joined by members of the Saturday Printmakers. 

This workshop built on the introductions from Ink & Drink, but went deeper: tools of the trade, points and picas, lock‑ups, make‑readies, and the intricacies of traditional letterpress. The Toowoomba Art Society and Saturday Printmakers had recently acquired their own equipment, so this was a chance to strengthen their skills and understanding. 

The narrative for the keepsake was inspired by Toowoomba’s heritage and blooms, paired with the slow, deliberate pace of letterpress: Time unfolds slowly amongst the flowers.

We printed from a laser‑engraved plate depicting a Banksia, based on an illustration by Sydney Parkinson, the botanical artist who accompanied Joseph Banks on James Cook’s first voyage. The image comes from Banks’ Florilegium, the monumental collection of engravings published from those original drawings. Over this botanical motif, we set traditional wood type, combining upper‑ and lowercase forms to create a layered composition.

This was a wonderful way to conclude the Movable Type Studio’s 2025 regional tour, made possible through Flying Arts and the Regional Arts Fund. We thank Robert Heather for his support, Tracy Heathwood and her team at Mackay Art Space, Tanya Woooley from Advance Rockhampton and the Rockhampton Shire Council, and all those who helped bring this journey together. 

This project was made possible through the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, delivered by Regional Arts Australia and administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to share the craft of letterpress with communities across the state. Without this support, reaching thousands of people throughout Queensland would have been a significant challenge. Thanks to the Fund, we’ve been able to celebrate the timeless art of letterpress and build connections that will continue to grow into 2026.

Activating Heritage Through Printmaking and Public Engagement

Before the clang of steel and the hiss of steam, this land was, and still is, Country. The ground beneath our feet belongs to the Jagera, Yuggera, and Ugarapul peoples of the Yugara language group. Ipswich, known as Tulmur in Yugara, has been a place of care and connection for countless generations. We acknowledge this enduring relationship and pay respect to First Nations communities past, present and emerging.

Then came change. In the 1860s, Queensland’s colonial government saw rail as the key to opening up the inland. On 31 July 1865, the first railway line steamed west from Ipswich to Bigge’s Camp (now Grandchester). Ipswich was chosen for its river port and growing town, and with that choice came the need for a rail workshop.

By 1864, the first sheds stood about a kilometre from where we are today. Some were shipped from England, prefabricated and ready to assemble. Inside those sheds, crews pieced together locomotives sent in parts from Glasgow. By 1877, Ipswich workers had built Queensland’s first home-grown locomotive from spare parts, a sign of the innovation that would define this site for generations.

Behind the fence, a world was taking shape. A world of steam, steel, and skill. Over time, the Ipswich Railway Workshops grew into one of Queensland’s largest industrial workplaces. At its peak, more than 3,000 people worked here every day. They built locomotives, carriages, and wagons that kept the state moving. They forged iron, shaped timber, and painted the bold insignia that marked Queensland Rail’s identity. This was a place of craftsmanship and community, a self-contained city humming with energy.

Today, the Queensland Museum Rail Workshops (QMRW), keeps that story alive. The towering brick halls, the overhead cranes, the worn workbenches, they all whisper of the hands that built a state. And now, those echoes of industry have inspired a new chapter.

Moveable Type Studio Rolls In

It didn’t arrive with whistles or fanfare, just the steady rumble of a container truck rolling through the gates. Inside that 40-foot box was Moveable Type Studio (MTS), our travelling print workshop built to spark curiosity and get hands dirty. For six weeks, MTS sat nestled among the towering brick halls of the Queensland Museum Rail Workshops, humming with creative energy. Visitors wandered in, drawn by the scent of ink and the clack of setting type, and found themselves part of something rare: a space where history wasn’t just displayed, it was reactivated, one print at a time.

Our residency began with a deep dive into the museum’s collection. From bold union posters to delicate Edmondson railway tickets, we uncovered artefacts that spoke volumes about Queensland’s industrial past. These discoveries inspired hands-on projects: reimagining historic designs as contemporary relief plates, and printing them anew for today’s audiences. Each piece became a bridge between eras, a conversation in ink and paper.

Public Engagement Highlights

Our residency wasn’t just about setting up a studio, it was about opening doors. Each activation invited people to get closer to the story of the heritage site and experience creativity in motion. Here’s how those moments unfolded.

Live Printing Demos

We started with the basics’ ink, type, and a press. No screens, no shortcuts. Each demo was different. Some days, it was quiet with just a few curious visitors leaning in, asking questions, watching the process unfold. Other days, the place buzzed. Car clubs rolled in, families wandered through, and suddenly the studio was full of chatter, ink, and shared stories.

People didn’t just watch, they participated. For many, it was their first time touching the tools of communication that once shaped Queensland’s industrial voice.

First Nations Storytelling Through Language

For two days, the studio shifted pace. The presses kept rolling, but the focus turned to language; how it’s shaped, how it’s shared, and how it holds memory.

Gordon Hookey joined Clint Harvey at the bench. A Waanyi man from Cloncurry, Queensland, with Chinese and Javanese ancestry, Gordon’s practice is grounded in a divergent, activist perspective. His work sits at the intersection of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures, challenging dominant hierarchies and amplifying marginalised voices. Known for his bold, hand-drawn letterforms and acrostic wordplay, Gordon brings language to life, not just as text, but as commentary, as resistance, as story.

In the hands of Gordon Hookey, language is never just text; it’s a tool, a challenge, a conversation. His hand-drawn letters carry weight: shaped by lived experience, sharpened by humour, and grounded in a practice that speaks back to power. For this workshop, those letters became something new. Digitised and laser-cut into timber ahead of the session, they formed a custom typeface; not a font in the conventional sense, but a set of marks built for meaning.

When participants arrived, the blocks were ready; but the real work began in conversation. Around the bench, people spoke about words that mattered to them: names, places, phrases that held memory or meaning. With Clint Harvey facilitating and Gordon’s letterforms as a starting point, the studio became a space for reflection and response. Participants composed prints that layered personal stories with cultural references, shaping each piece through dialogue and making.

The result was more than a set of prints; it was a shared process, tactile, thoughtful, and grounded in the layered heritage of the Workshops site. Each impression carried the rhythm of language and the weight of lived experience, pressed into paper one word at a time.

Type Tasting at the Queensland Museum Railway Workshops

Deep into the Moveable Type Studio residency at the Queensland Museum Railway Workshops, we activated a public engagement session called Type Tasting.

This session brought together eleven participants at the MTS container, inviting them to experience a hands-on introduction to letterpress printing. Using contemporary laser-engraved plates depicting a steam locomotive drawn from the museum’s archives, participants were able to print a modern interpretation of historical imagery. These new plates offered a contemporary lens through which to explore heritage, bridging the precision of digital design with the tactile rhythm of traditional printing.

Alongside the laser-engraved plates, participants also worked with nineteenth-century wood type from the MTS collection. They learned to lock up type, ink rollers, and print combinations that merged old and new technologies, combining the bold personality of wood type with the fine detail of laser engraving.

This session encouraged people to slow down, engage in conversation, and connect with both the physical process and each other. For many, it was their first time handling historic printing tools and understanding the labour and craft behind each impression. Participants left with a tangible reminder of their time, a unique print that carried both the story of the Railway Workshops and the enduring art of letterpress.

Introduction to Letterpress

By the time the “Introduction to Letterpress” session kicked off, Moveable Type Studio had been parked at the Queensland Museum Rail Workshops for a couple of weeks now. It had settled into the site like it belonged there, a container of wood and metal type nestled among steel beams and locomotive bones.

Seven participants arrived that day, stepping into a space already steeped in history and making. The session unfolded slowly. Clint Harvey welcomed each person into the process, setting type, mixing ink, locking up chases. Around them, the Workshops whispered reminders of what this place once was: a hub of industry, of invention, of labour.

At the centre of the session was the C18 locomotive No.692, not in the container studio, but present all the same. Built in Ipswich in 1914, its silhouette had been drawn from QMRW photograph collection and laser-engraved into timber plates ahead of the workshop. Participants inked the image, pressed it into paper, and paired it with bold, handset wood type spelling out “Get on Board.” The phrase felt apt, a call to engage, to connect, to keep things moving.

Teacher PD Evening

Our connection to education was just as important. Educators stepped into the Queensland Museum Rail Workshops for a free, hands-on session linking printmaking to curriculum outcomes. Feedback from Lynette Shanahan, Head of Creative Arts at All Hallows’ School, captured the impact:
“I was impressed by the high level of visual samples and the practical experience of using your amazing printing presses… Keeping Queensland Art Teachers Association QATA in the loop may be useful, as art teachers are always interested in new ideas and community participation.”

Schools Program – Exquisite Monsters

Finally, we took creativity back to the classroom. Our pilot schools program brought together Redbank Plains State School, IPSAI Arts Collective, and artist Ally Boots for a collaborative design challenge. Using the exquisite corpse method, students created a steampunk-inspired monster: Redbank Plains designed the head as a mechanical panther (their school mascot), IPSARI crafted the body, and Ally Boots completed the feet.

Final Week of Residency: Galvanised Festival

As our residency drew to a close, we were delighted to anchor the grand finale of our program within the annual Galvanized heritage festival. Galvanized is the City of Ipswich’s festival of heritage, showcasing “the best heritage experiences and events Ipswich has to offer” across ten days.

Kicking off the weekend, we hosted a ticketed two‑hour “Ink & Drink” session at the MTS container on the Friday evening. Participants gathered at dusk, beverage in hand, and worked with the same laser‑engraved plates of the steam locomotive (drawn from the museum archives) alongside nineteenth‑century wood type, continuing the hybrid print process of our earlier “Type Tasting” sessions.

On Saturday the doors opened wide to the festival crowd. Our container space formed part of the broader museum site activation where visitors moved through, chatted with us and fellow participants, and observed hands‑on demonstrations of both wood type lock‑up and the laser‑engraved plate process. The buzz of the site amplified as families, heritage enthusiasts and curious passers‑by engaged in the craft of letterpress within a rail‑heritage setting.

Sunday proved to be the major highlight: the “Steam & Smoke BBQ” event held at the museum drew approximately 1,800 people through the gates. Amid food‑trucks, blacksmith demonstrations, nature‑dyeing workshops and the rumble of industrial heritage, our culminating print event stepped into the spotlight.

Working with local schools and the Ipsari art collective, we had developed a large‑format relief block in three parts, one third designed by Redland Primary School (head), one by Ipsari (body), and one by the MTS crew (feet), forming an “exquisite‑corpse” monster concept tied to our theme Monsters of the Industrial Revolution. We inked the block on fabric, laid it flat, and then rolled it with a road‑roller to create a one‑of‑a‑kind print event. The result: bold, massive fabric prints and delighted participants. The day ended with smiles all round as the large‑scale relief printing found its public moment.

Reflections & Impact

Over six weeks, we welcomed hundreds of visitors, teachers, students, artists, and curious locals, into a space where heritage and creativity collided. The residency sparked conversations about history, design, and identity, leaving behind not just prints, but lasting connections. For us, the greatest reward was seeing people engage with the tactile beauty of letterpress and rediscover the stories embedded in Queensland’s industrial past.

Our heartfelt thanks to the Queensland Museum Rail Workshops team for their support and collaboration. This residency was more than an artistic project, it was a celebration of community, culture, and craft. Follow Moveable Type Studio for upcoming activations as we continue to bring letterpress to the people.

The Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) is a partnership between Queensland Government and Ipswich City Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland. This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

A Night of Collage, Camaraderie, and Creative Ritual with Ron Monnier and Moveable Type Studio

Several weeks on, and the scent of ink still lingers. Held at The Paint Factory in Yeronga and hosted by Movable Type Studio, this wasn’t just a workshop. It was a gathering. A chance to slow down, make something with our hands, and connect with others through shared creativity.

Why We Do This

At Movable Type Studio, we believe in three things:

• That printmaking is a ritual—a way to reconnect with the physical world.

• That manual craft helps us recover from the overload of screens and digital noise.

• That community matters, and creativity is best when shared.

INK & DRINK brought all of this to life.

Collage as Conversation

The night began with a walk through our mobile studio—a converted shipping container filled with vintage presses, wood type, and the smell of ink. Then came Ron Monnier, who skipped the formalities and got straight to the good stuff: collage.

Ron’s style is raw and playful. He invited us to cut, paste, and rearrange the world as we saw fit. No rules, just scissors, glue, and imagination. Twenty brave folks joined in—artists, teachers, curious locals—and created surreal, funny, and strangely beautiful works. Heads where legs should be. Eyes on elbows. A joyful mess.

From Cut to Press

Behind the scenes, Ron’s collages had been turned into printing plates using laser engraving. This blend of old and new—handmade art turned into press-ready plates—let us print his designs using traditional letterpress methods.

Two presses ran side by side. One printed bold wood type that read “Go With The Flow.” The other carried Ron’s custom plate, inked and pressed with care. The results weren’t just prints—they were collaborative artefacts, each one shaped by the hands and ideas of everyone involved.

What It Means to Us

INK & DRINK is part of a bigger idea: creating events that feel personal and creative, but are also open and welcoming. Whether you’re an artist, a teacher, a parent, or just someone curious about ink and paper, there’s a place for you here.

We want to make printmaking accessible, repeatable, and meaningful—not just a technique, but a way to tell stories, build community, and keep old skills alive in new ways.

Looking Ahead

Next up, we’re heading north for our Central Queensland tour. We’ll be bringing the mobile studio to towns and communities across the region. If you’re nearby—whether you’re a school, a council, a local artist, or just someone who wants to see what it’s all about—get in touch. We’d love to meet you.

And if you’re someone who wants to collaborate, support, or help us grow this work, we’re open. Let’s build something together that’s bold, tactile, and rooted in place.

Because print still matters. And so does community.