This Easter holiday, children can try their hand at printing with the help of Peter the printer, who has been busy restoring Radstock museum’s old printing presses.

One of the presses is now working well enough that children will be able to have a go at printing using the museum’s lovely old Aesop’s Fables picture plates. The event will take place on Thursday, 5th April from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

There will be lots of activities during the morning, organised by the museum’s volunteer education team, including making colourful patterns with vegetable and fruit printing, using letter stamps to print their names, Aesop’s Fables story time with Jane and Penny, Aesop’s Fables drama with Jeni and Patrick, and making traditional printer’s hats with Irene.

Peter said: “When newspaper printing presses came into operation, the paper had to be printed on both sides at the same time. The presses were enormous; taller than a person, and the troughs of ink would sometimes drip and also as the ink became warm, it would become more liquid and would sometimes fly off the moving parts of the printing press.

Printers made hats out of newspaper to protect their hair.”

A museum volunteer, whose relatives worked at Purnell printing works at Paulton, said: “Printers were issued with cloth hats in the past, as if ink got into their hair they would have to use white spirit to remove it.”

Peter has nearly forty years of experience working in the printing industry: his apprenticeship was here in Somerset, and he has since worked for the weekly newspaper: West Somerset Free Press and for Robert Maxwell at BPC. Peter was previously Director at both the Bath Press and Redwood Books in Trowbridge and sharing his expertise abroad, he has worked in Madrid for Mateu Cromo.

Radstock Museum is delighted that Peter, who came to the museum as a paying visitor one day, was so keen to see the museum’s printing presses working again; he has since been able to help the museum by starting a programme of restoration which, when complete, it is hoped will enable the museum to run special printing events for adults as well as children.