The 60-year anniversary of letterpress printing at Glasgow School Of Art is marked by this compact and exciting exhibition at the school’s Reid Gallery. Featuring a wealth of material straddling the boundaries of commercial design, fine-press printing, contemporary art, and pop culture ephemera, this intriguing in-betweenness of the work that goes on in a contemporary letterpress workshop is partly what the show is attempting to get across.

The Caseroom (the name given to GSA’s letterpress workshop and equipment) actually started at a time when the medium was on the wane. Photography-based litho-printing was revolutionising publishing when the facility opened its doors in 1964. But a group of arts-and-crafts-minded staff had seen the value of keeping alive a manual craft with centuries of cultural heritage wrapped up in it.

As a result, The Caseroom has always occupied a terrain in between art, literature, craft, design, and industrial history. Over half a century later, in an era when undergraduates can edit InDesign documents on the bus home, The Caseroom has a new magic with budding artists wanting to see how older and newer media can be combined to create exciting and original work.

All this is borne out in the exhibition, which contains a potted history of the workshop in ephemera, images and text, alongside examples of pieces produced in collaboration with The Caseroom’s technicians (currently Edwin Pickstone and Ruth Kirkby) since its inception. Artists such as Scott Myles and Ruth Ewan rub shoulders with authors such as Louise Welsh and Alasdair Gray, plus fashion and music-world designers. 

The Caseroom: 60 Years Of Letterpress Etc, Glasgow School Of Art, until Wednesday 26 February.