One of JMW Turner’s best loved paintings is The Fighting Téméraire, depicting one of the last remaining ships of the line from the Battle of Trafalgar heading for the breaker’s yard. Turner painted the image in 1838, more than 30 years after the battle, and at the point that sail was giving way to steam. She is being pulled up river by a steam tug: her age has passed.
Last week Leeds printer JH Davenport posted a video with a similar theme. A two-colour litho press is hauled through the factory and hoisted on to a low loader to be replaced by a digital label press. Like HMS Téméraire the old Sakurai had been a reliable performer, but things had moved on. For Davenport and hundreds of similar printers litho is fading away. Another printer claimed to have only printed three jobs on his litho press since April. Others have ceased litho printing altogether.
This does not mean that litho is no longer valid. It is not a wooden hulled sailing vessel in the age of the ironclads, hopelessly out gunned and vulnerable. But litho is no longer the de facto printing process that bestrode the world like the British Royal Navy. Digital presses are nimbler than the 20-year-old litho machines. It’s time to send them up the river.
The end for the fighting frigates of print
One of JMW Turner’s best loved paintings is The Fighting Téméraire, depicting one of the last remaining ships of the line from the Battle of Trafalgar heading for the breaker’s yard. Turner painted the image in 1838, more than 30 years after the battle, and at the point that sail was giving way to steam. She is being pulled up river by a steam tug: her age has passed.
Last week Leeds printer JH Davenport posted a video with a similar theme. A two-colour litho press is hauled through the factory and hoisted on to a low loader to be replaced by a digital label press. Like HMS Téméraire the old Sakurai had been a reliable performer, but things had moved on. For Davenport and hundreds of similar printers litho is fading away. Another printer claimed to have only printed three jobs on his litho press since April. Others have ceased litho printing altogether.
This does not mean that litho is no longer valid. It is not a wooden hulled sailing vessel in the age of the ironclads, hopelessly out gunned and vulnerable. But litho is no longer the de facto printing process that bestrode the world like the British Royal Navy. Digital presses are nimbler than the 20-year-old litho machines. It’s time to send them up the river.
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