A SOMERSET LETTERPRESS PRINTER, part owned by a former MIS salesman, is offering a series of unique printed products that drive to the heart of the British psyche – personalised weather maps.
Birthday Weather has secured access to the archive at the British Meteorological Office in Exeter where there are hand drawn maps for every day’s forecasts for 140 years. These are hand drawn, changing from decade to decade as technology became faster and more accurate, but have retained the same set of symbols for much of the time they have been produced.
BIRTHDAY WEATHER HAS BEEN FORMED by Adrian Manning who has joined Rose Mill Printers in Ilminster, with designer and artist Matt Saunders and marketing executive Rebecca Hughes. The idea was formed after Manning discovered the archive of hand drawn maps for everyday’s forecast, from the 1976 heatwave, the 1987 ‘hurricane’ to this year’s extensive flooding. The maps are scanned and printed as posters, cards or on mugs as specified from the company’s website. As the name suggests, the immediate aim was to mark a birthday with an original gift. but the appeal is that the daily maps can apply to an significant occasion.
The letterpress printer is using its own digital press while demand is manageable, working to ensure that colours are reproduced as accurately as possible. It plans to add tea towels, clothing, children’s products and others to the portfolio spreading from reproductions of the maps into other weather related paraphernalia sold through its own website or those of partners. The company has been featured in Country Living magazine and on the notonthehighstreet.com website and a run of 500 mugs sold out in a matter of weeks, which bodes well.
MANNING LEFT PRISM, HAVING BEEN UK operations manager, following its acquisition by EFI. He had previously worked for Optimus and Sanderson and had connections also with Tharstern and Shuttleworth as a consultant. Joining Rose Mills is a return to his roots he explains having trained as a letterpress machine minder at Burgess & Son in Abingdon before switching to look after its Optimus MIS, one of the first in the UK. “Printing has been my first love,” he says. “And somehow I ended up as an MIS consultant looking after the northern hemisphere for Prism.
“Birthday Weather is about taking printing and the archived maps and putting them together. We are using the original copies of the hand drawn maps, including the occasional tea cup mark.”
THE RANGE OF AVAILABLE MAPS extends back to 1872 and covers some of Europe, except for the war time periods when the weather ended at the North Sea he says. “If the original map has faded we can’t do much, though we are trying to retain as much of their originality as possible. And they were printed letterpress,” he says. Some dates are iconic, the day that the Titanic set sail for example when the forecast warned of ice and a host of dates associated with the centenary of the first World War.
However, Birthday Weather will not distract from the core letterpress printing business of Rose Mills Print. This can be social stationery to business cards, the meat and drink of a letterpress business. Says Manning: “I’m loving being back in print and paper and creating a product that people are going to love.”
