Tuesday 3 April 2012

Making relief-cut wine labels

This shot shows wine labels from the mid 1990s and the equipment used to make them. They are printed onto either gummed or self-adhesive labels from inked printing blocks. The blocks are rubber, mostly erasers, although the large block here (with "Apple" on it) was a rubber fender block from a van or truck.
  Wine label making

Single-block printing

This block has been used twice. Originally it had the words reserve and the date (1997) on it. These were removed when it was used in a following year.
Wine label printing block

These labels were produced from it (not the Elder reserve 96, that was produced by photocopying an original drawing and then hand-colouring it.)

You can see the two variations - with and without the side text.

Wine labels

Multi-block printing

These labels are proofs to check alignment. The green apple" block was printed first, and the black smaller areas printed with a number of smaller blocks. The patterns are either oak leaves, elderflowers, the year (1995) or "Dry".
Wine labels
This is the main printing block. It's about 10cm by 8cm

Wine label printing block

Here it is alongside labels printed on the first level only using it...

  Wine label printing block and labels
...and here are the individual small blocks used to over-print the details. These are between about 10mm long by 8mm wide.
Wine label printing block
Wine label printing block
Wine label printing block Wine label printing block Wine label printing block

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