Introducing Brittle City Press, an imprint of Wooden and Leaden, a new short-run analogue publication venture based in Joyce Campbell’s Morningside garage/studio.  

At the heart of the studio are an Asbern cylinder proof press and a substantial collection of vintage wood and lead type. To these foundational publication technologies, Campbell has added a laser cutter, a cnc router and facilities for making photopolymer plates. Brittle City Press thus combines print technologies ancient and very new to open up a wide field of possibility within short-run publication.

“We bring these technologies to our collaborations with and between artists, such that the tactile act of printing informs the form and function of our books. The press is committed to supporting a diversity of voices, to providing the means to publish in a diversity of languages, and to recuperating those bodies of knowledge we will need to rebuild our shattered earth once the reign of technocapitalist patriarchy comes to its inevitable, messy end. Big goals, small press. Brittle City Press is one of a planned suite of imprints emerging from my Morningside print studio under the umbrella of the Wooden and Leaden Publishing house.” 

Wooden and Leaden does not seek out collaborations so much as remaining receptive to them. It supports projects that are in keeping with its core objective, which is to expand the range of available creative literature being made in Tamaki Makaurau and to expand access to analogue short run publication experience for creatives working in the region. Planned projects/imprints include both adult and children’s literature, publications related to music, and publications authored by neurodivergent creators. 

Wooden and Leaden are currently augmenting our library of type to include type sets with macrons to enable publication by creatives working in Pacific languages and we are building our typography skills to support linguistic diversity more broadly in our short run and analogue publications that we might provide publishing opportunities for writers in languages representative of the diversity of Tāmaki Makaurau’s people.

Brittle City Press: The Initial Series

Public Chairs: On domestic chairs in public places by C. M. Dale of Tokyo, Japan.  Printed by Brittle City Press, an imprint of the Wooden and Leaden Publishing House, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland, Aotearoa - New Zealand and distributed by Laurel Doody Library Supply, Los Angeles, U.S.A., https://ldlibrarysupply.com/ With design assistance from Yasmin Dullabh.

Transmutations. An artist’s book by Rowan Thomson. This book of abstracted self-portraits destabilises the idea of the body as a fixed form, celebrating its capacity for fluidity, transformation and metamorphosis. The images appear scientific, evoking the cellular process of mitosis - a pulling apart, splitting in two. The images shift and slide, always seeking change. Printed with a combination of photogravure and letterpress by Brittle City Press, an imprint of the Wooden and Leaden Publishing House, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland, Aotearoa - New Zealand as an output of a CAI Summer scholarship.

The Brittle City and the Sunken City. Images and text by Joyce Campbell with research assistance from Rowan Thomson. Printed with a combination of Laser cut, photopolymer and lead type. by Brittle City Press, an imprint of the Wooden and Leaden Publishing House, Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland, Aotearoa - New Zealand as an output of a CAI Summer scholarship.

All images by Sam Hartnett.