Brian Barry

 

The 1916 Proclamation bill was printed on a Wharfedale printing press in Liberty Hall by Christopher Brady, working with the compositors Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien.

The men completed the task, demonstrating fine resourcefulness g iven the dangerous and challenging circumstances involved. They had only enough characters to set half the type, which meant that the proclamation had to be printed in two halves. This effectively doubled their workload. The original version shows evidence of where they were forced to place a character or two from a different font in the body text and alter or touch up some letters in the bold heading text. The printing press was said to be a temperamental machine and it required constant attention during the process.

The Wharfedale press is graphically represented in my linocut, constructed with type characters from the proclamation. It is in tribute to the men and the machine involved in its production.