Harper-Thames on a Shoreditch workshop keeping traditional craft alive by force of will
In a small workshop tucked behind a row of considerably flashier shopfronts, a screen printing studio has been quietly operating, mostly by hand, using techniques and equipment that have changed remarkably little over the decades the studio’s founder has been running it, in an area that has, around this exact building, transformed almost beyond recognition.
I visited on a morning when the studio was working through a run of prints for a local independent bookshop, and spent an hour watching a process that felt, frankly, like a genuinely deliberate act of resistance against an entire surrounding economy built increasingly on speed and digital convenience.
Why Analogue, Deliberately
The studio’s founder, who has run the workshop for well over a decade, described the decision to maintain largely traditional, hand operated printing methods as both an aesthetic and, increasingly, a genuine commercial choice, distinguishing the studio’s output from the considerably faster, cheaper digital printing options widely available elsewhere.
“Anyone can get a digital print made in twenty minutes at a shop two streets over,” she said, carefully registering a screen against a sheet of paper. “What they get from me takes longer, costs more, and has a texture, a genuine physical quality, that digital printing simply cannot replicate. That difference is now the entire basis of my business, in a way it wasn’t necessarily when I started, when this was simply how printing was done.”
Who Actually Commissions This Work
Clients seeking out the studio’s specific traditional printing process range from independent publishers and artists wanting genuinely distinctive print runs, through to, increasingly, larger brands specifically seeking the tactile authenticity that hand printed work carries, a demand the founder described as a genuinely interesting reversal from earlier in her career.
“I used to feel like I was swimming against the tide, purely holding onto an older way of doing things,” she said. “Now I have brands actively seeking out that exact quality, specifically because everything else in their world moves so fast and looks so uniformly digital. There’s a real value now in something that visibly took a human hand considerable time to make.”
The Economics of Slow Craft
Running a business built around a deliberately slower, more labour intensive process requires a genuinely different commercial model than volume based digital printing, with the studio pricing its work to reflect the actual time investment involved rather than competing directly on speed or unit cost with faster alternatives.
“I’m not trying to compete with a digital print shop on price or turnaround time,” the founder said. “I’m offering something categorically different, and I price it accordingly. The clients who come to me understand that distinction already, generally. I’m not trying to convince someone who wants a same day print job that they actually want what I do instead.”
Passing On The Skill
The studio also runs occasional workshops teaching traditional screen printing techniques to newcomers, a practice the founder describes as essential to the craft’s continued survival beyond her own individual business, given how few formal training pathways for this specific traditional printing method remain widely available.
“If I don’t teach this, genuinely, who does?” she said. “There aren’t many places left doing this the traditional way, teaching it the traditional way. Every workshop I run, I’m hoping at least one person leaves genuinely wanting to keep this specific skill alive somewhere, rather than it simply dying out with my generation of printers.”
The Rent Reality Facing Traditional Craft
Like numerous small, traditionally minded creative businesses across the area, the studio faces genuine commercial rent pressure that makes maintaining a physical workshop space, rather than the considerably smaller footprint a purely digital printing operation might require, an ongoing financial challenge that the founder manages through a combination of workshop income, commission work, and, she admitted candidly, a considerable amount of personal financial sacrifice.
“I could make more money doing something else, genuinely, with the skills and business experience I’ve built over the years,” she said. “I stay because I believe in what this specific craft offers, and because I think losing entirely traditional printing studios like this one from an area that still markets itself heavily on craft and creativity would be a real, if quiet, loss.”
Craft Sector Support
Some local creative industry advocacy groups have periodically highlighted traditional craft businesses like this studio as examples of exactly the kind of specialised, skill intensive creative work that broader area marketing invokes but does not always meaningfully support through affordable workspace provision or dedicated funding programmes.
“There’s a real gap between how the area markets its creative heritage and how much practical support actually reaches businesses genuinely maintaining traditional creative skills,” said one local craft sector advocate. “This studio is a genuinely good example of exactly the kind of business that deserves more structural support than it currently gets.”
What Keeps It Going
Despite the genuine financial and structural challenges, the founder expressed real optimism about the studio’s continued survival, citing a loyal, growing client base specifically seeking out traditional craft quality, and a genuine, sustained interest from younger creatives wanting to learn a skill that feels, in her words, “genuinely rare in a way it simply wasn’t when I started doing this.”
Watching her work through the final prints of the morning’s run, carefully lifting each sheet, checking registration, setting it aside to dry, there was something genuinely compelling about the deliberate, unhurried pace of it all, a small, stubborn act of craft persistence happening quietly behind a shopfront in an area that has, in almost every other visible way, moved considerably faster around it.
Further Reading
More of my reporting on Shoreditch craft and creative industries can be found at my author page at The London Prat, with additional coverage at Bohiney Magazine. Related material is collected at NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
