Armed with an Adana 8x5 letterpress affixed to his custom-frame bike, Hand will make three cycling tours to visit public libraries throughout the UK.

At each library, Hand will print bespoke bookmarks that celebrate each library, and famous figures who used them.

Now 67, he is an experienced hand at touring the Adana press, having pedalled his press-bike hybrid all the way to printing progenitor Gutenburg’s birthplace in Mainz, Germany in 2014; from Land’s End to John O’Groats in 2017; and most recently around festivals throughout the UK in 2022.

For his latest tour, he will travel as far as the Shetland Isles to celebrate the place of public libraries in communities across the country.

Hand told Printweek he would cycle up to Oxford from his base in Bristol, where he runs bespoke print company The Letterpress Collective, before heading through to Wendover, Stevenage and London.

“At each, I will print something dedicated to the library, but also relating to someone who has a connection there,” he explained.

“So Stevenage is where the journalist Gary Young was brought up, and he would go to the public library as a kid – now he’s an internationally renowned journalist and writer, so I’m trying to dedicate something to his relationship with that library.

“The point really is to talk about letterpress printing, and its continued relevance today, and to support public libraries where I can. They are struggling – a lot have closed down.”

Hand hopes to make it to around 30 libraries over the course of the summer’s three expeditions – with return trips necessary to stock up on plates and type – and expects to finish around the beginning of October.

Many of the bookmarks will feature illustrative prints on one side, with Hand aided by a wide network of artist friends and acquaintances across the country.

From the Bristol artistic community alone, Hand has secured the support of Richard Long, a Turner Prize-winning land artist and sculptor, for Bristol’s own Redlands library; further away, in Orkney, the library at Kirkwall will be illustrated by Aardman animation studio co-founder Peter Lord, featuring his clay character, Morph.

Each bookmark, printed on the Adana – which Hand says is like “carrying a three-year-old on the back of your bike, but less wriggly” – will be printed mono.

Hand is no stranger to having a three-year-old on his bike; his own grandson, even at that age, is a big fan of their local library. 

“He can’t really talk properly yet, but he knows his way around – they have a fluffy dog, which he goes and collects, then he has it until we have to leave. It’s these kind of things that I’m looking for, these insights into libraries.

“What we do as printers is so connected to the libraries, yet separate. Whether you’re an old-school printer like me, or very modern, there’s this connection. Old and new books are all there – printing is just so connected to language, literacy, to the past and the future.”