Last year Printmakers Council was delighted to receive funding through the Heritage Lottery Fund to catalogue and preserve its archive.

On November 18th our 50th anniversary exhibition ’50 Years of Artists Prints’ opens at the Bankside Gallery, London where we will be sharing some of the interesting facts and materials discovered during the archiving process.

Here is a little taster of some of the things we discovered:

The Printmakers Council did not originally have any administrative or Gallery space, their original administrator worked from the Royal College of Art.  A selection of  prints were gradually collected and used for selection purposes and sales,  these were kept in a plan chest which was for a while stored in Michael Henshaw’s basement. Between 1969 and 1970 office space was rented at ‘Space’ in St Katherine’s dock. A move was made in 1971 to the Hachette Gallery and between 1973 and 1976 PMC had residency at the OUP Gallery in Dover Street. Office space was rented at the Clerkenwell Workshops (31Clerkenwell Close, EC1)after the landlords gave them notice in 2003 a move was made to 23 Blue Anchor Lane¨ London SE16 3UL.We now share this space with Trevor Price the landlord and Mychael Barrett.

The 1970’s saw some innovative ideas with discussions about the merits  holding a ‘happening’

In 1979 an exhibition entitled ‘By Acid, By Screen and By Gum’ toured Yorkshire to Keighley, York and Huddersfield.

And in the same year the annual dinner and disco at the London Corinthian Sailing Club sounds to be a riot thanks to Harvey Daniels and some bottles of port….