Music fans at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival last weekend woke to a very tactile publishing experience – a letterpress-printed daily newspaper.

Efforts to produce 15,000 copies a day of the Glastonbury Free Press followed weeks of preparation including the installation of an old Intertype hot-metal linecaster, a 1954 Heidelberg cylinder press and an assortment of proofing and folding equipment (right). A concrete slab was poured specially to locate the 20th century kit and three-phase power laid on.

But not without teething problems. The first day’s edition failed to appear, with a blog noting problems with the press and reporting that only the digital edition would appear.

That said, the ‘steampunk drama’ of the letterpress process (their description) was a big attraction at the quirky event, attended by more than 100,000 people.

Apart from the Heidelberg cylinder, proofing presses were in use to produce a variety of ephemera… and proved more predictable. Here’s YouTube footage of the Predominantly Pink Platitude printing press getting into the spirit of the event.