1740. The great frost has frozen the rivers of York. Taking advantage of this and the ensuing frost fair, entrepreneurial printer Thomas Gent takes a makeshift press down to the Ouse and sets up shop, printing keepsake pamphlets for any revellers willing to brave the ice that creaks and cracks beneath his rollers.

2019. The great canapés are running low at the launch of Thin Ice Press, a common press reconstruction and letterpress housed at the University of York.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this evening – was it just going to be a rather dry presentation of some old machines? – but chatting to members of the Thin Ice staff, it’s impossible not to get caught up by their enthusiasm. The launch is very much a statement of intent: exploring the past by making plans for the future.  They’re keen to illuminate York’s rich printing history, too long obscured by the more touristic Romans and Vikings and tea rooms, and to start a new chapter.

Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, they are in the process of building a reproduction common press based on one that belonged to Gent. Tonight they’re showing off other recent acquisitions and activities, including three working historic iron presses. This is the beginning of a growing collection to be made available to staff and students, plus there are plans for research, teaching and public workshops, and they hope to launch one or more imprints soon.

As well as the customary nibbles-and-fizz, there is an exhibition and silent auction of work from the thriving contemporary letterpress community, with prints from the likes of Nomad Letterpress, Red Plate Press, The Department of Small Works and The Print Project. My wallet hurts.

Escaping the crowd of bushy-tailed students and greying, nodding enthusiasts, I have a poke around the actual studio. An assortment of wooden type scales, reference books and other specialist accessories are scattered about, resting upon towers of shallow drawers full of type (none of your abstract modern names here, just functional labels like ‘8-Line Wood Serif’ and the more ostentatious ’10-Line Wood Serif’). There’s no mistaking this for a dust-gathering museum – it’s all very much in use.

The iron presses themselves are beautiful. There’s an 1838 Clymer & Dixon Columbian press, an 1847 tabletop Albion press and a 1926 Arab press. They are weighty and mechanical and – to me at least – completely alien. This is all very different to the media jams, magenta tantrums and planned obsolescence that I’m used to with my pathetic desktop printer at home.

The oldest of them is particularly awe-inspiring. A gargantuan iron beast, its dense black frame adorned with toothsome serpents and topped with a bald eagle counterweight, the Columbian dominates the room and exudes malevolence. It looks like the sort of demonic relic Mike Mignola would draw and then discard for looking too preposterously evil.

I want to drag myself away, lest it devour my soul, but it’s in action tonight, printing commemorative souvenirs for those attending the launch, and it’s rather hypnotic. The crowd gathers around, silently rapt by the centuries-old mechanical-magical process of taking a design from over here and placing it over there. There is a special look of delight on each recipient’s face as they are handed their print.

In this moment, I realise what it must have felt like out there on the ice almost 300 years ago (it was probably a tad colder and they had fewer canapés, but still). Witnessing the alchemy of wood and metal and ink, taking part of it home with you…. Thin Ice Press is reviving the magic of printing and it is quite, quite wonderful.

Daniel Benneworth-Gray is a freelance designer based in York; All photographs by Alex Holand