Part of my museum project is to find people who use obsolete technology. Here’s someone who printed his own books at home with an old letterpress machine.

This is the late Alloy Gunawardhane who wrote more than 1000 songs including hit songs of iconic singer H. R. Jothipala. Over the years, and now especially after the economic crash, I have admired him more and more, because he printed his own song books with this letterpress machine at home. I admire that tenacity and resilience. He was his own printer and publisher. I took this photo in the early years of the new millennium. By then, letterpress was on the way out, used mostly to print cinema wall posters and death notices – and small song books of popular hits. It was a crude poor man’s press, but it did the job. He had the sort of independence that most writers can only dream of. American poet Walt Whitman was a printer too, writing, printing and publishing his own newspaper single handedlyback in the 19th century, challenging big business. Alloy was doing the same. He’s a hero. Now I wish I had done the same. In today’s context, with outrageous paper and printing costs, the time has come for us to print and publish our own books. Desktop publishing (digital) is a fashionable concept, but I discovered long ago but it’s not cost effective when it comes to printing our own books. I bow my head to these forgotten heroes of the letterpress!