Making relief-cut wine labels

This shot shows wine labels from the mid 1990s and the equipment used to make them. They are printed onto either gummed or self-adhesive labels from inked printing blocks. The blocks are rubber, mostly erasers, although the large block here (with "Apple" on it) was a rubber fender block from a van or truck.
 

Single-block printing

This block has been used twice. Originally it had the words reserve and the date (1997) on it. These were removed when it was used in a following year.


These labels were produced from it (not the Elder reserve 96, that was produced by photocopying an original drawing and then hand-colouring it.)

You can see the two variations - with and without the side text.

Multi-block printing

These labels are proofs to check alignment. The green apple" block was printed first, and the black smaller areas printed with a number of smaller blocks. The patterns are either oak leaves, elderflowers, the year (1995) or "Dry".

This is the main printing block. It's about 10cm by 8cm



Here it is alongside labels printed on the first level only using it...

 
...and here are the individual small blocks used to over-print the details. These are between about 10mm long by 8mm wide.