Anaïs Nin (1903-77) is a somewhat polarising literary figure, and is often regarded as one of the first and finest writers of female erotica. She ran her private Gemor Press in Greenwich Village from 1942 to 1947 and was the printer-publisher of four of her own books, now rare letterpress editions. She taught herself to set type and stood for hours working the treadle press - apparently in rather glamorous outfits.

Following on from Sylvia Gosse's painting 'The Printer', this week we have women who have run their own publishing press, using traditional letterpress methods, ink, and hand-set type. This is Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) poet and heiress, who founded the Hours Press in 1928 in Normandy, moving it to Paris in 1929. Over four years, she published twenty-four titles, including books by Ezra Pound and Samuel Beckett. Her wealth allowed her to take financial risks that other publishers could not, and the Hours Press became known for its beautiful book designs and high-quality production.

Apologies if you received today's yesterday; this was due to a technical glitch.

Of course many women nowadays wear their aprons at home with pride because they are practical, comfortable, and suitable for a huge number of tasks, skills, and forms of creative expression. If anything, the apron is the perfect symbol of domestic feminism, as we like to call it. In her Self Portrait (MOMA Macynlleth), Jenny Jones (b1954) is surrounded by the home comforts which are celebrated in so many of our novels, and wears a fine apron with voluminous pockets.

Women also wore aprons in a wide range of working roles during the Second World War, yet although around 35% of women were in the workforce in 1951, that decade saw much debate about women's roles and there was great pressure on them to swap sturdy aprons like these for domestic pinnies. Evelyn Dunbar (1906-60) was a brilliant documenter of the Women's Land Army; this is Women's Land Army Dairy Training (1940, Imperial War Museum).

This is The Printer (c1915) by Sylvia Gosse (1881-1968, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery). Gosse was closely associated with Walker Sickert and, in an all too familiar story, her work has been "unfairly overlooked" in favour of his and that of other male painters she knew. But what sets her apart is "her fascination with working women as a subject"; the apron worn by the printer is workwear for an expert operator.

This week it's aprons. They were rejected by a generation of feminists as symbols of female domesticity and enslavement, and yet they have been and still are essential for many women who work outside the home. Here we have two female welders during the First World War whose aprons which are just as much a symbol of skill, equality and independence. Building Aircraft: Acetylene Welder (1917, National Museum, Cardiff) is a lithograph by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946). 

Raymond Briggs' work was greatly influenced by his relationship with his parents, and in Ethel and Ernest (1998) he follows their lives - and his own with them (that is him in the window) - over forty years. It is delightful, funny, deeply moving and often heartbreaking; it covers social mobility, nostalgia, grief, marriage and family dynamics. As Briggs said,"Life is sad, really, but there's also love, which makes life worth living."