Category: Printing

I’m always on the look out for printing methods to use in my books and broadsides and with my letterpress printer.

More Typewriter Men

TypewriterI own a 1890s letterpress, as well as several 40 year old cars, so I clearly have a weak spot for old out-dated machines. I’ve found another article about a shop that fixes typewriters (my other entry about a shop in NYC is here). The article, from the LA Times, includes a very sweet video, showing the shop and the family that runs it, as well as the owner fixing a typewriter.
The owner says there’s been a small resurgence in people using typewriters. Using a computer tied to the Internet can be overwhelming — too many distractions when you sit down to write something. A typewriter, alone on a table, doesn’t have all the commotion and diversion of a computer. (It’s a toss up for me — could I give up the spelling checker for no distractions?!)

Steamroller Prints

Patricia Curtan’s roadworks printEvery fall, the San Francisco Center for the Book asks local artists to create a design that is then cut into a 48 inch square piece of linoleum. The designs are printed using a large (3-ton) steamroller at the SFCB annual street fair and it’s quite a sight. I am particularly enamored of one of the prints this year — that’s it to the right. It’s by Patricia Curtan (who you might know from illustrations in Chez Panisse cookbooks) and looks just like my own press. It’s to be auctioned on Nov 7th at an SFCB fund raiser — oh how I wish it came in a smaller size that I could afford!
See the steamroller printing in action here. There’s more about Patricia Curtan here. Also, on her website, she has a lovely illustration of the progression of printing a multicolor block print (roll over the number sequence at the right of this page to see the progression). You can see all the steamroller prints from this year here.

Large Prints

Several people have asked me about doing bigger prints with my wood type. I’m experimenting with 16×20″ reproductions of my original letterpress prints. I’ve now got four different designs in my shop. They are printed on thick white Lettra and printed on a high-end Epson printer. Take a look at them here.
The Weight of Numbers

Single Sheet Books

singlesheets.jpgOne of the problems with making your own books using an ink jet or laser printer is how to print them without lots of fancy software. My first books of my artwork and stories, with two pages per sheet and double sided, required me to devise an often complicated recipe for the order to print the pages. Then I discovered single sheet books. Because they are printed all on one side of a sheet, once I had a template, they were easy to design and quick to print and put together. They end up being small — from an 8-1/2 x 11″ sheet you get a 2-3/4 x 4-1/2″ book — but very easy to work with.
Earlier this summer when I was making a book out of my haiku poems, I played around with several single sheet configurations. I was reminded how convenient they are to work with, so I wrote up some instructions and made a kit that includes directions for five different configurations and three books to make — each pre-printed and ready to fold, cut and assemble. And it also includes a Word template to use to design and print your own book from a single sheet. The kit is available here.

Edible Printing

example of an edible book
After School Snack
by Dawn Forbes

The International Edible Book Festival is held yearly on April 1st. Participants create edible books that are exhibited, photographed and then eaten. Here’s an example to the left, and there are lots more on this website.
I haven’t been to one, but every year when I see announcements about festival “exhibits,” I think about what sort of book I’d make. Recently I saw this Electrolux Scan Toaster prototype bread printer and thought it would be perfect to make such a book. The idea is that you plug the toaster into your computer, put a slice of bread in it, and then print.
Less science fiction is this article on how to print on edible paper with edible ink.
scan toaster