Category: Letterpress

Ink Coverage

white vs. silver ink coverageLast week I got an email from a student in one of my tabletop platen press classes asking about ink coverage — she was having trouble getting the ink to completely cover her image. The paper color was “mixing” with the ink color (actually showing through the ink) and the resulting color wasn’t what she expected. She tried using more ink on the press but then she got “ink squeeze” (the color squeezes out at the edge of the artwork or text making it look muddy). This is a common problem with smaller platen presses, especially the tabletop ones, and I encounter it often enough on my floor model press as it’s only an 8×12 C&P. I suggested a couple of things to try

  • double inking the rollers before striking the paper
  • double hitting the paper to get 2 layers of ink. This usually doesn’t result in ink squeeze problems.
  • a trick I learned from Maia de Raat: mix a bit of opaque white into the colored ink. The white usually adds just enough opacity so the paper color doesn’t interfere with the ink color; I’ve used this trick many times myself.
  • a more time consuming solution is one Eric Holub suggested to me — first print a thin layer of white, then the color over it.

As luck would have it, a few days later I ran across this great blog post on printing on black paper from Studio on Fire in Minneapolis. They explain why using silver metallic ink, rather than opaque white, on black paper provides much better coverage — and the dramatic images on the left show their results. On their blog they have more information including the effects on small type. And this suggestion:

Q: How can I know what my ink color will look like printed on a colored paper? A: We recommend using the “multiple” filter in Adobe Illustrator. It isn’t a perfect match but does give a good approximation.

The covers for my recently printed Sherlock Holmes notebooks are white printed on black paper and it was a lot of work to get the white to cover adequately. Lucky for me I already have silver metallic ink from another project — when it’s time to reprint the notebook covers I’m going to give silver a try.

The Book Arts in San Francisco: Arion Press

One of the last metal type foundaries in the US is here in San Francisco — M&H Type — now part of the Arion Press. If you’re in the Bay Area you can tour the press and type foundary. Or, without leaving your chair, you can watch these videos… The first one is an overview of Arion and especially the printing and binding of their Lecturn Bible. In the second one, you get a glimpse of traditional lead typecasting and Monotype composition, as well as letterpress printing.

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Letterpress Print Exchange

Last December, Kelly Moran organized a letterpress print exchange between sellers on Etsy. Over 40 people signed up and the prints are due by March 15. I started mine last week — I haven’t made a wood type collage since last summer, so it was fun to plan out the colors and go through my wood type drawer choosing the blocks to use. While I was at it, I decided to do 2 designs, one 8×10 the other 5×7, in several different colorways. Below are 2 of the resulting prints — the one on the far left is for the print swap. The photo to the right shows the set-up for the print run for the first color of the print below right (it looks awfully yellow but is actually green!). Next up is figuring out the titles (that’s probably the best part of the entire process!), numbering and signing them, and finally shipping the swap prints to Kelly.

Print for Letterpress ExchangeAnother wood type collage

Press setup

In Cahoots Press

The Topography of Home by Macy ChadwickMacy Chadwick is a fellow letterpress printer and book artist here in the Bay Area. She calls her press “In Cahoots” and she’s recently put up a website with photos of her work. I first got to know Macy when she wrote about her playful long-distance collaborations with her friend Lisa Hasegawa for Ampersand. They work on joint books for one hour a week and mail the results back and forth. (You can read the article here and see photos of some of their books here.) Macy has a new book, and wouldn’t you know, it’s got a map theme! Called The Topography of Home, it’s letterpress printed and the pages have cutouts inserted with silk paper that’s been stenciled. The book is to the left with a detail below.

The Topography of Home by Macy Chadwick

Pictorial Webster’s

I had a wonderful time exploring all the books on offer at the Codex Foundation Book Fair in Berkeley the other day. My favorite book (although it’s hard to choose just one) is Quercus Press’ Pictorial Webster’s — a 400+ page leather-bound book printed using the original wood engravings and copper electrotypes of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries of the 19th Century — the 1859 & 1864 editions of the American Dictionary of the English Language (the 1st illustrated dictionary in America) and the 1890 International Dictionary. I think I first saw this as a work-in-progress when I had a table at a book fair in Seattle, about 5 years ago. It was wonderful to see the printing finished and the book bound, and even better to hold it in my hands and page though it.
The Quercus Press website has a lot of information about how they obtained the images (borrowed from Yale), how they selected the order, and how they were printed (using a linotype and letterpress). There are also lots of photos of page spreads. Here’s a page from the finished book:

Pictorial Webster’s