Letterpress – Page 21 – Green Chair Press Blog

Teach Yourself Letterpress Printing

When I have a question about my press or how it’s not printing as I would like, I look on Briar Press’s bulletin board or through the PP Letterpress archive. But sometimes I’d really rather look through a book, especially at my studio where there isn’t an internet connection.
Too bad there aren’t many modern letterpress books, and even the old ones don’t have much information on fixing smaller tabletop presses, like C&P Pilots, and nothing on using photopolymer plates. Boxcar has digitized a Kelsey manual with information on oiling, press set up, makeready and printing on envelopes. A friend gave me Letterpress: New applications for traditional skills by David Jury — the title sounded promising but it’s just a coffee table book with lots of pictures and nothing really practical about printing. Paul Moxon has written an appreciation of John Ryder’s 1955 book Printing for Pleasure (available from NA Graphics).
Here’s what’s on the shelf at my studio:

Platen Press Operation by George J. Mills (from 1953, reprints are available from NA Graphics). General Printing: An Illustrated Guide to Letterpress Printing (also from 1953, and recently reissued and available from Amazon). The latter has a nice section on the history of printing, and both have good information on setting type, lockup and makeready.
The only book I’ve found with information on photopolymer plates and letterpress is Gerald Lange’s Printing Digital Type on the Hand-Operated Flatbed Cylinder Press. It doesn’t discuss platen press printing per se, but the sections on troubleshooting and the platemaking process apply to any press.
A new acquisition is Barbara Tetenbaum’s A Guide to Experimental Letterpress Techniques. She discusses how to do pressure printing (putting string or a stencil behind the printing sheet) and other techniques using found objects. She’s bound examples of each technique into the spine. Her instructions are for cylinder presses, but I’m thinking I can modify many of them for my platen press (a project for next year!) (Available from Another Room Book Arts Bookstore.)
My favorite book by far is Clifford Burke’s Printing Poetry: A workbook in typographic reification. It’s long out of print (but you can get used ones from Amazon) and my copy was a special Christmas present from my Mom when I got my first press. It’s mostly concerned with typography and poetry, quirky and opinionated, and has a section called “of Money, Time and Rust,” the bugbears of those of us with the letterpress printing bug.

And To-morrow

I’m printing my 2008 calendar design on my hand-feed, manually operated (using a foot treadle) letterpress printer. The calendar has 14 pages, 2 colors each. This ends up to be a lot of feeding and a tremendous amount of treadling. It’s not a particularly mindless task, as I have to pay attention so that my hands don’t get caught as the platen opens and closes, that the paper is straight, and most importantly that the ink is consistent across pages. Once I get a rhythm going, though, it turns out to be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, especially with a bit of music on the radio or through my ipod.
While printing I’ve been thinking about calendars I’ve particularly liked. The one pictured in this post is by Lisa Rappoport of Littoral Press from 2005. It’s really more of a mediation on time, I guess, and it perfectly matches that repetitious feel that I have spending my afternoons treadling. (Kate Godfrey took the picture.)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
—Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Printy Quotes

Books finely printed I keep a notebook of quotes and poetry that I scour for titles for my broadsides. Juliet, over on the muddy island, sent me a link to a lovely site with quotes about printing: the cavendish gallery of print and typography. It pairs the quotes with printing-related images.
The gallery doesn’t include one of my favorite quotes, so on the right is my own addition, paired with my favorite printer.
And below is the text from the gallery entry with a phrase that inspired the title for one of my recent wood type collage broadsides, Safe Ground.

This is a printing office.
Cross-roads of Civilization,
Refuge of all the Arts against the Ravages of Time.
From this place Words may fly abroad
Not to perish as Waves of Sound
But fix’d in Time,
Not corrupted by the hurrying Hand
But verified in Proof.
Friend, you stand on Safe Ground:
This is a printing office.

Merit Badges

I was a girl scout through high school and I still have my sash with the badges I earned for things like camping, backpacking and baking. Imagine my delight last Saturday at the SFCB Roadworks craft fair when my friends Jennie and Carolee, of Pod Post, showed up with their new merit badges for letterpress! I immediately bought a set and today I’ll sew them on my printers’ apron.
That’s Carolee on the right, modelling her sash with another set of their badges — these for bookbinding. They also have a set for zine making.
The letterpress badges are labeled “Level One: Set Type’, ‘Level Two: Mind Your P’s (and Q’s)’ and ‘Level Three: Press Time’. Carolee said I could wear the Level Three badge, even though I print on an inferior C&P floor model and not the coveted (and pictured) Vandercook!

Agapanthus

I’ve been looking at Chinese latticework designs recently and thought some of the patterns would adapt well to a letterpress print. The designs are clean and simple, and greatly enhanced with color. I had already selected a colorway for this pattern when I noticed that the agapanthus in our front yard were almost finished blooming. I always love the spikey blue flowers on long skinny stalks, and decided to ditch my original plan and use the blues and greens from the fading plants.
This is the first in a series of prints based on patterns. It’s a bit different from my other broadsides as it doesn’t have any text. You can see the whole print here.

Outside the Box

This is my latest broadside, Secret Sky. I wanted a large swash of color in the background, so I used an uncut linoleum block to print the light blue. It required a lot of makeready (shimming up the block in the back, as well as some under the tympan of my press. The block isn’t flat nor is it an even thickness. Next time I want a solid fill I’ll try another material!). The circle is a photopolymer plate and the rest is wood type.
Here’s the quote that inspired the title:

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”
–Rumi