The Cult of Gocco

One of the nicest parts of the Book Jam last Saturday was chatting during the slow times with the book artists’ at the table adjacent to mine, Kate Godfrey and Nikki Thompson. Nikki produces books using hand-set type on a letterpress as well as with her Japanese-made Gocco printer (a small screen printing system). Throughout the day, I over-heard Nikki describing her Gocco and how it works to visitors and then end with “but the machines aren’t imported any more and it’s hard to get supplies”.
My knowledge about Gocco printing is pretty limited — it’s popular on Etsy to make cards, prints, housewares and t-shirts. And in one of the first issues of Ampersand that I edited, Nicholas Yeager explains how to use a Gocco printer to etch images in metal. (The owl to the right is a Gocco produced print by Bernadette Sipkes that’s hanging in my house.)
So imagine my surprise on Sunday when I opened the New York Times Sunday Magazine (of all things!) to find an article entitled The Cult of Gocco: How the end of a product turned into a publicity event — and maybe, a new beginning. It seems that an artist named Jill Bliss started the website SaveGocco.com to do just that — create enough publicity that would inspire the Japanese Gocco manufacturer Riso to make and import the machines again with a letter writing campaign.
From poking around on the web a bit, it looks like they’ve had some success, as more and more stores carry both the machines and supplies. Here in San Francisco, Arch is now importing and selling machines & supplies. Online Paper Source and Wet Paint Art sell machines. The Japanese-based Etsy sellers Print Addict Japan, Felt Cafe and good-ness will ship supplies and machines to the US. Nikki says she buys her supplies from Welch Products. And there are yet more dealers here.