MY LATEST LETTERPRESS ADVENTURE
With my discreet attraction to everything letterpress over the last few years, I felt compelled to take our relationship to the next level and embarked on a 4-week letterpress workshop, run by the ever-so inspiring husband and wife team Doug and Danika of D&d Letterpress. The workshop, organised by &company as part of The Rocks pop-up, an initiative of Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, took place every Wednesday night in June in a quaint, historic building in The Rocks. The pop-up space fit-out included a shopfront retail area selling the work of up-and-coming artists; the cosy workshop cleverly set up at the back. In fact, this small space was actually a McDonald’s restaurant in its day!
For the 4-week crash course, we enthusiastically learnt about the history and craft of this artform and the different types of presses. We tried our hand at setting lines of metal type using one of D&d's various type cases. Experimenting with an evolved method, we then created photopolymer plates based on our own designs, a method that made it possible for many newspapers to utilise modern photocomposition techniques using existing letterpress equipment. We incorporated both of these elements to print our masterpieces with hand-mixed inks on 'Wendy', their rescued and restored foot-treadled Chandler & Price letterpress.
It was fascinating to hear that, back in the day, printers worked at great lengths to get a 'kiss impression' rather than the 'deep impression' – similar to a deboss which we love nowadays. What is now viewed as the perfect end result has completely shifted. It was also interesting to hear about the printers themselves sticking lead type behind their ears and stirring their tea with, say 'Times New Roman'!, not only because of the digital era we live in, but because of the lack of knowledge back then regarding lead poisoning.
I especially loved hand-setting my lines of type in the composing stick and adjusting my 'leading' with, you guessed it – varying pieces of lead! I also loved the process of choosing a Pantone colour and mixing different inks together with a spatula to make a PMS colour from scratch. Usually you'd weigh the breakdown of inks on a digital scale, but we simply guessed it. I found mixing inks very therapeutic and quite hypnotic! It was fun 'inking the plate' and, whilst pedalling, watching the rollers even it all out (although we did have to remove some thick ink ‘skin’ during this process). As beginners, we became friends with what we called the ‘hand brake’, used in order to place our paper perfectly for each press.
We proudly walked away with some newfound skills and knowledge, as well as an appreciation for the amount of time, patience, and back-breaking work printers endured before offset and digital printing took over, (not to mention our amazing set of letterpress cards that we pressed ourselves onto beautiful 100% cotton-rag paper!)
Here’s what I got up to...
I chose 6pt & 8pt Times New Roman. Spot the uppercase & lowercase letters...
My completed type in one of Doug’s beautifully hand-crafted composing sticks.
Checking to see if I spelled everything correctly via a mirror.
The composed type is neatly locked into a chase with ‘quoins’ which are expanded with a quoin key to tightly lock in the ‘furniture’.
The chase is placed in ‘Wendy’ ready for printing.
We used sticky tape, scrap paper and trial and error to set up the paper registration.
My im’press’ionable type. A perforation tool was actually used here to create the dotted lines.
A UV lightbox exposes our photopolymer plates for 15 mins. It is then placed in a water bath where we wash the unexposed areas thoroughly... Here's my plate we prepared earlier...
We were shown a fresh tub of ink versus an older tub of ink. With older ink, a hard 'skin' of ink forms on top of the fresh stuff. You just 'peel' this back a little to expose the fresh ink.
INKING WENDY & PRINTING OUR PLATES
Correctly operating Wendy required my complete concentration as evident in my determined facial expression! I'm holding the ‘hand brake’ just in case...
My finished letterpress masterpiece!
(Thanks to my study buddy Clare for her contribution to this post)
