Letterpress workshop

Today I taught another Letterpress workshop. I was lucky and had a lovely group of students who were all eager to learn, and work in teams and as always it was a great experience for me too!

Locking the type into the press... it's always quite the puzzle..

I think at some point their were 14 hands working on this all at the same time.. .AAAAAHHH :) I don't know how we did it but it worked!

Explaining different non-toxic ink options. Introducing Akua inks.

Introducing Hawthorn Inks (Lindseed based).

Setting up the inking system on the Vandercook.

In this workshop we did use Handschy Lithography Inks to print the type, but we cleaned up with Estisol and soap and water, instead of Varsol. Thank god for not having to deal with the stinky toxic solvent!

Adding more ink.

Students typesetting.

Because we were printing many different types of letters and fonts, and old warped wood as well as lead type we had to touch up our inking with a little hand roller.

First round of proofing and explaining how printing works at the same time... :).

Not too shabby for a first proof, we had some trouble with the lead font, more pressure was needed.

Then all the students printed their own. :)

We printed three students at the same time with the first one, and 4 students at the same time the second round.