April 12.
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.
Relief Printing: In this technique, the artist sketches a composition on a block of material and then cuts away pieces from the surface, leaving a raised area which will receive the ink. A roller is then used to apply ink to this raised surface and the image is transferred to paper with a press or by hand burnishing or rubbing. Since the recessed, cut-away areas do not receive ink, they appear white on the printed image. Relief prints are characterized by bold dark-light contrasts and an impress into the paper of the inked lines. The primary relief techniques are woodcut, wood engraving, and linocut.
In practice, the letterpress also includes other forms of relief printing with printing presses, such as wood engravings, photo-etched zinc "cuts" (plates), and linoleum blocks, which can be used alongside metal type, or wood type in a single operation, as well as stereotypes and electrotypes of type and blocks. With certain letterpress units, it is also possible to join movable type with slugs cast using hot metal typesetting. In theory, anything that is "type high" and so forms a layer exactly 0.918 in. thick between the bed and the paper can be printed using letterpress.
Letterpress printing was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century to the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century. Letterpress printing remained the primary means of printing and distributing information until the 20th century when offset printing was developed, which largely supplanted its role in printing books and newspapers. More recently, letterpress printing has seen a revival in an artisanal form.
After speaking to Gen at bookmarks, I made a booking for an induction for Letterpress printing. We started by printing smaller text, my name on some card stock with printed patterns. I learned how to place the type and set it in place. Gen then showed me how to ink the plate. The lever to press the type set against the paper was much heavier than I had expected.
After that, we tried the other letterpress. This time I went for a different font and larger type. I picked two different shades of red for the ink. I started rolling them out, at first, I wasn't rolling the roller, and the ink just wouldn't spread. It took me a few tries before I got both colours rolled out. After rolling them out, I went for a two-tone look, colouring the 'dragon' and the top border with the brighter red and the bottom of the ampersand and 'magic' and the bottom border a darker red. I tried printing that, then tried to randomly put some of the other colours on each other, just seeing what effect it would have. I wasn't trying to mix the inks, but rather layer them. I did quite a few prints with different colours and layers. I changed the spacing based on how the prints looked and moved the type around to centre it.
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