Brian Allen offered a letterpress class last weekend and six of us spent a day delving into the mysteries of printing. Brian is a master printer and his studio is equipped with several presses, an extensive library, endless cases of type as well as various strange and wonderful machines. Along with the actual instruction that culminated in student projects, Brian kept us fascinated with ongoing commentary that encompassed print shop vocabulary, the history of printing and type design, the state of printing and book arts today, what to expect if you want to buy a press, as well as learning opportunities in the triangle and beyond.
We each set up and printed a short piece of our choosing. Since we could only print one at a time , Brian encouraged us to get playful and set up and print some wooden type. You see my effort above. I'm pleased with it.
I chose to print the two-line refrain from Yeats' poem, "The Long-legged Fly". I have been coming back to this poem over and over in the last few months and I'm glad to do a little homage by printing these lines. It was pure chance that Brian handed me a case with a Celtic typeface. It might have been a bit of an affectation to choose it for Yeats, but since the Irish poet and the Celtic typeface were paired randomly, I will credit a fortunate happenstance and enjoy the effect. Here's what my effort produced:
We each set up and printed a short piece of our choosing. Since we could only print one at a time , Brian encouraged us to get playful and set up and print some wooden type. You see my effort above. I'm pleased with it.
I chose to print the two-line refrain from Yeats' poem, "The Long-legged Fly". I have been coming back to this poem over and over in the last few months and I'm glad to do a little homage by printing these lines. It was pure chance that Brian handed me a case with a Celtic typeface. It might have been a bit of an affectation to choose it for Yeats, but since the Irish poet and the Celtic typeface were paired randomly, I will credit a fortunate happenstance and enjoy the effect. Here's what my effort produced:
I printed five sheets -- that is, I produced an edition of five. Three are on heavy stock, but two are on slightly lighter weight paper. I folded one into a Turkish map fold and made a little book for it. I found an image of a long-legged fly from a nineteenth century garden book and inkjet printed it to the cover and the back of the mapfold. It turned out to be a nice little book.
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