Thursday, October 18, 2007

Breakthroughs!

Another day at home with the sniffles, a dry throat, lots of orange juice. I did, however, manage to get out to see Ampersand Duck and her school's fantastic book studio. Much envy!

It was a little surreal to see a full working studio, and talk to people who actually DO letterpress - not just blog about it, have informative websites, or run print businesses and supply stores. Sounds weird, but it's true. I can also understand how it would be so much easier and faster to learn from a course or workshop, rather than picking up information from the web. I've heard a lot of people say that letterpress is just something you can't learn from reading websites and books. I guess it's true to an extent, but if you're determined, you'll find the information you need, it may just take longer.

After quickly seeing &Duck's copies of these two books, I've decided I need copies too! I've now ordered Letterpress: New applications for traditional skills from Paperchain and will order Letterpress Printing: A manual for modern fine press printers from Oak Knoll Press next payday.



After exploring a couple of possible places that could make photopolymer plates for me, &Duck's going to help me by casting my plates from film I'll get made by Monaro Printing in Hume (just around the corner from where I live!). So good to know that I can get it all done locally!

Also, I've been using Yupo paper for tympan paper, for lack of something better. It's been working pretty well, but now thanks to &Duck, I've got some of the real stuff to play with. A good thing about the eight-five: you can use other printer's cutoffs because it's so small. This is a pic of some of the tympan paper with &Duck's student handout packed full of great info.


So it's been a good letterpressing day for me today, even though I haven't touched the Adana. I'm so grateful that there's someone like &Duck in my city! Woot! :)

(Ok, so this post ended up being a mini fanclub tribute to &Duck... sorry! hehe)

1 comment:

Ampersand Duck said...

Next we'll be starting up a Canberra letterpress society! We'd have to hire a pretty big hall, heh.