First Day of Letterpress Class

This Tuesday was my long-awaited first day of letterpress class at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia! Our class (which has 8 people, and only 4 newbies) will be learning how to hand set type from their impressive collection of vintage lead and wood typefaces, as well as producing custom designs via polymer plates. And of course we will be learning the ins and outs of their set of Vandercook letterpress machines.

We played a little game where each of us wrote one sentence of a paragraph, and then set out into the studio to choose individual fonts for our sentence.

Composing my sentence upside down and backwards. 

Building our paragraph and making numerous adjustments with spacers and furniture so nothing wiggled.

Applying red and yellow ink to the oscillating roller that would eventually become a lovely shade of orange.

Our first pass! Identifying typos and making adjustments.

Voila: the finished print.