Letterpress Possibilities: Pressure Printing and Moveable Type

This workshop will provide a wonderful introduction to setting type by hand using the Morgan’s collection of large wood and metal type, learning alternative letterpress processes, and operating the Morgan’s Vandercook presses, the workhorses of letterpress printing. Participants will make prints with text printed from handset type and pressure printing imagery, an experimental letterpress technique used to create textural effects. By the end of the workshop, participants will have created a series of letterpress broadsides or posters. 

Instructor Bio: Wendy Partridge is a letterpress printer, book artist, and paintings conservator. She helped establish and for a number of years was the coordinator for the letterpress studio at the Zygote Press. She teaches several workshops each year on letterpress printing. In 2012 she was awarded an artist residency through Zygote and the Ohio Arts Council to spend five weeks at the Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden, Germany.

Supply List:

Several short texts to set in type (a few words or even single words) 

2 pressure print plates 17” x 12” (Instructions will be sent upon registration)

Adhesive (i.e. glue stick, spray adhesive, tape) 

variety of collage material to make additional plates 

A variety of papers to print on cut to 17” x 12” (different colors, weights, old print proofs or sketches)

Apron