Rhinestic's Knick Knacks

Saturday, March 01, 2014

An Enriching Letterpress Workshop with Papypress!

I had an amazing 4-hour session today immersing myself in the world of letterpress at Papypress. The sight of the antique machines really tickled my vintage-love and steampunk fancies.

Ian gave us a short history about his company and a rather comprehensive introduction to letterpress. There were 5 of us in the workshop, and since I came alone, I had one of the three tabletop letterpress machines to myself! But, of course, we did eventually take turns to try the different machines in the end. =) 

The Adana tabletop letterpress - Printing with my custom photopolymer plate

If you remember, I did a cat illustration 2 posts back. Well, I redrew it digitally and sent the artwork to Papypress so that they could get the custom printing plate made. Using this printing plate, I did a number of postcard-sized prints with 3 different colors.


Prints from these tabletop presses will not show much or any 'de-bossing' if the image covers a wider area like my printing plate. To get visible indentation, a much smaller design is more suitable like so.


However, Ian was generous enough to demonstrate the use of a commercial letterpress machine which is able to deliver a big punch of force when printing.

The beautiful Heidelberg Windmill

Ian used my printing plate for demonstration, and all of us were awed by the machine's prowess. It was able to give the most delicate imprint and indentation!

Look at the level of details of the indentation!

I might add more details to the hand-printed letter pressed cards and hopefully, list them on my Etsy shop! 

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