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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Vintage ornaments and lead type - showing spacers |
Over the last few days Fiona and I have spent a few hours each day in the letterpress studio. I had committed to doing an alphabet of bookmarks using 24pt Excelsior font - a cursive font surrounded by very old and slightly worn border ornaments you see in the photo above.
To produce 180 bookmarks it probably too me roughly 9-10 hours. What took much of the time was changing over the 26 capitals of the alphabet; and making sure they were centred properly and held firmly with different sized spacers. Each time I would do a test run and adjust the location of the letter if necessary - you can see in the photo below my tests - both sides of the paper was used to minimise waste.
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Ornaments and type locked up in the Adana chase |
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Testing!!!! |
I used a formula for each letter of the alphabet that I found on the internet - advice given by a jewellery maker regarding the letters that sell in a hierarchy from Hot down to Quite Rare. See the pages of my work book below - I needed to print about 130 bookmarks but building in extras for possible blemishes I printed 180.
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Calculating the number of bookmarks I needed to print for each letter |
Anyway the photo below shows the 180 completed.
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Quite a stash of bookmarks printed and drying |
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - The beauty of multiples |
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - You can see the worn edges of the ornaments when the photo is enlarged |
And because I had the ornaments set up, ink on the press and 12 blanks I decided to put a 24pt ornament in centre and print a few decorative bookmarks - Fiona suggested I print both ends that way folk could put them into a book either way and still have a decorative end showing.
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Double ended bookmarks |
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| ©2020 Barry Smith - Beautiful vintage square 24pt piece of ornament |
This was a good printing exercise as it gave me lots of practice in locking up and using spacers.
It’s fiddle and frustrating but great fun. Remember that perfection is too easily achieved with digital printing, so a few flaws prove that it’s made by a human ;) xx
ReplyDeletebrilliant idea to print both ends of the bookmarks ... and I love how the ornaments play so well together!
ReplyDeletebe well ...
Love seeing the process with all of the thought and planning required. Beautiful results!
ReplyDelete