A friend of a friend asked if Fiona or could check out some old copper printing plates, see below, to see if it was possible to make prints from them. Given Fiona is up to her eyes in exhibition preparation I agreed to clean the plates and run a proof or two off them. The outcome of my endeavours is shown in the opening photo above.
After gently cleaning the plates I cut some quality etching print paper offcuts, dampened them, inked up the plates with water based etching ink and ran them through a small hand press we have. One of the plates is shown below on paper and baseplate of the wee press.
I initially tried using Paynes grey ink but did not get a good proof so I switched to sepia - better outcome.
Whoever created the plates had done a very good drypoint job - some very fine detail as you can see in the photos above. The plate with the cross was not as good as the artist had used an etching process that did not work as well.
The current owner of the plates is now think about next steps - really depends on family connections etc. The task took me a couple of hours - good that Fiona and I have the skills to do small proofing tasks like this.
Sepia certainly has done them justice. Well done!
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