Monday Methods: Pressure Printing

Today's Monday Method is a printmaking technique, an unusually flexible one. Pressure Printing. 

Pressure Printing is an experimental letterpress technique, done on our Vandercooks here at the Center, in which a low-relief collage is made with thin objects (string, stickers, lace, thread), arranged into a composition and glued onto a sheet of paper. This sheet is paper is fed through the press underneath the sheet of paper you're printing on. In the bed of the press is a type-high block which provides an inked flat of color.

As the paper is fed through the press, it picks up varying amounts of ink from the block depending on the pressure created by the relief collage behind it-which creates an image. Make sense? 

The image that results often has a soft, fuzzy quality to it, like a rubbing, which is unique to it. It's an appealing technique to many who like it for it's improvisational, humble-means-to-an-exciting-end character, and the fact that the end result is often quite surprising.

Book artists like  Barbara Tetenbaum, Julie Chen, Macy Chadwick, Sara Langworthy, and many others have used this deceptively simple technique to create colorful imagery in their work.We occasionally give workshops on this technique,  so be sure to check out our class schedule (www.centerforbookarts.org/classes) to see if one is coming up.

-Sarah Nicholls

Have any stories about printmaking? Want to give us suggestions or comments? Comment on this post, email us at info@centerforbookarts.org, visit us on Facebook (/centerforbookarts) or follow us on Twitter (@center4bookarts). Can't wait to see you there!