The piano and piano player were no longer in the lobby Wednesday night as I arrived eager and early for class number two at the Cooper Union Foundation Building.
Two apparently was the number of the day, as on the agenda was learning the two separate techniques for 2-color printing on the letterpress. (Although, actually, the techniques would be the same for any number of colors.) One technique, the classic method, calls for two runs through the press, once per color. The other technique, an artist's "cheat," lets both (or more) colors print on a single pass.
Elizabeth, my partner in printing, did not arrive for class, so I was alone on the press. This let me "do my own thing" on the one hand, but made things go truly painfully slowly as there was only one pair of hands rather than two available to lay down the type, figure out the furniture needed to keep everything aligned, ink the press, clean up between colors, re-arrange, re-ink, and so on.
And then, after pulling out the first impression, I realized the wooden letter "P" I'd used was just too broken up to work. I supposed (hoped) it looked a bit artsy and wouldn't have changed it out, but the instructor came by and frowned at that poor pitiful P. So I went searching for a better one, with no luck at all because apparently that font had only the one cap P. I had arranged things just so and was NOT looking forward to unsettling everything, but that P did have to go. I settled on a P (same width but not as tall) from a different font and just called it artistic necessity. Not that the piece was anything but practice anyway ... but it cost me some grief and some time.
I took the "cheater's" way out and used the one-pass technique. It wasn't as easy as it had appeared at first. What you do with the 1-pass is remove (carefully, meaning this involves gloves, rag, a good eye and a steady hand) ink from the letters you want in the second color, then hand re-ink (with a breyer) those letters in the second color. The inking rollers remain up for the printing pass (so they don't re-ink the lettering on the way back), but you DO have to remember to set the lever to "PRINT" or you'll go through the whole thing and end up with a blank sheet of paper. Which I did. Twice.
So, two senior moments. After that, I remembered!
By the time I'd finished with that one pass and had something reasonable to show (certainly not exactly right but at least I could say I'd managed to get something out of the press), just about two hours had passed. Friendly instructor came by. How about doing it the other way now, says he. Wellllll, I averred, trying my best to get out of it, because I knew I'd be washing down the press, removing type, washing down the press, removing & replacing type ... you get the picture ... it looks a bit daunting, since I didn't do evenly spaced lines like your demonstration. Oh, he says, it's not so bad, you can still do it.
So do it I did. Muttering unprintables to myself. I was not at all pleased with the results: there'd not been enough time to be careful enough, I was hurrying just to get it done, and feeling sorry for my sorry self besides. Still, I was glad I'd done it both ways. And I gained a true appreciation for all those letterpress operators who've gone before who had to do all that for a living; and I told the instructor so.
Oh yes, he agreed, nodding. Like my father and my grandfather. Oho, so that's his connection to the printing arts! In New York? I asked, wondering if perhaps I'd heard of their company at some point in my checkered typesetting/graphic arts/printing career. No, no, in Ohio.
So I wouldn't have known anything about them. But I shall genuflect from time to time in that general direction -- no, no, in all the directions of the compass -- just to honor those who've gone before, journeymen printers who produced cards and billheads and memos and posters and books and all manner of commercial printed matter not for art's sake but just to put bread on the table.
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