Virgin No More

There were eight of us neophytes in the class Wednesday night, seven young women and one young man. (And I mention young because all, including the instructor, are far younger than I, so I truly felt my age as I entered and took a seat at the table.) It took a while to locate the Letterpress studio on the fifth floor of the Cooper Union Foundation Building but yes I finally found it, identifying it by the row of Vandercook proof presses it held.

A short introduction, then we gather around the first press in the line as the instructor demonstrates: the rollers, the motor used to turn one of the rollers, the switch for same, the grippers, the foot pedal, the bed where the type is placed, how to ink, place the paper, turn the crank and walk it down the bed, release the paper, take it back, and now it's our turn. The lone male, the only student who had allowed as how he'd done some printing before, was first to have a go, then the rest of us in line. I was last -- and almost wasn't at all. As I stepped up to take my turn, the instructor started to explain how we were going to proceed: I stopped in my tracks, startled, wondering if I'd forgotten to remove my +25 Cloak of Invisibility, when a chorus arose: hey, you missed one. The instructor blinked. He apologized. I stepped up. I placed the paper under the grippers, took a deep breath, turned the crank, walked it down all the way, pulled the sheet off the roller, smiled. A virgin no more, and it didn't hurt a bit. So I did it again.

Then we were paired up and let loose among the fonts and cuts. This was the fun stuff: no clients to please, no specs to adhere to, we were as happy as preschoolers in a sandbox. Before us were a zillion choices: what to do, what to do? Mainly I deferred to my partner, an artist with a studio in DUMBO, as she seemed to have some definite ideas, while I would have just grabbed this that and the other thing and mushed it all together without caring about anything but getting to the Vandercook and walking that roller down the bed. So we got something together (I must admit it was an odd sort of something, and anyone who knows me knows I do like odd!), got it placed, though a bit haphazardly, in the bed, chose an ink, inked up the roller and the type. And looked doubtfully down at our handiwork: the "E" wasn't inking up right; how could we be sure where our masterwork would end up on the paper? The instructor came around to ask how things were going. We pointed to the type, asked our questions. He peered at our attempt. Oh, we can fix that, says he, just go ahead and print it first and I'll show you what we do. And off he went to see what was up with another pair of students.

My partner stood at the crank. Paper under the grippers. A doubtful look at the type bed. Hand on crank. I'm scared, she says, ever so softly but looking at me. Oh the paralysis of perfection, how I recognize it! I smile, only slightly alarmed by her hesitation: you gotta do it, I say, it's only ink and paper. Roll it. And she does. Ah, our masterpiece, how horrid it was: it sat in the bottom right of the paper, not all there, and the E barely printed at all. Still, nobody had died, and the instructor soon came along to help us out of our mess. It was not long before we had our very limited "edition" of 2. I'd have done more but that was enough for my partner, she wanted to take a crack at something else. We washed up the type and returned to the drawers for something else. Again, I deferred to my partner as she tried out the really big wooden letters, finally spelling out the word HAY. I suggested some smaller letters above spelling out MAKE. So we were off and running again, except that here we ran into the old A-Y bad kerning bugaboo. This did not sit well with my partner. We hastily reworked the piece into "MAKE HA" and pulled out another edition of 2.

And then it was time to wash up the press -- three hours had somehow passed in the space of, oh, ten minutes or so. And, though we washed up ourselves as well as the press, both my partner and I went home with a spot of bright blue printer's ink on an arm. I wasn't aware of mine until the next morning at work, when bossman says Is that ink on your arm? Egads, I look and there it is, so bold and bright you would think I hadn't washed at all! So, hey, I do work in the printing industry after all -- the pressmen will have something to clean that up, and they do: it's called benzine. Eeeks. But it does the job. This stuff'll kill ya, sez the pressman as he hands me a rag and the evil chemical. Yeah yeah, sez I, I'll take my chances. No, really, he insists, and I walk off toward the bathroom to apply soap & water to my now clean arm. What the hey, a lady's gotta do what she's gotta do: what's a drop of solvent among the thrills of ink and paper? Roll 'em.