I was initially hesitant about the print workshop, mostly because it’s difficult to imagine a creative and enjoyable space in the basement of Dunham. I ended up really, really enjoying the process. I wasn’t expecting the process to be as labor intensive as it was–going through and finding each letter, arranging them, transferring them onto the printing press, preparing the ink, getting the ink on the rollers, printing proofs, and then printing a second set of proofs took a lot more time than I would have imagined. Having always considered the print revolution as a huge step into modernity, it was surprising to see how slow and manually dependent it was from a modern perspective. I really appreciated the opportunity to try the process myself, however, and I’m definitely a lot happier with the takeaway product than I was after the last workshop.
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It was surprising to see how manual the printing press was, even though I think Prof. Rippeon said that back in the day it would have been called automatic. When I heard the word “printing press,” I imagined a huge machine that stamped things onto pages, one after another, with a bunch of steam coming out of different parts. I had only seen illustrations of printing presses before this class, so I think I impressed my 21st-century technological views onto thoughts about how they actually worked. I’m glad that using a printing press is actually a pretty tactile process!