The scriptorium workshop where we got to use a traditional printing press was a lot of fun. Over the summer I had the opportunity in Rome, Italy to attend a week long typography workshop. In the workshop, we also used a kind of letterpress- although the way we went about it was different. Because the workshop dealt in actual prints, meaning acid-etched metal plates, rather than the keys straight onto the paper, the format of the press was different. We put together the keys into the arrangement of text we wanted, added texture to the plate, and literally lit the ground on fire. I have a short video of one of my professors holding up a plate and taking a blow-torch to it. Inside, of course. Europeans don’t have the overly-safe obsessions that Americans do. It was a lot of fun to see how the process worked in both cases, especially since there seem to be many ways to do it and I am very interested in book arts.
