The next book of Silences

I have found both the brain space and time to start on the second book of Silences. I sat down and discovered that past-me had been very good and cut all the pages, the end sheets and the covers for the second book; and that she had also done the stitched line pen marks on the cover as well, so all that present-me had to do was print! Ha ha.

I thought I would get a run at a couple of prints, but first up I did have words with the more recent-past-me who as she packed up the studio had pulled apart the chase that she had used to print the first book. 

This was not a total disaster; but it did mean present-me had to spend some time trying to find a photograph of the set-up and then try to re-build it such that the books could be printed looking very much the same as the first ones by getting all the spacing and alignments right.

Funny the things you think about under pressure - I was clearly trying to be tidy, when in fact I made my life a bit trickier.

I did however manage to re-build it and here is the table with work about to begin.

Not the traditional way to set type; but it works for me when I am trying to replicate the location of the type on  page. Here I am using an awl to hold back the type so it doesn't fall into the space whilst I get the next spaces and letters.

The first silence set!

And printed...

One down, only fifteen to go! Plus a title page or two, a colophon, and a thank you page; but we have begun!

Finishing and beginning

Happily I got to sit and write my rainbow words with a much better blue-indigo colour and I am really happy with the result (compared to this too-dark-for-me indigo version here).

believe looks quite different from breathe colour-wise; and a nice step up from the blue of beauty.

So there are now two completed sets of rainbow daily words done. 

As I polished B's bowls today, I got an absolute sense of satisfaction and completion of the first real job I had done here in the new scaled down studio space. Yay.

Here they are, scattered in the first bowl.

And in the second bowl. And a bit of a close up too. This second bowl is much deeper, and more worn, but very lovely.

As we organise ourselves and our online shops, these bowls and words will soon to be for sale. I will let you know when we go live.

And to more beginnings...

I took the chance over the weekend to print some more grief cards, after the order that went out last week.

I cut some paper down to make the cards and grabbed the chase that already had the type set in it and went about printing the inside wording. It felt so good to be able to print again! I also managed to get the front page type printed, but am yet to complete the illustration. So another beginning has begun!

Proofing that the type was straight and the right distance from the bottom, and also the right distance from the end of the card.

And then I thought I might start testing a new card. You can see three proofs in this photo.

No. 1 (in the middle) shows that I decided that the second line of type should move to the right a bit. It looked as if the capital G had a bit of a non printing bit; and I was surprised to have picked up a non-italic 's' from the tray!

No. 2  (top) I liked the line positioning and then saw for the first time that I had the 's' in breaks upside down! Had totally missed that in the first proof.

And then No. 3 (bottom)is just right...

Endings, beginnings, finishings and beginning again. The life of a maker. 

A Letterpress print play day

On Thursday we happily hosted a group of 6 artists/printmakers from Brisbane for an introduction to Letterpress printmaking. They were a great bunch of women, co-ordinated by Sandra Pearce of Art From The Urban Wilderness - a community art centre in Brisbane, and together we managed to learn heaps, laugh a lot, print some great things, eat a delicious lunch, share birthday cake and experiment! It was a full day and full of joy as well.

Here are same happy snaps of the day.

Talking about letters that could go either way, and how to work out what is the bottom of the letter and what is the top - here you can see the N is upside down and would print differently to the O - making the line line of print look wobbly.

Barry joined us after lunch and was a mighty help!

Getting the alignment right.

Deep in conversation about something!

A good example of how a letter placed upside in the chase, prints above the base line of the rest of the type...ss in darkness.

However, the printmakers liked it that way and kept printing! Three pairs of printers made three postcards and we all shared them. 

Selecting wood type for the galley press printing. We had a lot of fun with this random layout of ransom-note letters and numbers and punctuation.

Towards the end I got to play with it too, and here I scrunched up some tissue paper, and filled the gaps around it with some small off-cuts. I loved the result - the fracturing of letters when I straightened the tissue paper out.

And finally, an ingenious solution to how to transport an open tub of cream back to Brisbane safely - a glove, of course!

More printing and proofing

 My book of silences continues to take small steps forward, and to date no major dramas, just the odd problem to solve and sort.

Whilst waiting for some ink to dry, I got the 18pt Univers out and got the title ready - although this is not the layout of the title page, I have it out, ready to go when the chase is finally free from the 16 silences that are making up the first book.

At the moment, the plan is for an edition of 21, so I am printing 25 just in case...

These great little drying racks also offer some wonderful paper moments!

As I have previously mentioned, there is a fair bit of imposition and alignment to get right. I was trying to check whether the silence on the front and the back of the page had printed at about the same height, and thought - oh its such a great sunshiny day I am sure I'll be able to check out there, And I did.

I am happy here that the top lines on each sides line up.

And here I was hoping that the where I had to print on both sides would broadly line up as well, which I think it has.

And just what a great sky it was. So good for soul to feel warm again and to enjoy the bright light that is Australia in Spring and Summer.

And it is definitely doing magical things with my Dad's orchids as well!

The proof is in the proofing

 This will possibly be a pretty boring blog post about proofing, but I have begun to print the silences for my book of silences and am taking it all very seriously!  I really want this book to work and there is a lot of imposition and alignment to get right, so I can't be too casual about where things go on the page.

In part, because I am using other people's silences, I feel it is particularly important to honour them.

I have tried to think my way through lots of things and am hopeful I can progress smoothly. There will always be hiccups; but I would rather avoid pile ups!

My first proof print of my first silence. I wanted it to be 10mm from the folded gutter, and it was 12mm. Easy to sort. But I looked at the l on love and wondered - is that an l or is it a capital I? 

It would be an easy mistake to have made if I was dissing type so I went into detective mode and collected both an l, and an I, and the original piece of type in the chase. The photos are not too clear, but I was checking the width of each piece of type.

And sure enough, the piece from the chase was one of the wider pieces, which meant it was a capita I. I felt rather chuffed that I had noticed, and also solved the issue.

The top piece shows it with a correct l in place.

Every silence is being proofed, and a couple of them have definitely had moments!

This one's only real problem was layout, and was easily sorted.

This one had an upside down s! Which in other circumstances I might have rather enjoyed, but not here.

And with this one I had completely left out the word 'in'! Had I been writing a small poem, I could have left the word 'with' out as well and it might have worked, but I really need to reflect the words properly.

Sorted now.

It has been a good time. All the pages are cut plus many more for just in case...

The covers are cut and the end pages are cut. 

The imposition and layout have been decided and now I am printing. 

Because most folios need to be printed on all four pages, it will take time to ensure that the ink has dried in between printings. 

I am enjoying going slowly and letting it unfurl.

These brilliant, bold and bright images are close ups of waratahs. I love the varied wild and curly parts!

Small steps making books

 The small steps needing to be taken along the way of this small edition are happening. Slowly. I am making a book about silences, and it is hard to come up with thinking and thoughts and design ideas that support silence and make the book feel silent in a way. It's an interesting struggle.

I was testing out a couple of white pens here, to see how they performed on the chosen cover paper.

And then seeing how they perform on the white Magnani Map paper for the inside pages. White on white can be hard to get right, but this gel pen feels close to what I am trying to achieve.

And so I spent more time in the studio today cutting pages. I am now up to 200 sheets ready to become folios and pages. Only 125 to go. Spending extended periods of time bent over cutting and trimming paper isn't great for your back, so I stopped after a while and turned my mind to how the words might print.

I will try to set up a chase so that all I have to do is slip the text in and out whilst the remainder of the furniture and leading stays in place for easy printing. Hopefully as easily done as said!

And so I began setting the first silence.

Either I grabbed the wrong letter or I had put it in the wrong part of the case, but this is why we proof!

Got it right this time I think.

Now I am thinking about the spacing between the words, and the lines and wondering if they all need to breathe a bit more. A problem for later in the week!

It has felt like Spring on more days than not this week, and the flowers are beginning to really burst in the garden, and in the house...