Book Studio

The ANU School of Art is having an Open Day on this Saturday, August 26 from 9am to 4pm, along with the rest of the university.

The Book Studio, upstairs in the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, will be open and operational, and there will numerous activities throughout the Workshop itself, including demonstrations of various print techniques, a print sale, t-shirt sale, plate-drawing stall and a sausage sizzle.

The Book Studio has been printing cloth serviettes to add to the sausage sizzle, cut from white cotton drill and printed with letterpress ink (which, from long experience, does not wash out!). Here are a few samples:

We’ve also printed a few items of clothing, just for fun.

Open Day is a fantastic way to see the School of Art in operation. There are activities happening in all workshops: Printmedia, Photomedia, Painting, Ceramics, Glass, Textiles, Furniture, Gold & Silversmithing, and Sculpture. There is also the judging of the annual Student Drawing Prize in the Gallery, as well as many opportunities to buy or win artworks.

If you’re in the Canberra region, this is a great way to spend your Saturday, no matter the weather.

Recently the Book Studio held two small one-day workshops on letterpress, taught by Caren Florance. Designed as a quick introduction to setting type, each group set a block of type each, had it printed on cylinder proofing press and came away with a few copies of a small chapbook that they could bind at their own leisure. The majority of participants were members of the ACT Craft Bookbinders Guild.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room while they concentrated on getting the right letters out of the typecases…

The first workshop was on Sunday 6 August, with 6 participants. The theme of their chapbook was ‘Ampersand’, with text on the origins and usage of the symbol, with a couple of poems on the same theme.

A freshly printed page, drying on the rack

The second workshop was on Thursday 11 August, with 5 participants, and their theme was ‘Alphabet’. They each set a block of prose or poetry, and Caren filled the centre of the chapbook with an alphabet of wood type.

A proof of an Alphabet page, printed in brown

Because of the limited amount of type, each block of text was set in a different font, but to contain the design we kept the font size at 12pt. The chapbooks were printed mostly on Magnani Laid paper offcuts with a small number on thick Arches paper. Sunday’s class chose to print their type in black, while Thursday’s class chose a dark brown ink.

A 4-page imposition, using a 4-section chase

Participants learned about publication planning, letterpress measurements, setting type, moving type, locking up, imposition, and using the press. Most importantly, they also took the time to put their type away, which is one of the most important parts of the endeavour!

Dissing the type (aka putting it away)

The workshops went well. Everyone worked very hard, seemed to have a good time, and a lot was achieved with just one day. Plans are afoot for more workshops, and possibly a letterpress night course. If you would like to participate in such a course or workshop, please contact the Book Studio by email: eabs[at]anu[dot]edu[dot]au

POSTSCRIPT: Images of the actual chapbooks have now been posted at the Book Studio flickr page. For the ABC chapbook, follow this link. For the Ampersand Chapbook, follow this link.

In 1st Semester 2006, the School of Art Painting Workshop hosted Hossein Valamanesh as an Artist in Residence. During his residency he wanted to work with large pieces of unleavened bread and sought a way of flattening his bread under weights. Somehow his search led him to the Book Studio, and our large drying cabinet. Over the next month or so Hossein became an informal but regular visitor to the Studio, trying different ways to dry, flatten and then mount the pieces so that they could be framed without falling apart.

Hossein used the bread as a canvas to paint with pure saffron mixed to an ‘ink’ with water. He painted very elaborate Sufi calligraphy, spelling the word ‘love’ over and over. When I questioned this, he replied ‘Bread and Love — everybody needs it, every day’. Some of the bread pieces worked, others fell apart, which instigated a whole other way of looking at the work, and will lead to ongoing explorations. Towards the end of his stay, we ate a few pieces of the fragments, and the taste of the pure saffron was such a wonderful experience that he used a number of the pieces as an ‘eat your art out’ feature of his farewell party.

Hossein enjoyed the Book Studio so much that he used the letterpress equipment to produce a small edition called ‘In Praise of the Beloved’, which had two almonds in their shells adorned with fake eyelashes attached to the paper with the title printed underneath in handset letterpress. Deceptively simple, and very beautiful, like so much of his work.

(top image: Hossein at work with saffron while John Pratt prints in the background. Bottom image: bread in progress.)

If books had been invented after the computer, they would have been considered a big breakthrough. Books have several hundred simultaneous paper-thin, flexible displays. They boot instantly. They run on very low power at a very low cost.

Prof. Joseph M. Jacobson, MIT Media Lab, quoted in the N. Y. Times, Apr 8, 1988, page B2.