Spent a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon helping out at Stephen Fowler’s drop-in rubber stamp workshop at the Arnolfini in Bristol. It was busy all afternoon, and by 5 o’clock two huge paper-covered walls were decorated with an array of beautiful stamps. Really inspiring to see everyone’s work and the excitement it generated - the instant gratification of rubber stamps seems to appeal to all ages.
Revisiting roller prints
Chopping, folding and stamping onto roller prints (from a workshop with Stephen Fowler a couple of years ago). I can feel a series of these coming on as I have a large pile of roller prints languishing in my plan chest - they may finally have a purpose!
Set in Stone
The original lithographic stones found in the stores of the M-Shed in Bristol.
My chosen litho plate which I scanned to print acetates to create photo-polymer stamps.
Embossed book cloth for the front cover - the shape will be filled with a metallic print of the star motif (shown in the next photo).
Gold foil heat transfer – laser printing black ink onto black paper and then running it through a laminator with the foil.
After a fruitless search for just the right green paper for a bellyband (to match the tobacco tin in which the book will sit) I decided to mix and roller my own colour.
Belly bands printed with a photo-polymer stamp of the company name and a metallic heat transfer foil for the seal on the back.
The fiddly job of folding, cutting and sticking 150 rizla papers...
… into a flag book structure.
Set in Stone
Deep in the heart of the M-shed stores in Bristol, over 70 lithographic stones have been stored, gathering layers of dust. These stones, discovered in the blitzed basement of the Mardons printing house, were once used to mass-produce labels of W.D and H.O Wills tobacco, whose products included Golden Virginia and Players Navy Cut.
‘Set in Stone’ is a collaborative project run by Charlotte Biszewski, who has worked with Stephanie Turnbull to transfer the images on the stones onto lithographic plates in order for them to be a starting point for various Bristol artists to create new work. It will culminate in an exhibition, appropriately, at the Tobacco Factory in August - more details to follow soon.
As soon as I heard about this project I was really keen to be involved. Following on from my MA studies, I’m really interested in the idea of taking printed ephemera from the past and preserving it through re-invention. When I picked up my litho plate back in May, I was thinking that this would be a good opportunity to create something non-book for a change, but as I mulled over the potential of the imagery I started thinking of traditional embossed bookcloth, patterned endpapers and creating something that could be contained within a tobacco tin. So that will be a book then.
Pictured here are some photos from the production process, which involved creating photo-polymer stamps, heat transfer foil blocking, embossed book cloth and Hedi Kyle’s flag book structure using Rizla papers. Truly tobacco-tastic!
Rockets and Robots
Preparing for a rubber stamp workshop I’ll be running for MA Printmaking students at UWE next week. Space age stamping - it’s a whole new frontier, with metallic inks and everything!
Pinnable patterns
Had a lot of fun at the last meeting of the Artists’ Book Club at UWE last week - they’d hired a couple of badge makers from Bristol Scrapstore. Great to see some of my rubber stamp patterns transformed into a pinnable format.
New for BS9 Arts Trail
On sale for the first time this weekend will be a new range of hand stamped A6 notebooks - covers were created using a combination of handmade photopolymer stamps and hand carved rubber stamps. Way out in patternsville...
The last batch
After three months of making books for the BS9 Arts Trail, I’m about to bind the final few (phew).
The perils of a momentary lapse in concentration
One silly mistake and a whole book is ruined. Bah.
Stamping sampling
Interesting to see the different results from using the same tiled stamps as a base, and then ‘accessorising’ with other hand-cut rubber stamps.
Pattern pimping
Using rubber and photo polymer stamps to add pattern to Paperchase blank notebooks.