studio project
Birthdayscape 8
Three times we've produced an accordion-fold book as a keepsake for Ellen Steinberg's Birthdayscape. Up to twenty women friends gather in some far off place for a week of rest and relaxation. This year they are 'camping out' on the appropriately named "Isle of Women," just off the coast of Cancún.
This is the 2009 edition.
Each time we've done the keepsake we've tried to push the envelope a bit more. This time we were working on a method for printing pieces longer than the presses we have. Our Vandercook Universal III will print a maximum length of 24". We wanted to go a lot longer so we built the Lead Graffiti "Long Bed" which allwos us to print about 7 feet. The book above is 80" wide on a single sheet of paper printed in one pass.
Below are images from the production of the 2009 edition. You can see the other Birthdayscape book keepsakes we've done at these links.
2007 home building in New Orleans.
To see our blog entry where we show our first attempt at using the press.
The image above shows the paper almost ready for printing. We used a Super White seamless, which is normally used for backgrounds in photography. One of the ways it comes is 9 feet wide by 36 feet long. [We had three half rolls (18 feet long) left over from our 'citizen' photography for the Histories of Newark: 1758-2009 we designed this past year.] The rolls were cut using a radial arm saw to trim the paper to 9" wide. We could get two books out of each.
We did our copywriting to get the text to the right length which was just about 77" wide. It says "2009 Birthdayscape viii: Twenty women and the Goddess IxchEllen on Isla Mujeres." The twenty panels (one for each participant) of the book were 4" (80" total).
The type we used, Antique XXX Condensed, was made by William Page & Company, sometime between 1859 when it first appeared in a specimen book and 1891 when the company was bought out by the Hamilton Wood Type Company. Taking the mean would put the type at 131 years old.
This shows us inking the wood type the first time. After you've done a couple much of it fills in. One of the nice textures you get as you print is the hint from previous runs where you've not reinked.
This shows a closeup of the hand inking. As the group was traveling in Mexico we wanted the text to have both an aged quality as well as a sense of the texture of sand from the beach. As it turned out that texture was almost impossible to avoid because of 120-year old variations in the thickness of the letters.
This image shows Jill with two rollers (blue for the sky and green for a bit of vegetation) moving her way down the type. Ray had already inked the 'sand' areas.
As it turned out we had problems with the color being a bit too dark to write over along with keeping the paper straight. So, after an edition of eight we decided to give up for the day and return to it refreshed the next morning.
Below starts the second try.
The next day's printing went a lot better. We think the floor is flatter in this area versus over the seam you can see in the last photo from the previous day. This shows Jill and Ray the next morning with the C&P proofing roller in place.
In the instance of this project the printing is a three-person job. Jill would get the starting end of the paper under the roller, Ray would hold the paper to be printed and Tray would do the actual printing. Once we got rolling we could keep the paper pretty straight. If you drew a straight line from one end of the baseline to the other we would be within 3/8" over the 77" of type. We think it would help to use wider paper, but we were being a bit stingy as this eats up a lot of paper in a hurry.
We figured out that you cannot pull the paper almost at all as you print. The paper will absolutely be pulled the other way. The best way to do it was to have the roller start on the type and immediately try to take as much tension off the paper as you could while not letting the paper touch the type in front of the roller (which will definitely give you a double image). You want the roller to push the paper onto the type.
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We have a nice hanging rack system that attaches to our 22' ceilings. We ended up printing about 30 to get a good 22. Walking up and down the ladder was exausting after you've done it 60 times. It looked great hanging in our studio.
Below is the type stacked so you can see it in less than a 24" wide image.
Folding was no small task. We trimmed off the top and bottom of the paper with a long straight-edge. We marked every 8" along the bottom. We would then fold to those marks first starting with one end of the paper and then with the other. We were starting to push our deadline and the ink was still tacky. It is hard to do the handrolling we typically do and keep the ink thin. When you double layer ink in different colors it makes drying take longer so we had to put slip sheets between each of the folded panels.
Jill came up with a nice way to tie the books shut. We cut a small notch in both the front and back boards and ran a ribbon through them. It did a good job of holding the back of the book nice and tight.
Jill designed and printed the covers using handset metal type and silver ink. The contrast is subtle, but you can see it at the top of the right book below.
Then we glued the covers to the backs of the first and last panels, added a bit of paper to give it some texture and voila they were off the next morning to Mexico.
We mentioned at the top that we already have plans for improving the design. Here is that schematic.
You need those blocks that run the length of the press to support and push back against the vertical piece. The force of quoins is just too great to simply screw it to the bottom as we did the first time around, especially using particle board. We will definitely use oak in the next version of the Lead Graffiti "Long Bed."