Printing Valentines on the Albion Handpress: 14 February 2015

Gary Price and Fred Voltmer being precise.
The 4th Annual Valentine Broadside Printing event was another rousing success.

The planning started well in advance. The inordinate amount of necessary prep work is painstaking. But to the printers, all of it is fun.

Even on the day of the event, there was a lot of fine-tuning to do.

Grendl Löfkvist and Fred Voltmer being precise.


Above you can see the copper block in the bed with the little red heart visible. The experts are aligning the paper on the tympan.  


Li Jiang inking.
  Inking the block again. Red ink of course.


Penelope Houston getting ready ...

With the frisket closed over the tympan, you can see the paper peeking through. 
Next steps: close it up, roll it under the platen, turn the rounce handle, and pull the bar handle.


Gretta Mitchell and Fred Voltmer.
Here you can see the happy result!


Photo courtesy of Gretta Mitchell.
More happy printers!


Norman McKnight with broadsides. Photo courtesy of Gretta Mitchell.
Norman, with the broadsides from our previous valentine printing events.


Valentines laid out in the SF History Center Reading Room

By the end of the afternoon, production printing filled the room.


Gary Price helping the curious.
Back in the Rare Book Room, everyone waiting to print on the Albion, got to practice on the little Golding "toy" handpress. And of course, we had another capable expert from the American Printing History Association's NorCal chapter supervising the entire process.

It was just another Valentine's Day in Book Arts & Special Collections at the SFPL.

Photo courtesy of Gretta Mitchell.


Happy Valentine's Day!

Watch the video from last year's event.

 


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