Well, greetings to all participants, wherever you are, are welcome to this webinar.
What's beneath the words? A paper journey with printer David Arms and
book conservator Andrew Honey, hosted by the Oxford Research Centre and the Humanities.
I'm Alex Franklin, co-ordinator of the Bombay Library Centre for the Study of the book. Today
is Webinars about the part of the book that we don't think we are reading the paper that is beneath
the words. But then libraries are very fortunate to have a fully functioning letterpress
workshop on site. It's equipped with several 19th century hand operated cast-Iron
presses and also a 20th century proofing press. We have enough type
for students and keen amateurs to do projects, especially in castling
and belt typefaces faces. And the room is usually used for teaching to schools,
universities and the public. But to help us make the most of the workshop, we
invite creative letterpress artists as printer and residents each year.
In 2017, we hosted Russell Mouret, whose New York based in 2018, Emily
Martin from Iowa and most recently, David Arms, our speaker today, who runs
the Red Plate Press in West Yorkshire. David was at the ball game during November
twenty nineteen. And our next frontier and residents coming in 2021
will become Musgrove, a marker from Amsterdam, the printer in Residence programme brings a creative
printmaker to share their knowledge with the university and with the wider public community who learn at the workshop
and our weekly classes. The best part of it, we think, is that they interact with
the Bell Bay libraries, making work that responds to the collections and takes inspiration from the building,
the history and the people of the building. Before we begin, a bit of housekeeping
for all the participants, we're running for one hour today. Andrew Honey will speak
first and then David Arms and then we'll have time to answer questions. Participants
will notice that your mikes are muted. So please use the Q and A function
with which you can see at the bottom of your Zoom's screen. If you move your cursor down to the bottom
and please type in a question for our speakers during the webinar or while they're actually speaking, please,
and we'll get to as many of these as we can before the end. And also, please, can I
ask you cheque the chat function during the webinar because I'll be able to post useful links
and information there. So now we're joined by David Aames, who's at the Red Plate
Press in West Yorkshire. Hello, David. And we're joined by Andrew
Honey Book conservator in the conservation section of the Balvin Library. Hello, Andrew.
When Andrew and is Andrew going to begin the webinar with presentation
and after that, we're going to hear from David. Andrew Fatu.
Thank you. Thank you. Well. I'm
sure like. Like the rest of you. Lockdown
has been a rather unusual experience for us. And certainly as we've moved
from working in the bottling library to to working at home.
I've been buoyed by being able to follow other people's progress through
social media. And one of the things
that's been sort of slightly disconcerting to that is to see as I floundered and had difficulty
working from home just to see how productive others have been.
One of the most productive people I think I've seen is David Aames from
Red Plate Press, who was printer in residence at the Bodleian Library
at the end of last year. I was particularly interested between
the 1st and the 6th of April days, 12 to 17 of lockdown,
where he was posting on Twitter progress on
a book that he started right at the end of his residency at the body.
And for me, the most exciting thing about it was he was using paper that I'd supplied him with.
It's a small number of full sheets of Oxford, India paper.
And I'm going to talk about a little about that papers by way of introduction. More worryingly,
this was just the day before he seemed to run out of tahini, which was big news
on his Twitter account, however. So. So let me start by
explaining really what I passed over to.
This is a this is a folded sheet of Oxford, India
paper. And I think you can hear that very characteristic rattling
sound from it. This is just from a small supply that
I discovered deep within the bowels of the Botin library many years ago, shortly
after I started working there in our conservation stores. We do not know why
it's there. We don't quite know where it came from. But I identified
it as Oxford India paper. You'll see the water mark in a moment.
And I knew this was a particular paper used in Oxford in the late 19th century
and early 20th century. So I put it to one side. And
I've kind of held onto it ever seen since was only recently
with the start of the printer in residence.
Idea at the bargain that I've started to dribble out a few sheets
thinking that, you know, this is such a precious resource, we ought to really use it.
However, just before I go into that, let let me show you where
you might normally find it. So this is a copy of a book I bought many years ago.
The Oxford Book of English Furse printed in 1943. And it is
again. I'm not sure if you can hear that same crackle, but this very thin, opaque
paper used to print the twelve hundred pages within it.
And it's a book that runs to about twenty two millimetres thick.
By comparison, pulled off my shelves here. This is this is a copy of Anthony
Trollops. The Prime Minister. I picked something fat and again an Oxford well classic.
This runs to 480 pages and he's forty four millimetres thick,
printed in the 1980s on the usual kind of paper that we would expect for a paperback.
Now, it's interesting. This is 40 percent of the pages of the book
of verse, but it is twice as thick. If the Book of
English first was printed on this same paper, it would run to eleven centimetres
thick. So this is a very kind of amazing, opaque,
thin, beautiful printing paper that we're lucky to have a small supply
of. And before I go, I wanted
to show what all David's going to talk about, what he's done with it. Just I'll give you some background
to it.
So here's an image of part of the watermark. It has a repeating watermark. It's a machine made paper
and the watermark, says Oxford, India may not
see any information. It's a way.
Now, if I said this was this was a paper that I found so squirrelled away in our
conservation's stores.
And here's the full watermark. Now, it's an unusual
paper, as I've said. It's the sheets are about 40 inches
by twenty nine inches. A little over a metre by 74 centimetres,
which I've been trying to work out what size it is. And as with everything else in Oxford, it
seems to be an unusual size of paper. Something like a quad crown, which would
normally be 40 by 30 inches. The sheet of paper I rattled,
I weighed, and it comes in at just over
I think it's 18 grams. And that works out as a grams
per square metre of 25. And if you think that the usual sort of photocopying,
paper or printing paper is 80, GSM gives you a sense of just how
thin this is. Oxford
and AUP. In the late 19th century
started to circulate their own origin story about this paper
and the following quote is taken from publicity that they put out in 1896.
And I quote, In the year 1841, an Oxford graduate
is said to have brought home from the Far East a small fold of extremely thin paper,
which was manifestly more opaque and tough than any other paper then manufactured
in Europe. It goes on to explain that this Smalls fold
of paper was enough to print 24 Bibles, though
by the late 19th century, none of these it's known to have survived.
And these sort of extremely thin papers with
them sort of looked back on at some point in the eighteen seventies
and Oxford. They go on to explain that they prompted
them to begin experiments at their war for occult middle paper mill to make a similar
paper. Now, in 1875,
o u p first used what they called Oxford India
paper to print a Bible. And this was such a success that they sold a quarter
of a million copies in a few weeks. And this paper
proved and went on to be this a resounding success resulting in many
Bibles and these sort of works of reference being printed on this thing.
And yet opaque printing paper. So what is it? Is it
Indian? Is it Chinese? Was it made up? Well, the cult. Well, actually, the answer
to all of these is no. And perhaps unsurprisingly, Oxford
and AUP knew this. In 1896.
The paper, in fact, was made in Staffordshire by the firm of Britain's and by.
They started in the eighteen seventies and by 1887
they were supplying 5000, 154 pounds worth of this paper
to AUP in a single year. So why this
unknown, all the little known paper company from Staffordshire
in the mid 18th century, the process of transfer printing ceramics had been developed using
a thin and strong tissue to transfer designs
to biscuit. That
part of the ceramic process. By the 19th century,
these transfer printed were to become enormously popular with Staffordshire as the dominant centre
and also supply trains for them.
This strong but thin paper could be moulded around forms. And you can see the join
of one of these transfer things on the egg cup at the front here.
And Hanley. Was this the source
and the location for Britain's?
Paper mill in Staffordshire.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by this. In the 80s and 70s,
the brother of the manager of the Bible press was married
into Bratten Coke Potters in Staffordshire. So it's understandable
to see these links. But this extraordinary
paper.
This is extraordinary, take up, then take
fantastically you useful for printing these heavy works of reference
fell out of use probably at some time in the 1960s, though you pay
still uses a very thin paper, not as thin for things like dictionaries.
And it's this small supply of paper that I pass to David whilst he
was undertaking his residency at Bodleian.
And it's really at the end of his residency, he was doing other projects that he started to
play with it and play around with it, investing to gain what he could
do with it. And it's exciting to see that this has been completed during
lockdown. I saw it virtually through Twitter. And luckily,
a copy of the finished book has recently arrived through the press. But I'm going to pass
over to David now and he'll explain more.
OK. Thank you very much, Andrew. And thank you again as well for the paper.
It was really interesting to work with it. I'll just give you a very quick introduction to
myself. I'm a visual artist and I work primarily with less press
prints in language and geography. The scale
of the work that I produce ranges, I suppose, from small
artists, books of this kind of this kind of size, right up to large
scale installations working with large rolls
of paper that would originate been used in Web Web offset principally
for this book. For this projects, I made a small
artist book, really for those of you that aren't familiar with artist books.
A good couple of people to investigate research would be Johanna Drucker
and Steven Barratry as well. Both have written a lot about our artists books,
a lot discussion about definitions and so on. But this is a small artist, this book that I produce.
So what I'm gonna do is show you very briefly what I made. I'm going to demonstrate
my press here because this is similar to the press in the Bodleian. Less for
a studio. And then I'm going to talk in a bit more detail about the book itself and how
I made it and how I use the paper. And I'm probably going to finish off just by explaining
a few things about the residency at the body. And I did in a more general terms, because, like Andrew
said, this particular projects are works on right at the end of the residency. When I previously
worked on a large scale project. So as you're seeing from from Andrew,
this is the final final book I made to Cursus. I'll explain more about that in
a moment. And it's a very simple book that uses the Oxford
India paper.
To build a kind of a topographical picture, if you like, I'll explain more about
the type I used and why. In a moment, one
of the aspects of working with this paper is it's quite difficult to open.
As Andrew said, it's only 25 GSM.
So it's difficult to handle. So that's a quick look at the book itself.
I'm going to demonstrate my press here because I don't know how well versed in less press
printing the whole audience is. So I'm going to assume you have a general interest
in print any books, but you may be don't know precisely aspects of this process. So just very
briefly, with my teaching Hartsell, if I angle the screen, he should hopefully
be able to see in my studio here. The press that I use for a lot of
my work here now, this is it's a cylinder proof press,
very similar to the one at the Odlin, which is a Western model of undercook. Number
four, Desprez is an icon built in Copenhagen
in Denmark in 1956. I'm working on the project actually at the moment.
That includes investigating the history of this press. And I've actually been to find out through records
from the Eickhoff company in Denmark where and when it was sold. It was
sold in December 1956 to a printer in Copenhagen, less
than a mile from the factory it was built in. And I went to the site factory last year
as part of this this project I'm currently working on. So it's a cylinder proof
press where the type that you're using sits on a press bed, which is
just here. And then the paper goes round the cylinder. An impression
is taken from the type on that paper and then the paper is delivered
out at the other end. So I'll just demo that very quickly. It's something I've got set up. I've been working on this morning.
So the paper goes into the from the feed board here. This handle
unfolding here turns the cylinder and this presses slightly unusual in that the bed
of the truss moves rather than the cylinder itself.
Papers delivered at the other end. All right, let's take a look around.
Reverse the handle. And the press bed goes back to
the other end.
Not saccharin. This is for a Danish products I'm currently working on. That
is a book to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the Nordic Summer University says 1950 to 2020.
So that's how printing works in this context, at least.
OK, I'm going to explain what I used in the Bodleian
studio to work with the Oxford India paper. Like I said, this
is printed at the very end of the residency there. I always tried to leave a few days at the end of the residency
to work on something more spontaneous and more improvised, sometimes
using some of the materials that I saw in the studio but didn't
get to use in the main projects. I made one of the things that I saw in the modelling studio
were some damage type. Now let's verus type
is made of metal or of wood. There are some that are made of plastic and other pulp polymers, but mainly we're looking
at metal and wood type. And I mainly work with metal metal type.
One thing that can happen with metal type is it can get damaged through being dropped, through
overpressure, through leaving something on top of the press that the senator
hits while you're in the process of printing. All these various aspects
of printing can damage time. I've got some type here from my studio that
is damaged not by me, but it's been damaged in a past life. And this
is similar to the type that used in the body. And for this curses book.
I don't know how well we can see this, but I'm going to demonstrate to you now. OK,
so this is a piece of seventy two point metal type. It's a K, you can
see that. But what's interesting about it is it has here. It has what's
called a kearn. Now, Kurn is a piece of the actual type
that overhangs the body. Okay, so this K here, if I hold it at this
angle, you can see I gave it a plain background. This bit of the K here overhangs
the body and that bit at the time, the Kurn is frequently at risk of damage.
So like this E here. The very top. Here,
the curtain itself has been smashed away. If I hold it next to an F,
which has got the same the same component part of the type, you can see that
the F is still complete and that the EU occur and it's being smashed off. So
at the Bodleian, they have a case of caslen italic type.
I think it was sixty point. And within that
case, there was a lot of smashed type. And I thought most of the time because
in the body and they produce books and they're talking about the history of print going back centuries
with the students. And they're often talking about fine print.
And I thought, wouldn't it be nice to use this type that's partly broken instead
of people ignoring it because it's broken and it won't. They want some of the right words. They won't look
good. Why don't I take all of those neglected pieces of type and put them
all into the same book? And so essentially, that's what that's what curses
is. So on this page, the first page of the book, these are all the pieces,
the damage type that I found in the Bodleian. Let's press studio. OK.
They're turned on one side, obviously. So if I turn the book ninety degrees, you can see the actual
letterforms. OK, I've turned them that way because I wanted to see
them more as as symbols rather than letters that you might normally recognise. I've been
trying to research lately a lot. I see Mick writing, which is literally writing without any semantic content
or value. And this seemed to fit with that idea.
So I'm going to show you. Rather than trying to do on screen now, I'm going to show you
some better quality photographs that I've taken. This is the technological part
of the presentation. See if I can make it work. Share screen.
OK. It looks to me like that's worked. Hopefully it has to this just so you can see the
pages of the book a little better.
So what I did was I over printed all those broken pieces of stuff. I
threw the book. So the first page there are six pages because that was the amount of paper
I had to decide how to cut the paper up and draw. And he gave me five sheets. It's in short supply, so I
had to decide how to economically cut the paper. And so I ended up with with six
pages, essentially that could be folded to make a reasonable quantity of these books.
It's an addition of 15. So this six pages and the type
is over printed one more printing at a time through the book. So page
one. Each character appears once. Page two.
Each current set up is twice. I move the position of each character through the book.
So you have this gradual overprinting of the
forms of the letters. The letter forms through the book as page three. Page four. They gradually
start to get more dense and start to get more mixed. Page five.
And then page six, where they're moving so much amongst themselves that they.
It's hard to tell that they're still letterforms. OK.
Just some close ups as well. One of the
aspects of Princeton on this this paper, it's incredible stuff to
work with because it's it's very thin. Twenty five GSM. So it's very
difficult to handle. You saw me earlier struggling to open the pages of the book.
It feels very precious and delicate to handle, which I like
the fit there with the fact that it was often used for printing Bibles and so the sacred nature
of certain texts. That's interesting. The care that you have to handle handler with
another interesting factories in less suppress printing these days, always being.
Well, there is currently more recently a debate around the amount of pressure that one should use to
print with whether or not you should try and print just the kiss impression, which traditionally
was the way that you should have printed, or whether people like the kind of
decompression that you get with wedding invitations or business cards these days. And there's this
debate around it. I'm not going to go into that. You can look at it. But using this paper,
I really could only print with the KISS impression because
it's so thin you can't print it any deeper impression. People who do wedding invitations,
business cards are printing on 200 GSM upwards 300 GSM. So it's really thick cardboard
that you can print into. You can't do that with this paper that you have to be careful and delicate with it.
And you also have to be careful and delicate in the way I use the press just then in feeding the paper
round the cylinder, because it quite easily wafts away and wafts around and you can end
up with a mangled piece of paper somewhere attached between your ink and your type. And a
great big mess. So you have to be very careful handling it.
These final ones are just some scans, so they're just they're just higher resolution images. The lines that you
can see in the paper that maybe some people would say, you
know, you they should be regexp pages. All the sheets were a bit like that because like Andrew said,
they were very old. They've been in storage for a long time. They all have some marks of having been in storage. So
there's these lines across the paper. I don't mind about that. That's fine for me.
And I also like the opacity, see? You can see there that because
the the amount of density of an image builds up through the book. You can actually
see some of the type coming through from the back of the previous page. In the early
pages. There's much less of that, but gradually as you build up, you
can see a little bit more that the opacity of this paper is fascinating because you would have wanted to print
on both sides of the paper. And you've been wanting to read both sides of the paper. If you were Princeton, you know,
a Bible, for example. So that's some closer images of the work itself.
I don't know if I have too much more to say, but actual book, because Andrew and I are going to come back and have a conversation. But I also thought
it might be useful if I just wrap up my part of this presentation by showing you the main piece
of work I made as Prince or residents of the Bodleian. I was there for a month in total
and the Kirsty's book only took it last, took three days of my my time there. And then I bounded
back in my studio here. But the main project I came to the body in2 to print
resulted in this print. She's caught between some turns. It's part of a series
of what I'm calling the moment text landscapes. It's the fourth in the series and they're all made on residencies
and they are made in response to a place or landscape. What's found? There
are a work block with oral histories and conversations
and signage. Research into
that place. Photographs, all the aspects of the place I draw
on to produce a piece of work. So this is the final print. It's about
15 runs through the press. So there's an added amount of layering and colours
that go on there to create this. This overall effects. And it's made through the process, if you like.
One of my one of the artists I'm most interested in is work with Ken Campbell.
He makes artist books and he talks about finding the form of the
book through the process. And on the bed of the press. So
that makes sense to me in the way that I work. And I find that the form of this
this work through the process. So I don't know what it's going to look like at the end.
I only know a rough shape or form from sketches that I make beforehand.
But each layer I put down in the print influences the next one.
This is the kind of research that I would do on a project like this. This was a map exhibition at the Bodleian when I was there.
And I take a lot of photographs and walking around the city and I'm looking at I guess I'm looking at shape
or colour form textures.
And aspects of all of these work into the final print. Oh,
that's useful. That's an image of the Kirsty's book being printed on the press.
It shows you that the press, the press in the body and studio similar to mine. So this is how
I work on a project like this with a notebook full of research, conversations,
oral histories, gradually working together. While I'm setting the type.
That's the better the press a couple of shots about.
And this shows a little bit when at some point through the process, how I reached
the next stage. Each time I might prove Prince. New elements that
I've been working on and then cut them up. And arrange them on
the layers of the print, they've already been made to work out where the next layer should go.
And this is number four in that process. And I'm hoping after lockdown
finishes and we could be looking at twenty, twenty one now that I'll be moving on to the next the next residency
projects that will result in the next iteration of this Sprint series.
And I think. That's everything that I had to say in my presentation.
That leaves you with that final piece of work. And I think Andrew is going to come back in now and we'll have
a conversation. And he'll also talk about some of the other Frances residents who use
this same type of.
Thank you, David. That's fascinating. Fascinating to see. Well, to remember back to last
November, that seems such a long time ago now look. But
extraordinary to see you sort of wrestling and thinking
around this paper. I mean, I when I first found it in our store room, I
sort of like. Our first thought was, you know, this is
the important stuff, we ought to keep hold of it and look after it, and it's only now I'm realising
we've got something like 50 sheets of it that slowly it's interesting to see
how people and how, you know, those that are
have a kind of working knowledge of printing, how they might respond to it.
So I'm going to come back to you and ask you a bit in a moment how actually using it might
affect your work in future. But before I do that, I want to just show you share a
couple of photos with with others on some work by Emily Martin.
Emily was the printer in residence in 2018,
and I did the same thing. I sort of snuck a few sheets of this paper to her
towards the end of her residency. She took it back with her to Iowa and
produced a small book and then luckily sent me a copy.
But if I can just show you a couple of photos.
So not my egg cups again, but actually. So here is the book. And she
called it crosswords. And it's again, it's a small artists book.
And let me just show you a couple of things. So that's the the first opening from it. She's also
using end leaves, which is a form of ham, a paper that that I passed on to her.
And then his picture of the cover. And
her description of the process. And what she was doing with it.
And I think Alex is going to put some some links in the chat. If you go to Emily's
Instagram and website, it explains more about its.
And then very. Yeah.
One of the final openings of it, and it's interesting that Emily was
was using it almost like a Chinese book, printing on a double leaf. So it folded
in again, questions around thickness and ease of using
it. And can I just add what I was asking whether she would
be happy for me, chef? Photos with a switch, which she was. She also wrote
something very interesting in the email that came back to me. And I'll just read it out to you now.
I've I've had crosswords on my work table where I see it regularly since I finished
it. She writes, The paper is so specific, thin, strong,
opaque. It was not nearly as hard to print on as I thought before I started.
My main issue was the static electricity would hold it to the timpani. And I had
to be careful when removing it. I think I would handle it differently, using
it again. Having used it once. I'm not sure I took full advantage
of all its qualities. I doubled the sheets with French phones in the book to get more heft to
the pages. Even in that little book, I didn't quite grasp how opaque
the paper was. It's interesting. This is another comment you've come
mentioned. She ends by saying, I thought I needed to compensate for the size
and blackness of the type I was using.
So with. Emily Martin's
thoughts bringing Arias. Can I ask the same sort of questions to you? I mean,
having used it once now, do you think it will affect how you print in future?
And if you which you use it again? Are there things you'd like to investigate further?
I mean, might it prompts you to work differently?
Yeah, I think so. It was a couple of people just looking, the Q and I commented in
there about their approach using this kind of paper. I think it was a prince who was talking
about using elevon GSM paper.
Emily mentioned, as you said, that Emily Martin said that she didn't
find it difficult to work with the she thought she might find it. Which is interesting.
I've never worked on anything this thing, and I've never really used Japanese papers in much of my work,
for example. So for me, I was really cautious about using it because I didn't
know how I would handle it. It slowed the process
down. I mean, letter press is known to be reasonably slow process anyway,
but it slowed the process down even further because I knew that there was
a risk of the static risk of it, of it holding it simple and not not being released.
I didn't quite know what it would do when it hit the type. I think that if you
Caslon I'd used has quite a relative is quite thin,
thin stroke and typeface. So there's more natural, positive area. Your printing
is very small in comparison to the negative area. That's not printing. I think if you tried to print this,
I don't know how it would work if you tried to print wouldn't type. With this, I've got a piece of wood
around here. It has a much larger surface area. Just looking around
my studio to see what I've got.
So this is a piece of wood type. And as you can hopefully see, natural surface area
is much greater than a piece of metal type. So the honest answer to
that question is, I don't know what that would do. I'd be worried that as you printed as the paper hit
the pipe, it would just stick. There's that risk. So be careful with the amount
of ink years or more care than you would normally use. Perhaps
is part the part of that process. I've been
because of lockdown. I haven't ordered any more of this toxic paper. I've been looking at where I can
order it from in the UK. You think, Shepherd, it's up some in stock, but I've been
wary of ordering anything during jury lockdown. But once we a little further down the
line, I'm going to order the biggest stock of this paper and work with it some more.
It was great to get those five sheets from you, but I was
I was really keen that there was some outcome from using those sheets that I didn't basically didn't mess them all
up, basically with lots of experiments that might have been useful
and interesting, but would have resulted in a great big massive on the floor of the end.
So I guess I went I was cautious with it. I wanted to do something that was a finished piece of work
at the end. So I think if I have next time around, I use it. I will be a lot more
experimental with it and see how it handles on different conditions. A lot
of a B testing around like what if I use, you know, this much? What if I use this much pressure?
What if I use this wood type? How does it handling the different conditions?
I want to do a lot of looking at that. And
I think a lot of my work involves involves overprinting and layering. So that's another
aspect that I'd want to test. This was an interesting test because the last page of the book lays up six
overprinting of ink. And by the end, there were some characters that were not not
coming out perfectly. I think you've had more time. I would have tried to correct some of those issues,
but that's OK. To me, it was an experimental part of the process.
Well, I'd be interested to see what what happens with multiple over principles through the process, because obviously
it's I'm presuming that it's original intention would have been that it's for printing
on books. So each printing is nothing over printed. If you like, in that
way, there's just one printing on each side of the page. So overprinting is something I'd be really interested
to try with it and see what what happens through the process of
drawing. Time is always an issue when you over print because you're printing ink onto ink rather than ink
onto paper. So that affects it as well. That's a long answer
to your question, but I want more time and more paper to experiment further. Okay. When
once lockdown's over. We'll have to go back and see. I must at some
point count what we've got. I mean, a lot of it's wrinkled, a lot of it. It's been kicking around in a basement
for a long time. But perhaps perhaps now it's time to bring back home Alex.
And yes, shall we get to that? And in fact, there's a
lot of questions from our participants. Thank you all very much. And we have just a few minutes for
those and then we will switch off. So let's try to get theirs and maybe first
of all, to go back to David with us.
So a question about your process, which really takes off from that. We've been hearing by definition,
there is a limited supply of this paper and you were given a very restricted supply by Andrew.
Did you have any chance to experiment or was it did you have to get it right from the very beginning?
I guess I was experimenting within a box, if you like. I
quite like I worked quite well with boundaries with like, OK, this is what
we're going to work with. This is the size of the paper. These are the colours. This is the amount of time to work
with. Let's see what we can do within that within that process. So it was it was
an experiment for me because I'd not used this paper
before to see what I could do within the context of a certain size that
I had to work to because I had to cut these five large sheets down.
That's the size I've got to work with. This is the amount of time I've got to work with like that was
those were just finding a page again. Those were the only LACHSA
forms that I was working with. Those were the ones that were broken in the case. So there's nothing more to work with. So I like
setting up that as an arbitrary rule as well. Like, I'm going to work with all
of the broken side in this case. Okay. It's, you know, thirty five sorts, however
many it might be. That's what I'm gonna do with that. I think
in general, I'm slightly wary of the word experimental because it it it's
it's so dependent on context and so dependent on where you're at. As
an artist. As a producer. So things that you might think
of yourself as experimental, somebody 50 years ago or 200
years ago might have already done that. And so I'm conscious of looking back at that history to see what's
been done already and what can be learnt from and not thinking of it all. As you know, I'm on
some grand experimental journey, so something might be an experiment for me. But that's different from saying it's experimental
in. There are a couple of questions, a set of technical questions and historical questions about the paper
itself. And maybe this is for Andrew. Can you tell if there's a filler like
Kaylin or calcium to increase the capacity of this India paper? We commonly
used the idea of English finish paper for packing in the US, very
heavy, heavily calendared smooth paper. How would that compare to these? This
is India paper, so-called. Well, I can
answer to what earlier questions with that before, which was a question about it has more been written about
it since Harry Carter's book. And I've put another reference in the chart.
There's a conference paper from nineteen ninety six on it. No, I don't think
there is a filler there. It's apparently the the actual recipe was
a closely guarded secret, partly between AUP and
and. They talk about there being
rope used as the main source of the furnish. So it's a
good quality sort of ham or, or flax
fibre within it. But no, to get that extraordinary Raffel and the thinness and the opacity,
I'm not sure you don't see the same sort of filler that you do with, say, a coated
art stock. But I don't entirely know, really.
And I presume the paper would have changed slightly over the years. It's interesting. My 1943
copy is beautifully. I mean, it's kept it's it's not browned or anything around
the edges. It's it's in pretty good condition. Whereas and again,
that's what we have in the storeroom. I don't know quite how old it is. I
sort of 20th century some time, but who knows. I don't quite know. That doesn't really answer any of
those questions. OK. Well, another quick one then for you, Andrew, and then back
to David for another one. The India paper that one finds
used in printed intagliata plates and lithographic stands, especially in the 1920s
and 1930s. Was that the same paper later described as Oxford India paper?
Oh, this is interesting question. I was checking on the OED this morning for
the first use in English of the first recorded Use for India paper.
And they put it back to the mid 18th century. Talking
about it being used to sort of fine impressions of engravings or etchings.
And we know that the print makers came right back to Rembrandt, were experimenting with
imported papers, mainly from Japan.
And then in the early 19th century, is India proof the OED gives it? I think
1812 is the first use is is a type of of entangling
printing where your layering Chinese paper onto a wove paper to get
a better quality impression. So I think, oh, you is just harking back to
that term. Indian is referring to sort of India proof paper. But it's a different thing.
And then, of course, would engravers often use Chinese
paper, especially for proofs and to cheque their work because of this?
A fantastic smooth finish, opacity and thinness, the ability to take detail
and I think would engravers still do? We have Peter Lawrence
in bodily last year. And as a printing demonstration, him and he was printing
on Chinese paper. So, yeah, I think that's a different thing. But I think, oh, you are harking back
to to those older papers. Finally, Andrew, just one thing,
a reference. Has anything more been written about the paper since
Carter's? Yes, there's a 1996 conference paper.
And that's in that the reference in the chap now. Yeah, that's why he phoned him.
He was the archivist. OK. I'll add that again to the chair.
David, a couple of technical questions for you. And then also a question about working. So
all of the technical questions were, do you need to use tack reducer?
And how fast does this paper absorb ink as compared to thicker paper?
Right. OK. No, I didn't use any tax reduced to
the flacking that I used. I forget the source of it. Richard Lawrence
would know, but. It was fairly stiff already
the. So once I started working with it a little bit, it moved just enough and it wasn't
it wasn't too running. And the question about drying time. Yeah.
Well, this is always a hard question to answer because it depends on so
many factors drawing. I'm like the amount of ink you use, the amount of pressure you use, the
surface of the paper, the environment that you're actually printing it in, leaving
the printed sheets in. So because of the because of the Butlin's collection,
as I understand this, the temperatures kept quite warm
anyway in all of the buildings. So the actual studio I was printing
and leaving these, you know, the sheets up in on it on a drying rack like mine here was quite warm
already. So it dried that sped up the drawing time. That's a particularly hot room, I have to say.
Yeah, that's something that I had when it was November and December. I was there. I always had all the windows
open. I mean, I'm from the north of England, so I like it cooler anyway. But it was you know, it was
hot. But the paper itself, it doesn't
have anything. It doesn't have the kind of texture that the ink can sink into.
It's all it's almost like being sits just on the surface of the paper. So
that would, as far as I understand, paper that would that would increase the drawings. I'm a little
bit like I said, that was kind of offset by how hot the studio was anyway. So that sped
up the drawing time. I was really cautious about it. I thought I actually thought it probably wouldn't
dry in time for me to transport it all home. But it was it was OK. OK.
And a lot of nice questions and comments and people talking about how they use
this. We have a note that the people Jacque peppier can still be ordered by the
Corinto participants. So that's good to know. And finally, one
more question for Andrew and then I think one more for David. A
participant says, I have Bibles here on papers such as you describe with anything similar produced in the
US, or was Staffordshire the only source for it?
So you're muted. Andrew, say,
I think that similar paper. Yes. Was produced elsewhere. In fact, I've got
an Alex Cohen sample book over there that goes through many sort of
thing. So the bank papers and Bible papers and so
on. I think after the success of AP from eighteen seventy
five onwards, they were very keen to keep
their exact recipe of paper to themselves. They certainly sold paper.
They acted as a merchant for the paper to others, other printers
and then yes, other paper makers produced similar papers. And then if you think of those kind of copying
papers as well, I mean, those those very fine. Same ones, I mean.
I mean, the various bits of paper that I picked up over the years to be massive part
of. And I think you need following
because I think it's a slightly thicker paper. It doesn't have the watermark. And then again,
it's I found some French textbooks wrapped up in. And again, it's
a dictionary paper. Again, it's that same sort of thing thing, but it's not quite as thin
as lightweight as a. I don't think they quite make the same thing.
And it's probably to do with source of fine print. So. And
then shall we go to David? David, a question for you. You talked a bit about your
project. Their main project that you were doing between some
turns. Were there other projects happening in Ops, Federer, other collections,
inspiration you got from the collections while you were in Oxford? Yeah.
So one of the images that I showed in kind of research that I did during the residency was that the
Maps exhibition, I can't remember the official title exhibition. What
was it? Talking. Talking maps. It was called Talk. I'll put up a link
to it. Right. Thank you. Yeah. That was a great exhibition. That was the
main exhibition I saw there that really influenced the work.
I have a background in geography. It was my my favourite subjects at
school and I studied it, studied it at university as well. Way back.
Human geography in particular, rather than physical geography. So I am interested in how
the land and also our situation influences our lives, how we move,
you know, how we understand the world around us. So that's pretty much what for me. Human geography
is all about. So that Maps exhibition was a great introduction. I saw that on the first day I was there
to some aspects of the history of the city and particularly
the the physical landscape and its relationships
of water and flood. You could probably see maybe if I
bring it back to the image of the work itself.
Yes. So you can see that lack of a line that goes through
the middle the curve line. That was for me thinking from
that exhibition that showed maps of the city of Oxford when it was just a small settlement.
Just the extent of the influence of the landscape and where the water
cuts through the city. And then thinking fast forwarding through to now and thinking about how
that how the water and the water underneath our cities, underneath
our feet influences the way that we experience a place and the risk,
I suppose, attached to that as well. Constant risk of of water and flooding
is something that I'm really conscious of. I live in Coledale and these people will have seen on the news, lots
of towns around here flooding on a more frequent basis. That's another debate that
you can research and get into about why that happens. But the aspects of water, so that kind of flow
through the print, which kind of for me comes to define the the
a lot of the layout of the print. Came from that Max exhibition.
That's that that whole exhibition was a big influence. And I think the other the
other research that I did within the body in itself was mainly around people's research
writing. So I read a lot of Johanna Drucker's work while I was there. I mean, I was familiar with her work anyway, but
the BOSELEY has a really good collection of her writings. So that was the main. She was
the main person. I looked up in a more conceptual framework, I suppose,
for for situates in my work. Right.
I think where we're nearly at the end. If either of you seen a question.
Yes. David. Oh, you're muted still say there was there was two other questions.
Yeah. I just know it's now very likely they're related.
Somebody asked about materials. Yes. They asked about using
this paper. This is Oxford, India paper. Whether or not I wanted to
show whether how insightful the paper was, I think to the to the to the work.
And the really quick, easy answer to that is the materials are vital
in this process. I think material material is vital in most processes and
in most artworks to some degree, but certainly for me, yes.
The less first printing can be incredibly complicated if you choose to
go that way. And there's a multitude of extremely fine princes I like whose work
I admire a great deal. It can also be very quick as well, because in essence,
it's a simple process where you have a surface release surface. You could put ink on it.
You press paper against that. In that way, it's quite simple. So materials
are always something that I'm working with and thinking about, and the paper is not
a passive part of this process. I'm not seeing the paper in any of my work is just something
to put the important things. The words, the imagery onto
the paper has an integral part and integral role to play in that process, because
a lot of my work is about negative space. There's a lot of graphic designers I'm really interested in
and a common theme in all of all of that research I do is a use of negative
space that when you when you put a word, a piece of imagery there, you also
have all this negative space where it isn't. And so that's all active. It's not inactive.
That's a great way to think about paper and what we've been talking about today and the
importance of that. Thank you, David, for your active use of the paper.
Thank you, Andrew, for unearthing the paper and bringing it back from history
for us. Thank you to all our participants and all your great questions. We've only
had time to answer some of them, but you keep them
do right in. Look at the father in bibliographical press web pages
and you will see links and contacts. I'll put my
email in the chat.
Goodbye, everyone. Thank you.