23 November 2016

GHS 50: vintage printing blocks

I was alerted to the existence of these printing plates when the art department at work was having a clear-out a few years back. They didn't want them, so I put them with a few other archive materials I was gathering, since I knew that the school's 50th anniversary was coming up.
There are about 20 of these in total, with different images of the inside and outside of the school. It's very strange looking at a mirror image of the school! Luckily all the images are ones that we already had from other sources, so there was no great necessity to make prints from them.

But I thought it would be a fun project anyway, so I thought I'd have a go at printing a few of them one weekend.
I tried just using a stamp pad to ink them up for the first attempt, but I didn't feel the results were quite as clear as I wanted, so I finally broke out the printing ink and roller, and inked them up! I then used a baren to rub the paper against the plates. It was really hard work, so I just did a few copies of each until I had some that I was happy with.
I displayed a few of the prints alongside the printing plates at the school anniversary events.

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