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Letterpress: Challenge Press Certification Part 1

Learn the basic and intermediate skills of setting lead type and using the challenge press. This is the first of two classes required for certification to use the press independently.

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Letterpress: Challenge Press Certification Part 1

Letterpress: Challenge Press Certification Part 1

Learn the basic and intermediate skills of setting lead type and using the challenge press. This is the first of two classes required for certification to use the press independently.

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Registrations Closed

About

Learn the basic skills of setting and spacing lead type, as well as intermediate techniques such as ornaments, cuts, leading capitals, and rules. You'll learn these techniques using two short pieces of poetry or prose of your choice, one for each day of class. After the type is set, we'll go over how to use the Challenge cylinder press, which is ideal for high-precision printing as well as refinements or changes to the overall design. Both days, we'll trade prints so everyone goes home with an assortment of the class's work.

This course covers all the skills necessary for letterpress certification on typesetting and using the Challenge Press. After this course, you'll be ready to take the second certification class and demonstrate your capabilities to safely and effectively run a press unsupervised.

Details

  • You're encouraged to bring two pieces of prose or poetry of 15 to 30 words each.
  • Bring lunch. There is a refrigerator and microwave on the lower level.

Details

A $10 materials fee, included in the cost of the class, covers everything you'll need.

Class Policies

Ages 18 years and up are welcome.

Instructor
Eli Backer

Eli Backer is an artist, composer, and engineer who works in a wide range of media and is constantly making. A Bainbridge native, she holds a master's degree in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a bachelor's in computer engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Her work can be found in the Cynthia Sears Artist’s Books Collection at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, at the Center for Book Arts in NYC, and at the Fleet Library in Providence, R.I. She finds setting type and working with the presses quite meditative. In the Print and Book Studio, this monitor can certify people to use these pieces of equipment: metal type setting, wood type setting, the Vandercook proof press, the provisional presses, and the Challenge press.

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