We had a wonderful Maker Faire this weekend!
Today, 400 or so (we lost track!) people printed “Top Secret Recipe” cards with us. Yesterday, 600 people printed cards with us.
We are grateful to Maker Faire for providing us with the opportunity to share a little bit of letterpress with so many enthusiastic and interested people. We had a fantastic time and we hope everyone else did too.
It was a pleasure to provide the opportunity to try letterpress printing to so many people. It was also delightful to listen to the letterpress related stories that so many people shared with us including stories: of fathers, grandfathers, neighbors and friends who worked at letterpress related jobs in the past; of taking art and classes in junior high, high school and college that included letterpress learning opportunities; of printing presses being used to print village newspapers in far away places like India; and other stories of printing presses so near and dear that they were moved (sometimes at great expense) along with individuals and families when life changes dictated moves across the county and even from country to country.
It was truly wonderful to see the wide-eyed smiles emerge from children who had never heard of letterpress printing before. The question, “Where does the ink cartridge go?” — which was asked by more than one child – was answered with huge smiles on our part as we explained, “Well, in the old days…”.
Here are few photos we took today of some more of the world’s newest letterpress people. (A few more photos that we took yesterday can be seen here.)
Thank you to everyone who visited us and also to those who helped make our demonstration area at Maker Faire 2012 possible. We could not have done this without you!
Peach Farm Studio’s demonstration area at Maker Faire 2012 is made possible by generous support from Iota Press, Silverado Press, Morris Fine Art Services, Electric Crayon and Folding Bones Press.
This is great. I’m so happy that a stuffed monkey was able to experience the joys of printmaking.
Stuffed Monkey had a blast! Imagine how much fun a Sock-Monkey-Puppet would have!
It looks like you had a great time – I did a similar linoprint event earlier this year (my first) and still feel a bit ‘high’ about the whole thing. It’s great to share what you love, but even better to experience the response when people realise that these things are still done!
Great stuff! Keep up the great work!
Hi Lestaret, thank you (very belately)! It was a lovely event. So many people excited about letterpress. It was a fantastic experience. We’re back blogging again, finally. Hope you are doing wonderfully well and creating marvelous mischief with ink and paper!
so great to see kids excited. i bet some of them have never seen typewriters, never mind letterpress!
So great of you to share your talents and not let an “artisan craft” die
Thank you very much! By the response we got from people who printed with us over the weekend, including one enthusiastic 5-year old who wanted to print more, then asked her mom if she “could get one of those [letterpress presses]“, and adults who were as fascinated by the technology and mesmerized by the process of letterpress printing, we happily suspect there is enough interest in letterpress to keep many, many fingers inky for many more years to come.
For some reason, that makes me happy–it is not in danger of becoming a “lost” art!
We’re doing our part to help keep it alive and are so glad others like San Francisco Center for the Book and Arion Press (both in San Francisco) are making huge efforts along these lines too.
What a wonderfully joyful occasion!
Thank you very much! Preparing for the Faire, among other things has kept us very, very busy the past couple of weeks, but seeing so many faces light up with delight made it the effort well worth while!
How wonderful! It must have been so exciting to see all these young minds opening up to the possibilities of creativity. What a delightful gift you have given.
Léa
Thank you very much. The gift we received in return was smiles – smiles worth more than gold!