Making a print from an old ad plate/what is this?
Hello,
over the weekend I chanced upon this plate for a recruitment ad for Soldier Tradesmen for the R.C.E.M.E..
It is mounted on a wooden block with small nails, and I’m pretty sure this is original, but there’s a strange broken piece of wood protruding from the back that I’ve never seen on any wood-mounded lead pieces I’ve ever come across before.
Is this a common feature on larger pieces, or was this wooden black attached at a later date?
I’m interested in pulling a print or two to frame and hang alongside the actual piece. I’m fairly new to letter press and print-making (I’ve always been more of a collector). Would screen printing inks be appropriate for this? If not, what should I be looking for? I would probably ink the lead surface, and then run a brayer over the back of a sheet of thick paper to make the impression. Is there a better method?
Don’t know what you mean about the wood protruding from the back?? i would think it might have been glued to a board and hung on a wall as a display, then when removed from the board you got this wood piece on the back. I thing screen printing ink is too thin, any offset ink would work fine. We used to make stone proofs of newspaper pages all the time by dampening the paper then placing it on the inked form then a couple of sheets of paper over this then plane the form and you get a pretty decent copy. Dick G.
i’ve found that the back of a very flat wooden spoon gets the best image transfer, if you want something nice to hang on your wall. you can peel up half the paper (holding the other half securely), peek at it, then smooth it down and keep rubbing on the parts where the ink is skimpy. this is how i print all my block prints that are too big to fit on my letterpress.