Virtual Letterpress Class
Hello, As many of you have experienced our schools are closing across the nation to take action against the Covid-19. My school WCU of PA has closed all classes until the summer and we instructors are teach online. So I am scrambling to develop alternative ways to teach letterpress. Any ideas are welcome. I love the world of hand composition so relief printing on screen is a giant challenge. Thanks and be safe.
It looks like you have a p in the b box of your virtual type case.
On my web-site theres quite a lot of technical stuff aimed at letterpress beginners. Please feel free to use any of that you wish anyhow you like, but it would be nice to have a mention. See the web-site The Happy Dragons Press and go into the sub pages.
Best wishes from all here in the UK
Stafford ( Whose family left Ga. in 1783 with so many others to become American refugees )
Seems like one good way might be to break a modest project into steps and present close-ups from the viewpoint of the presenter (camera looking over the shoulder as type is selected, put in the stick, and justified), hand feeding the press, applying and distributing ink correctly, discussion of aesthetics with examples of good and bad, etc. if you could rig a selfie stick to a tripod you could probably put the smart phone anywhere looking in any direction. Could work, I think.
Bob, former teacher of museum hand crafts and hand letterpress.
Hi Larry
I run the letterpress/relief print studio at UWE (Bristol, UK) and we’re facing the same challenge. The pandemic has forced us to reduce the room capacity from 12 to 2 so I’ve been trying to think of way to teach letterpress to the same number of students as before, but using a virtual classroom. But other than the students just watching me compose and print type, I can’t think of a fulfilling way of running a virtual workshop. have you come up with any other clever ways to teach your workshops online?
Ben
Contact Erin Beckloff at Miami University of Ohio. She’s teaching letterpress classes through electronic media and has it well in hand.
I would pay to take a class in press maintenance and it seems like you could do that online. I can envision standing by my press with a laptop while an instructor describes where the most frequently missed oil holes are or how to adjust the platen bolts or or whatever other maintenance things I should be doing that I’m not even aware of. You could have a class for each of the common presses, floor and tabletop.
If anyone develops this class, make sure to advertise it and I’ll sign up!
Second the comment about Erin Beckloff. She helped organize an online conference on this very topic earlier this year, and has continued an online chat every couple of weeks.