Benjamin Chan

Yesterday, I began an apprenticeship at a letterpress shop in Oakland.  The shop is called Painted Tongue Press.  So far, it’s been a good experience.  People are nice, and the apprenticeship is really structured, so I appreciate that.  The commitment is once a week, for a whole year, so I’m going to use this space to try to remember what I’ve done, what I’ve been learning, and what’s stood out to me.

(more after the jump…)

Steph and I both started on Monday, and it was typical of how they would do things in an old school shop.  We did a bunch of grunt work tasks: putting certain cards and prints back to where they go in storage, packed cards and prints for shipment, did some research for cards, and a lot more sorting and finding things.  It was a bit tedious, but in the end, helpful to know, as we began to learn how things worked on the business side.

One part of the business is organization.  It’s important for the shop to keep samples of past work, so people ( potential clients ) can actually get to see, feel, and appreciate the actual work that the shop does.  In the case of making letterpressed artwork, the feel is really key.  Without an organized way to keep things, and to make things available, people won’t be able to appreciate and in the end want to do business with the shop.

I can relate to this side of things right now, because I just moved my room with all of my art junk, to the next room over, and I’m beginning to lay out my work space in my old room.  It was a big endeavor to pack all of my stuff into boxes, and to organize them.  The big question was:  what do I keep, and for the supplies I keep: how do I make things accessible yet organized so I can find things when I need them.

When you add in the fact that I ( and most people) have a limited amount space, it becomes even more crucial to have some sort of system ( or many systems ) to follow, in where to put all the stuff.  I can have the greatest set of tools, but if I can’t get access to them, then they’re really useless to me.

Anyway, you get the point.

We also were able to spend some time on the press, towards the end of the day.  Steph and I cleaned the Vandercook.  It was pretty fun, well at least it was working on the press.  It reminded me of how I started at the silkscreen shop.  I pulled shirts from the press, organized stock, and the eventually cleaned, then printed.  So, we graduated, from stock to cleaners.  Splendid.

It takes a lot of elbow grease, Crisco, and Alcohol to clean out the press.  Wipe, spray, repeat.

After that, we learned how to use the guillotine cutter.  It’s pretty old-school ( no laser site, or electronic safety ) but still really neat.  I think it’ll be a good tool to use in the future.  That’s it for day one.  More to come!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 11:18 am and is filed under Letterpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.