POTATO STAMPING
Challenging aspects of the task:
- Carving curved letters
I found getting around the corners of an “S”, or taking out the inside of an “R” was really difficult with a knife. As I went I started making a series of straight cuts instead of trying to make curves and eventually my letters became block letters. You might be able to see this change between the first “S” and the last “S”. Additionally, letters such as I, V, W, X, L, are much easier to make a potato stamp for than S, R, B, G, and so on.
2. Realizing that the carving had to be backwards
I carved the letters from left to right as if I were writing, but afterwards realized that the stamped word would be backwards. This is where modern technology saved me. I made the prints, put them on the shirts and then took a photo. We were then able to do a mirror-image flip of the photo within the phone’s camera app. That is why the printing appears the correct way in the photo.
3. Making the letters small
Similar to Guttenberg, the first letters I cut and designed were quite large (Clement, 1997). Although they were easy to see, you would not be able to fit many on a page if you were trying to write a book. According to Clement (1997), smaller and more compact script is a more economical form of writing. This would be very difficult with the potato stamp as you need to carve it with a knife. Your knife would need to be very sharp to cut smaller letters, and it would be much more difficult to get into the little spaces.
4. Stamping the letters
When applying my stamp, I stamped straight down. When I lifted up the stamp, certain parts of the letters did not appear. I realized I had not cut the face of the potato perfectly flat before carving the letters. I then had to rock the stamp side to side and back and forth to ensure that all edges of the lettering contacted the paper. To prevent making uneven stamps in medieval times, the woodcutters would use a saw and planer to get their plank surface flat before carving away the spaces they wanted to leave blank to create their text or image (Clement, 1997).
Analysis
I feel that writing is something that we take for granted (like so many things in our daily lives). This week’s readings, listenings, and viewings reminded me that it has been a long, slow evolutionary process for writing to become what it is today. My potato stamp was a lot like an early version of the premolded, reusable wood and metal letters used by the letterpress technician at the University of Plymouth (Cooke, 2012). Over 500 years later, I am able to make those same images with the flick of my fingers on the keys of a laptop. I am also able to shrink, enlarge, change color, alter font, or delete entire thoughts at the click of a button; all things that would have taken incredible planning, time, and physical effort at one time in history.
After completing this week’s task, I have a much better understanding of the need for symbols like the ampersand, designed to take the place of a commonly used three letter word. Anything that would have saved the letterpress workers time and energy must have been a welcomed advancement. It makes me wonder why more symbols weren’t developed to take the place of other commonly used words like “the”, “with”, “for” and so on.
Lastly, I feel glad that I do not have to go to a drawer and place letters upside-down and backwards into a tray everytime I need to write something. Although, if everyone still had to go through this process every time they wanted to write something, it might limit the number of impulsive emails that I spend way too much of my day responding to, or in many cases, avoiding.
References
Clement, R. W. (1997). Medieval and Renaissance book production. Library Faculty & Staff Publications, Paper 10.
Danny Cooke Freelance Filmmaker. (2012, January 26). Upside down, left to right: A letterpress filmLinks to an external site.[Video]. YouTube.