I approached this task reluctantly as I am definitely not the “crafty” type.  I don’t have a Pinterest account, and am convinced I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.  I was intrigued, however, by the prospect of what I might learn, so I decided to go ahead with the potato stamp adventure. 

I watched the DIY clip and was surprised at how easy it was to carve the letters into the potatoes.  After practicing for about 15 minutes, it took me about 5 minutes per letter.  Once I had my word completed, I proudly painted my first letter (the letter L), placed the stamp onto the paper, and then felt like I was part of a practical joke.  How could I not have realized the letters needed to be backwards??  I laughed out loud and considered myself fortunate that the E and A did not have to be redone.  I then spent another 15 minutes re-doing the other 3 letters.  So in total the process took about an hour.  I did have a fairly easy time reproducing the word twice, although the potato was very delicate.  When I think about how many words there are in the English language, and how long it took me to make 1 simple 5 letter word, it is astounding to think how painstaking it must have been to copy manuscripts by hand and work with some of these early text technologies. 

This assignment also made me think about the limitations of the earliest versions of the printing press.   I intentionally selected a word with only one circular letter (R), because I knew it would be easier to carve straight lines (although I also thought the word LEARN was appropriate for the assignment).   I can imagine that this also challenged the earliest technicians creating letters out of wood, and how this would likely have been far less of an issue when wood was replaced by the metal molds used in moveable type.  As well, like wood, I can tell the potato would not be very durable. 

The evidence is clear that the printing press did indeed “change the pattern of literacy,” (Harris, 2017) and this assignment really brings that concept to life.  When printed materials became more available an entire world was unlocked.  The length of time it took to make the potato stamps to record a single word reflects how this historic change required the invention of a technology to increase the speed at which information could be produced and shared.  I also thought about David Hume’s observation that new printing technologies didn’t just make knowledge more accessible, they made it easier to improve and correct work (Harris, 2017).   When I realized I had made a mistake with my letters, it required carving out new letters, which is time consuming and frankly, annoying.  The advent of the printing press allowed documents to be changed and adapted so much more easily, with future editions reflecting new opinions and discoveries.  This encouraged authors of these early works to strive to include the most up to date knowledge, to the benefit of society. 

Overall this was a thought-provoking experiment which helped me “LEARN” more about text and technology! 

References

Harris, Bradford. (2017). The printed book: opening the floodgates of knowledge [Audio podcast episode]. In How It Began: History of the Modern World . Retrieved from https://howitbegan.com/episodes/the-printed-book/