What a cool task! My kids and I actually worked on this task together (so much fun!). We all quickly discovered how challenging potato stamping can be: particularly when you’re trying to stamp a legible word.
My first mistake? I carved my letters from left to right. I didn’t think about the fact that I would be stamping the text in a different orientation to what I was seeing as I carved: oops! That was the first big lesson (which cost me the first half of my potato). I also had to learn to make my letters more obvious by carving around the letters more deeply in order to remove more of the potato-otherwise, my letters were like little blobs of paint on the paper.
During my second (and final) attempt, the last hurdle was figuring out how much paint to use and how to press the potato down on the page. In the end, putting a light coating of paint and placing consistent pressure from left to right, was the best and most consistent stamping method.
The entire project from start to finish took two hours; the first version took the most time because I was learning how to carve correctly (and of course, I carved the letters in the wrong direction). The subsequent attempt was much faster but still time-consuming!
Mechanization of Writing
I spent two hours diligently styling, carving and stamping one 5-letter word. Two hours! (And the word was massive on the page). I can certainly appreciate the convenience of mechanized writing as a result of this task. I can only imagine the effort required to make or find writing material and the length of time it would’ve taken to write a full page of text: exhausting! (Bring on the printing press, please!).
Update
I am very much like other classmates, such as Norah Smith, and I dove head-first into creating my potato stamp immediately after completing the readings and prior to watching Danny Cooke’s video about the letterpress. “…where technology has, really, pushed forward is that we can change things in an instant. Here, if you set up a paragraph or sentence, if you get it wrong, or if you haven’t planned your way forward through that, then, you just have to take it apart and start all over again” (Cooke, 2012). In so many ways, this epitomizes my potato printing experience. I literally had to take my potato apart when I made a mistake, and of course, start all over again; but also, it made me appreciate all the effort and skill that must have gone into writing those early texts on questionable writing material.
