Task 4: Potato Printing

The 5-letter word I chose to create as a stamp is my dog’s name, Oscar. I chose it because of the sentiment, and did not pay attention to the particular letters in the word. As such, some letters were quite difficult to form, particularly the “S” in my experience.

Stamp 1:     

Stamp 2:     

The process of creating each stamp was certainly challenging. For one, any marker I used to sketch the outline of the letters would quickly stop working on the damp surface of the potato, ultimately forcing me to carve the letters out freehand on the second attempt; this made it virtually impossible to create 2 similar, let alone identical, stamps. Also, the curvature of the letters made it difficult to form some of the letters.

In total, the process took approximately 30 minutes, with the second stamp taking less time than the first, as I began to get a feel for the process. However, the speed with which I worked is reflected in the stamp, as it looks sloppier, is unevenly spaced out, and has parts of its letters missing.

The mechanization of writing has created such large scale accessibility to print. The process of creating this stamp, however, truly gives one an appreciation for the labour intensive work it takes to create an initial text technology, before that labour goes away completely and one can use these technologies with minimal effort. A quote that struck me in the podcast episode “The Printed Book: Opening the Floodgates of Knowledge” is a Christian monk’s statement that “writing is excessive drudgery” before he goes on to describe the pain involved in printing by hand. I imagine though, that this quote would also have resonated with those who initially worked on woodcut printing in the 1400s, especially since the technology was short lived, and moveable type printing evolved.