February Meeting Recap

Last Saturday we congregated at Jim Horton’s shop in Ann Arbor, and had the good fortune to have a beautiful and sunny day. Jim gave lessons on wood engraving, and a few folk gathered around his dining table and worked away at a few blocks. The demonstration walked though how to properly hold tools, best practices for readying the block for carving, and other tools for quickly clearing out parts of the block that need to be removed.

Throughout the morning, we made marks and then made proofs to check them, going back from the living room to Jim’s print shop addition. Meanwhile, Fritz Swanson & Jody Harnish were outside in one of Jim’s meeting spaces preparing to cast type. They had brought both a 120pt “hand mold” made to take giant caster mats, and a 14pt hand mold made by Stan Nelson that took Thompson mats.

Around lunchtime, Rowena made soup and crackers for everyone, and we all ate together in the living room. Fritz took a few moments to talk about the work of the Printing Stewards, and to talk about the importance of organizing together and making ourselves aware of each others projects. It was the first time in a long time that many of us had been in the same space, and it was good to begin that process of working together again post pandemic.

After lunch, engraving resumed, and most of the chappel arrived, mixing in with the folks who were already there. Some of us migrated outside to see what Fritz and Jody had been working on. By that time they had cast several large ampersands.

Later in the afternoon, as people began to get ready to leave, we met as a group. We welcomed a new printer, Charly, and saw Lyz again. Both agreed to print for the calendar this year. We spoke of the potential end of Briar Press and what we personally would like for our own site. Among those things are a guide to printing terms and equipment, and extra reminders for meetings through email.

That’s all for this months recap, look out for another newsletter before the start of the next meeting, which will be on March 11th, at Small Works.