The great baseball project

Both of my Intro to Letterpress classes participated in a project sponsored by Gary Cyprs of the Sports Museum of Los Angeles this semester. They produced a collection of letterpress printed broadsides celebrating the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Beautiful Stonehenge paper and mounted linoleum blocks along with tools, tracing and transfer paper were provided. 

The students were required to include handset type, either metal or wood or both, and a linoleum cut block image on their broadsides. 

This student created a reduction linoleum print of Johnny Podres.

The final type for this one read, "we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher."

First a sketch,

Then handset the type,

then a proof is made. 

Students use their proofed type and images to make a layout that can then help them lockup the elements in the bed of the press. This saves tons of time. No one ever is allowed to take a pile of wood letters to a press and spend hours trying to figure out where to put them. That is considered very bad form when press time is at a premium. 

This image was printed using a two color reduction block under a final detail block.