The Wise Elephant … prints on the Adana Letterpress

Oh what a glorious day! A whole day in the studio, printing. Today I FINALLY got to have a good play with my Adana 8×5 tabletop platen letterpress. I printed a poem written by a friend a few years ago (thank you Brendan!).

Apparently the best way to learn is to make mistakes. Well today there were many. Type facing the wrong way. Type falling out of the chase. Too much ink. Not enough ink. Playing with the jigsaw of furniture locking the type into the chase. That was fun to start with – then got a little frustrating. But I did it!

It takes a lot longer to produce a printed piece on a letterpress than on the computer – but the results are so worth it. Delicious, smelly, printed, perfect in all its imperfections type printed on paper, handset, printed with ink!

Printing with Onyx 30pt – I composed the type. Locked the type into the chase. Inked the press. Mixing silver and cyan blue. I have a series of papers to test, so did little sheets of each paper sample.

I’ve had my Adana for at least 2 months now. Maybe three? To set type, ink and print was simply delightful!

The wise elephant
he is so gentle
he is lead by
a thread,

and steps so he
does no harm…

written by Brendan O’Shea