I took Paul Moxon's Vandercook Maintenance workshop last weekend. Whoa! So much to learn! We were given some detailed notes with illustrations to keep (YAY!) which will be extremely helpful when I take apart my SP15 to check and clean it. I was happy to see that I knew several people in the workshop. Joe Borges of Pomegranite Letterpress, Kirk Weppler of Pressmade and Kate Houston were all in some of my past letterpress workshops. Nadia of Inkpetals and Kevin from The Papaer Trail (they are also members of the Richmond Hill Book Arts Guild) were also there as was Kiva of Popolo Press. It was my first time to meet Kiva but we had corresponded a few times by e-mail and she has a wonderful studio in Montreal.
It was a lot of new information for all of us I think, but it will be really useful. Paul has SO much detailed knowledge of Vandercooks and it's history...in his head! I was really impressed at how thorough he is in his research! I hope I can keep some of what I learned swirling around in my head!
The Vandercooks at OCADU are probably in the best shape that they've ever been unless Craig Black has also seen to them. We did some hands on dissecting and cleaning and Paul checked to make sure we had done everything thoroughly and correctly...what's the use of taking it apart if we're not going to do it all correctly!?!
After the workshop on Saturday I was lucky enough to have time to get a drink with Paul and Kirk at a local pub. We chatted about Paul's work and teaching and then the subject of me teaching and my studio came up...yikes! Paul asked to see my studio and I protested saying, "It's a mess!!" but we eventually went to the studio where Paul took a look at my Vandercook and Sigrid's Vandercook (they aren't too bad!... sigh of relief) and I showed him the messy studio and my paper making workshop downstairs. The man makes paper, too!
Afterwards we went to have dinner and drinks near the studio and my husband joined us. We talked about all sorts of things other than letterpress...
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| Paul showing us his digital type high gauge for type and cuts. |
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| A portion of the tools used in maintaing and cleaning a Vandercook press. |
