This hands-on workshop and study day is a follow-up to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s conference Posters: collection, creation and context, and will focus on the design and production of letterpress and chromolithographed posters.
The day will combine practical printing with sessions devoted to studying a rich array of original examples, and should provide an unparalleled opportunity to consider poster production from several different standpoints (technique, design, display, and context).
In the practical sessions, run by Martin Andrews and Alan Hardie, participants will have an opportunity to print poster-like material from wood type, wood blocks, and nineteenth-century presses, in much the same way that would have been done throughout most of the nineteenth century. They will also be able to make marks on lithographic stone and help with taking impressions from what they have produced.
The study sessions, run by Michael Twyman, will cover letterpress and lithographic posters in two sessions. The first will trace the evolution of the letterpress poster in England and France from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century, and make comparisons between the two approaches. The second will focus on the production of chromolithographed posters in England and France from the 1890s to the middle of the 1960s. Both sessions will draw exclusively on original material.
Martin Andrews is a designer, printing historian, and teacher in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading, Alan Hardie is an experienced printmaker, and Michael Twyman, Director of the University’s Centre for Ephemera Studies, is a printing historian specializing in lithography.
This all-day event will take place in the Print Studio of the Institute of Education at Reading University’s London Road site. Numbers will be limited to 30 (sessions will be repeated so that no more than 15 people will be at each one). The cost will be £40, to include tea and coffee. Lunch is not included but the cafe, Eat & Drink at London Road, is nearby.
All enquiries to Diane Bilbey d.j.bilbey@reading.ac.uk