Some time ago I bought an old restored clothes mangle on ebay. It is a beautiful piece and I bought it with the sole purpose of using it to print lino artwork... pretty much giving an old piece of machinery a new lease on life, reinventing it as a printing press. It is old, it is beautifully restored, and it is extremely heavy! Given it's weight and size, it is difficult to transport and is unlikely to fit into my flat. Thankfully my parents are both encouraging of my creativity and have been good enough for me to leave it in their home just waiting for me to get motivated to put it to good use.
Well over a year ago now, a friend and I gave it a bit of a test run, but it was quite hit and miss and we didn't do a great deal, though some results showed promise. Since then the mangle has sat dormant in my parents home.
Another friend has been saying for a while now (knowing our shared love of the art) that he would like to come and give it a shot too. At last we finally managed to organise it and Timmo came and stayed this weekend and we gave the press another run. This time round (after a bit of trial and error) we managed to get some great results.
Another friend has been saying for a while now (knowing our shared love of the art) that he would like to come and give it a shot too. At last we finally managed to organise it and Timmo came and stayed this weekend and we gave the press another run. This time round (after a bit of trial and error) we managed to get some great results.
Take a look...
These are both my pieces and are around about postcard size.
The bird is a rerun of of a lino I carved a couple of years ago.
Here we are with the press - note Timmo's newspaper printer's hat.
Thanks Mum and Dad for hosting our creative chaos this weekend, and thanks to Timmo also for a great weekend, a great chance to catch up and to get creative. Now it's time to get carving more lino's, so we can get back there soon and give it another go!
7 comments:
Love it! In a massive clean out today I thought about tossing my never used lino carving tools...but kept them...
It looks like heaps of fun
Woohoo! Hats ahoy! Loving the postacrd and big-sized artworks.
Well I love all 3 pieces of work by both of you - very creative. And I also love the mangle itself - what a great find. Timmo's hat is also quite entertaining!
What a great printing press! I'm sure I remember seeing that bird and the pear in a long ago post or maybe flickr? I really like the bird. I've started some drawings with a view to doing some printmaking myself but there will be no fancy press for me just the back of a soup spoon!
weight loss
Thanks for a nice post you have given to us with such an large collection of information. Great work you have done by sharing them to all.
hi there, i have an identical mangle for making prints with and i wondered if you coated the wooden rollers with anything to stop the wood chipping or cracking? thanks
Hi Carolyn. There is no link to your blog on your comment, so I will respond here and hope you come back to it...
I considered covering the wooden rollers, mostly because there are a few dents in the surface of the wooden rollers, but then I decided to give it a go and it all worked anyway, so I have left them as is.
They seem pretty solid and I'm hoping they'll last a long time yet. Also, when I am running the Lino and paper through, I sandwich them between two thin pieces of ply wood and that seems to work to keep the art stable and to ensure the contact is even and solid across the artwork.
I would love to see some of your work when you do it. Do you have a blog?
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