FIELDTRIP/TOUR: 2 Class - Letterpress & Block Printing

Want to explore printmaking and the FBAC studios? Try out two different forms of printing including setting type on one of our Vandercook presses and making your own block print during this hands-on experience tour. This field trip/tour scales well for a variety of ages and is a great introduction to letterpress as well as block printing. 

After a tour of the center we will break into two different station groups for an hour and switch the two activities. At the end we will come back together to print the final copies created from the Letterpress station. 

The activity stations:

I am Learning: Interactive Letterpress Station:

An overview of printing presses with tricks, terms, and tools to use the letterpress.  Participants will be given the opportunity to use the lead type in the California type-cases to set their own name as well as the phrase I am and choose 1-2 words to complete the sentence to describe their true self. The lines will be set together and each student will get at least one copy of the end of the day of the group printing to take home.

Block Printing Cards: Carve Your Own Design:   

We will briefly talk about the mechanics of printing before diving into carving our individual designs. Each participant will carve a block and be able to ink and print their simple card design. Students will get to keep their blocks which can be used with stamp ink to create future cards. 

Please contact us at contact@frederickbookarts.org if you would like more information on how this program can be altered to fit the goals for your group's experience. 

Please note the initial sign up EVENT REGISTRATION form will ask for the number of attendees, please choose ONE and let us know the number of participants in the emailed google form sent after registration. Unfortunately our current system does not support purchasing a group event easily. 

If you have any questions or would like to reach out to discuss or confirm a date before signing up for the experience please contact us at: contact@frederickbookarts.org. Once you purchase this experience you will receive an email with a link to a form to tell us a little more about your group and we will contact you to schedule a time that works well with the teacher, FBAC, and your group. We do require at least one adult chaperone be present during programs of underaged children, and two present if there are more than 8 children present.

NOTE: We set our pricing to pay our instructors a fair wage and cover materials, but one of FBAC’s goals is to give access to the experience of all things bookbinding and printing to anyone who is interested. If your group or organization would like to participate in an experience but do not have the funding please reach out to contact@frederickbookarts.org and we will do what we can to work with your group so no one has to miss out on the experiences we offer.