Week 4

I found the process of potato printing incredibly frustrating! I am a perfectionist and I never realized how much the mechanization of writing has allowed this trait of mine to take over… to the point where I don’t often write by hand anymore for the fear of making a mistake and having to visibly correct it- leaving the mark behind. With the potato printing it was so hard to make my letters straight and of similar size- I also opted out of doing lowercase letters, as I knew right away that would add another layer of difficulty to this already challenging task. If time were not a factor, and if I didn’t think it probably would have defeated the purpose of this activity, I would have tried to improve my letters by attempting to carve these again (and again)!

The most significant problem I encountered was trying to make the letters uniform in size- in terms of width, height, and spacing. A potential reason for this flaw in the potato printing process, lies in the size of the potatoes- as choosing ones that are similar in size will increase the chance the letters are the same size… However, with potatoes, uniformity in size and shape is quite rare.

I found the hardest letter to make in this word was the E (due to the small middle line in the middle). I actually originally thought it would be the C that would be hardest (simply due to its curvature), but it was surprisingly the easiest. Not having to stress about keeping the lines straight, gave me a bit more freedom- thus allowing more room for error.

I also thought about my use of a pen to trace my letters before I started carving… did they even have such tools to assist them when they were printing this way? According to Lamb and McCormick (2020), they commonly wrote using quills dipped in an ink containing charcoal diluted water- would they have used this type of ink (if any) to also trace the letters? If not, I can’t imagine how much harder this task would have been! I actually started off using a sharpie that didn’t really show up for my first letter (T), making it so much more difficult as I was carving because I was figuring out on my own where the lines should start and end. By the time I got to the second letter (E), I switched to a ballpoint pen- which worked great and made a huge difference in the quality and accuracy of my letters from then on!

Due to the time it took me to carve out my potato letters (about 20 minutes per letter), I had to stop before I got to the last letter (H) as I had to leave to pick up my oldest from school. By the time I got home to finish the H, the potato was already soft and browning (as I had already cut them all in half)! This made it so much harder to carve out the letter, as when carving a mushy potato, it's near impossible to keep the lines straight and the width symmetrical (as you can see one line on the H is super thin and the other quite thicker). This experience of my potato spoiling (and browning), therefore making it harder to work with once it had been cut, made me think of the first types of material they used for paper (that which were made from plants), for ex: papyrus- and whether or not they ran into the same problems after it was picked from its original habitat.

Once it came time to actually print the letters (by stamping), a couple issues I hadn’t thought of came up. One was the paint. It was hard to regulate and maintain consistency of the paint- in terms of how thick or how much to put it on each letter. Another was the pressure. It was difficult to know (especially with the first print) how much pressure I should put to ensure the whole letter prints vs. not wanting to put too much so that it smears or spreads the ink.

The appreciation this activity gave me for the mechanization of writing was HUGE! After listening to the podcasts and readings, I am blown away at the efforts and time people will spend in order to have something in writing. Due to the laborious process involved, I was very proud after having completed this activity; even more so after hearing that “most of the oldest written documents of any significant length are printed on solid, hard, heavy surfaces (like stone or steel) by carving” (Lamb & McCormick, 2020)- which sounds like potato printing! This made me feel as if I experienced part of history- or in this case part of its struggle!

The one thing I do say that I think is lacking from our society in general nowadays, is downtime. I feel with potato printing and the letterpress, they offer a meditative element to the process of printing the letters and ultimately creating the word(s) or sentences. As Paul Collier (2012) describes, “the process is quite therapeutic. You can calmly put this thing together piece by piece. It’s a very enjoyable process”.

Similar to potato printing, with the letterpress “the ink in depression is a characteristic mark left in the sheet by the letters, [which] is something people don’t see very often because of the laser print and inkjet don’t produce that anymore” (Collier, 2012). Making this type of printing all that more special and unique. That’s a major downside to the mechanization of writing… it has made all our writing UNIFORM! Therefore making it lose its “wow factor and high quality” (Collier, 2012) that you can’t get reproduce any other way. I love scrapbooking and one of my favourite things to add are stamps! Any time I need to add phrases and words to my pages, I always choose to add stamps over my handwriting- they are of higher quality and stand out in a way that regular printing cannot.

One thing “the digital age [does is] remove us from the tactile work, the more hands on and I think there’s a longing in our soul for that” (Collier, 2012). This makes me think of the Maker Movement!!! This has been a huge push in many districts (mine included) and it is driven by a desire to get students back to basics in a sense- using their hands to build, play, create, and ultimately solve problems or answer questions. Each school I have been at over the past 5 years has converted their library to a makerspace and I can absolutely see this type of printing being something they could offer. As Collier (2012) states, “as an art form, it is very appealing”.

Overall, this task has led me to a new appreciation for the technology of the book and for the mechanization of the writing process in general. I truly agree with Lamb and McCormick (2020) when they state “the book is the most underappreciated technology. We only appreciate the contents (literature) without thinking about what a marvelous piece of technology the modern book is.”