For immediate release:
Consequences – A Two Pipe Problem Letterpress in residence at Foyles 14th October – 25th October
A Two Pipe Problem * is a one-man letterpress studio run by the artist Stephen Kenny.
Curated by Colin Ledwith, Futurecity
Kenny considers his three antique printing presses to be artistic tools. Working with a mix of wooden fonts dating back to 1836 and more modern steel type, everything is designed and printed directly. Kenny incorporates the wear and imperfections of his ancient wooden letters and his presses into the aesthetic of his work.
Letterpress is the oldest form of printing with an incredibly rich history. It is printmaking in a pure, physical form. In this method, a surface with raised letters is inked and pressed to the surface of the printing substrate to reproduce an image in reverse. After the Gutenberg press introduced movable type to the process in the 15th century, letterpress was the predominant printing method globally for 500 years.
Traditionally, carved wood and metal type is used to form the letter blocks. With every type set made up of individually carved or cast character blocks, wooden letters especially were susceptible to loss in the industrialised print workshops of the 19th century. It would be usual for a master printmaker’s skills to include carving - as he would often need to produce a ‘stand in’ letter on the fly during a print production run. Kenny holds many examples of these imprecise yet utterly unique miniature sculptures. Wood type takes on a life of its own, each surface mark and imperfection offers a unique print. The more use a font gets - the better it prints.
Letterpress printing is an art and a skill. It requires precision and quick thinking in the setting of type, and pragmatism and experimentation in creating the spacing in a print – often by using odd pieces of wood or steel left in the studio. Much of the process is judged by eye and intuition.
Designing a print with blocks of ‘movable type' rather than creating a zinc plate to print from gives each resulting print a completely individual identity. The density of the ink may differ slightly, meaning different areas of the type block register more of less clearly. Type may shift incrementally under the pressure of the press realigning the spacing by infinitely small degrees. Design by movable type is part design - matching a line of text to a wood font - and part compromise - setting text to fit the space the printer has. Printing with old wooden blocks bearing nicks and scratches makes each block and each print entirely unique. This is all part of the charm of letterpress.
The creation of huge rotary presses made industrial printing and newspaper production practical. By the 1950s, xerography and offset printing began to supplant letterpress and by the end of the Page 2 of 4
20th century, digital printing and related technologies had become the industry standard for many uses. Nevertheless the old method is resurgent among modern-day artisan print specialists who prize the unique, hand-made qualities and historical nature of letterpress print.
*“I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan, if ever he had a particularly tough case to solve, it would require 2 (or sometimes 3) pipes to solve. I don't smoke a pipe though.”
- Stephen Kenny.
A series of unique hand crafted prints.
Quoting and re-setting famous opening and closing lines from works of fiction on the shelves of Foyles bookstore, whilst resident in The Gallery at Foyles, A Two Pipe Problem Letterpress will produce a new and unique body of handprinted letterpress prints that pay homage to the surrealist wordplay of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ or Cadavre exquis.
Similar in format to the Victorian parlour game ‘Consequences’, Cadavre exquis invited each collaborator to either draw an image or write a word or phrase in sequence on a piece of paper, t