Rare Book Summer School: 2

Yesterday was just the practice day. Today was the Fun Day before the Real Deal.

We met up as a class at the State Library and had a chance to introduce ourselves and look at a mouth-watering collection of printed matter pulled out of the collection by the afore-mentioned Des.





I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts participants; I have a local book designer, a letterpress printer from NZ, another one from far north Qld, a library professional from SA and an artist/studio tech from WA. Also Trent, who is a book arts teacher and the letterpress tech here at Monash.

We came out to the Monash Caulfield campus in a clump on the train after lunch, and spent the afternoon looking at my examples, fondling the equipment, comparing stories and resource contacts and making plans for the week's work.







The idea is to print a folio of letterpress poetry broadsides. We're going to keep the paper size small to accommodate a few of the press platen sizes, and we're working with a choice of poems by three poets from the John Leonard Press stable.

So tomorrow we start, bright and early and earnest, and the dirty work begins!