As we have been sorting out various mechanical and technical issues, printing the bird series has been delayed for seems like forever. But this week, Tui and Duck have take off!
The first off the press are the large Tui and Duck prints, which sport one colour so far. The plan is to hand wash them with highlights or backgrounds, so they should look pretty special. Anyway, here’s a wee video as a taster of what is to come later in the series.
There is something meditatively satisfying when manually treadling a small letterpress, feeding in and removing individual sheets.
Sometimes we opt to add some colour to pieces by hand. In this case, the colours added are Windsor and Newton inks and highlight a small part of the pictures.
In his paper, “On the fine perception of colours etc.”, William Colenso describes the use of colour by pre-European Māori from his first-hand experience of having met and observed the work of elderly Māori still alive at the time. The legacy he provides offers a rare glimpse into how ancient Māori created and used colour, shape, and texture for various purposes. We have tried to bring to life Colenso’s legacy by applying elements he describes in a contemporary frame; using colours described, creating letterpress printing inks from natural sources to produce prints, making use of printing substrates made from locally produced materials, iconographic representations of the source materials and artefacts produced by those that Colenso worked with.
