[HN Gopher] William Blake's Printing Process
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William Blake's Printing Process
Author : brudgers
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-10-25 13:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| sonofhans wrote:
| William Blake was not the greatest poet nor the greatest
| engraver, but no one has paired those two as he did. He would
| still be legendary today had he done so well at either.
|
| He always struck me as a transitional form, halfway between the
| Classic and Romantic poets. Like William S Burroughs was the
| grumpy uncle of the Beat poets, the Romantic poets took his
| counsel and his humanity as starting points.
|
| He said that his printing process was dictated to him in a dream
| by his dead brother Robert. He had many such experiences --
| coming into his sitting room at night to literally pluck words
| out of the air, asking Mrs. Blake to place another table setting
| so he could converse with the prophet Isaiah over dinner. Very
| likely he was slightly mad.
|
| He printed very few copies of most of his works. He made 56
| copies of "Songs of Innocence," more than any other work. His
| greatest work -- longest, most involved, bringing together all
| his cosmology in one place -- was Jerusalem (https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Jerusalem:_The_Emanation_of_th...). He printed 5
| copies, and only colored one.
|
| It's quite the experience to read "America a Prophecy" 200 years
| after he wrote it. He had high hopes for this new society across
| the ocean, and was disappointed that it was founded on the
| original "fallen state" of slavery.
| blockwriter wrote:
| Hopefully I find this again in my bookmarks when I am 50+, looks
| like an awesome thing to try one's hand at.
| brudgers wrote:
| Why wait?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I get it. Youth is better spent on "active activities". I too
| have a slate of hobbies I have planned for old age.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Except, most elderly would probably be well served by
| increasing their physical activity levels.
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's something sacred in these old crafts. A blend of unknowns
| (no theory of anything), but personal involvement, patience,
| care, enough aesthetics but no quantified perfection..
| quercusa wrote:
| Patience and concentration are key!
|
| It takes a long time to develop the eye-hand coordination to
| execute what you envision and it only takes a moment of
| inattention to ruin things (e.g., cutting a line 'forward' that
| should be reversed/mirrored.)
| quercusa wrote:
| I think this is an example of what the technique shown in the
| video produces:
|
| https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/images/gm_379057...
|
| (from https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/ )
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I am reminded of hacker, Saar Drimmer's work [1].
|
| Like Blake, he was subject to a fair bit of censorship and
| "blind-eyeing" by the dominant institutions of his day when his
| work demonstrated chip-and-pin credit card authorization was
| hopelessly broken [2].
|
| But also like Blake, he turned to reinventing the lithographic
| machinery of the period to create new mediums for expression.
| Blake with his printing press, Saar with his PCBmodE circuit
| etching software - creating circuit boards which were published
| in the haute couture press[3]. And both using in effect the same
| medium of etched copper plate.
|
| [1] https://boldport.com/shop/dreamer
|
| [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504801
|
| [3] https://boldport.com/blog/2015/11/25/haute-circuits
| shrubble wrote:
| Blake: Prophet Against Empire is a well known though older book
| on him... https://archive.org/details/blakeprophetagai0000unse
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(page generated 2023-10-26 23:01 UTC)