Chicago-based book artist Daniel Mellis took a single piece of wood type, a thirty pica Clarendon R, and explored “the graphic possibilities” made available when using it in a limited set of maneuvers: positive and negative auto-pressure printing with a single inked impression. As the name implies, pressure printing is a printmaking technique where variation in the pressure applied to paper and an inked printing surface produces an image. Each act of pressure printing creates a positive print and a negative print.
Whereas the positive print is the image created when applying pressure directly onto the paper with the inked printing surface behind it, the negative print is created when a new print is made from pressing paper onto the “latent image” left behind on the printing surface by the positive print. A relief surface made from a blind impression (an impression without ink) on the paper with the wood type’s top and bottom produces the variable pressure necessary to create an image. As Mellis puts it, the process, which he calls “auto-pressure printing” turns a piece of wood type from a relief (raised) surface to a planographic (flat) one.
Each print in the box represents a different turn in the printing experiment, with notations representing which part of the wood block, on what axis the paper was flipped, and at what degree the block was rotated. Further notations indicate the side of the block that took ink and the last impression. Notation brackets [ ] denote positive auto-pressure printing, and parentheses ( ) denote negative auto-pressure printing. The prints exhibited, R[V], R(V), R'(V) and R’R2R(V), show a visual narrative of the merging, exchanging and reversal of shapes, textures and patterns that take place through the simple but calculated operations of turning and pressing paper against a single inked block of wood type.