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William Blake's Printing Process

73 points by brudgers 3y ago

sonofhans 3y ago
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_the_Giant_Albion 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 3y ago
Hopefully I find this again in my bookmarks when I am 50+, looks like an awesome thing to try one's hand at.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- brudgers 3y ago
  Why wait?
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      Except, most elderly would probably be well served by increasing their physical activity levels.
agumonkey 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
I think this is an example of what the technique shown in the video produces: https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/images/gm_379057EX1.jpg https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/images/gm_379057... (from https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/ https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/ )
s5300 3y ago
One of the more interesting people I’ve met in my life, a now deceased professor from my alma matter, LARPed (for a very long time) as the reincarnation of William Blake (had an entire designated church and everything) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethelred_Eldridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethelred_Eldridge Perhaps LARPed isn’t even the best word. There is a lot of debate on whether or not he decided to keep up a bit his entire life or genuinely believed he was Blake’s reincarnation. He was incredibly smart, not outwardly schizophrenic (you could say a schizotypal personality, but I think those labels are mostly bullshit - I digress), and didn’t really have any other reasons people might just think “he’s fucking nuts” I wonder how many other kooky Blake admirers there are in our world…
paulgerhardt 3y ago
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 https://boldport.com/shop/dreamer [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504801 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504801 [3] https://boldport.com/blog/2015/11/25/haute-circuits https://boldport.com/blog/2015/11/25/haute-circuits
shrubble 3y ago
Blake: Prophet Against Empire is a well known though older book on him... https://archive.org/details/blakeprophetagai0000unse https://archive.org/details/blakeprophetagai0000unse

73 points by brudgers 3y ago

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_the_Giant_Albion 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 3y ago

Hopefully I find this again in my bookmarks when I am 50+, looks like an awesome thing to try one's hand at.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brudgers 3y ago
Why wait?
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    Except, most elderly would probably be well served by increasing their physical activity levels.

agumonkey 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago

I think this is an example of what the technique shown in the video produces: https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/images/gm_379057EX1.jpg https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/images/gm_379057... (from https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/ https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/blake/ )

s5300 3y ago

One of the more interesting people I’ve met in my life, a now deceased professor from my alma matter, LARPed (for a very long time) as the reincarnation of William Blake (had an entire designated church and everything) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethelred_Eldridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethelred_Eldridge Perhaps LARPed isn’t even the best word. There is a lot of debate on whether or not he decided to keep up a bit his entire life or genuinely believed he was Blake’s reincarnation. He was incredibly smart, not outwardly schizophrenic (you could say a schizotypal personality, but I think those labels are mostly bullshit - I digress), and didn’t really have any other reasons people might just think “he’s fucking nuts” I wonder how many other kooky Blake admirers there are in our world…

paulgerhardt 3y ago

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 https://boldport.com/shop/dreamer [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504801 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504801 [3] https://boldport.com/blog/2015/11/25/haute-circuits https://boldport.com/blog/2015/11/25/haute-circuits

shrubble 3y ago

Blake: Prophet Against Empire is a well known though older book on him... https://archive.org/details/blakeprophetagai0000unse https://archive.org/details/blakeprophetagai0000unse