Workshop: Historical Printing

10:30–12:30 and 13:30–15:30

The sixteenth century was the age of the printing press, and printed texts and images were a major source of inspiration for Tudor artists, as well as being intricate art forms in their own right. In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to experience the materiality of the printing process for yourself, and learn about the historical context from Dr Fran Hughes, University of Cambridge. Participants will learn how to set type, discover the different kinds of press used for woodblock and intaglio prints/engraving, and even come away with a souvenir you printed yourself.

Suggested Reading:

Titles with an asterisk are available in the Paul Mellon Centre Library.

Malcolm Jones, The Print in Early Modern England: An Historical Oversight. New Haven and London: Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press, 2010. *

Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance. Boston: Brill, 2017. *

Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. *

Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997. *

Listing image credit: Printing office, c. 1600, etching, from Nova reperta by Joannes Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), Antwerp, c. 1600. Digital image courtesy of Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images (All Rights Reserved)