MA Research - Marthe Armitage - 'Back to the Drawing Board'
Marthe Armitage is a wallpaper designer who uses lino blocks and a traditional printing press to create her beautiful hand printed wallpapers. Her designs consist of florals, botanicals, stars, animals, bridges, towns and gardens.
This delightful YouTube video shows Armitage drawing and block printing her beautiful wallpapers. In the video you see her hand drawing in a grid onto tracing paper before tracing and cutting her designs into lino blocks. She makes reference to William Morris as being one of the inspirations behind her work and how she admires the rythem and shapes in his designs.
Armitage inks the lino blocks, places them down onto the paper and rolls the press over to transfer the design in a co-ordianated fashion, leaving gaps for the other half of the design which are then filled in when using the second block. She lays down one colour, rolls up the paper then prints the next colour. It is a long process and requires lots of skill to line the next block up accurately.
I really admire the talent and hard work that goes into this type of printing, I love the vintage printing presses, the inks and techniques used and the process involved. The satisfaction one feels when creating this artwork far outways the feeling one gets when digital printing.
Reference:
Armitage, M. (2011) Marthe Armitage - 'Back to the Drawing Board' [Video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VMLZm-BNo [Accessed 13 November 2015].
