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Photo of the Week: Forgers

Seth Gould and Peter Ross at Penland

Seth Gould, who is leading the fall Concentration in the iron studio, and Peter Ross, who has been a guest instructor for the past two weeks, doing some forging. Seth recently completed three years as a Penland resident artist and has decided to stay in the area with his family (lucky for us). Peter was the master of the blacksmith shop in Colonial Williamsburg for 26 years. He now lives in Siler City, NC, where he makes reproductions of 18th and 19th century hardware and iron furnishing for historic buildings. In addition to being amazing blacksmiths, Seth and Peter are also expert whitesmiths — whitesmithing being the art of filing, finishing, and polishing metal. The class is title Forged and Filed, and Seth and Peter’s students have been spending as much time using files as they have using hammers.

If you are interested in super-refined work in steel, we recommend this recent video about Seth, also titled Forged and Filed. If you click over to Peter’s (under-construction) website , be sure you wait for the slideshow to start, so you can see pictures his shop and his beautiful work.

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Photo(s) of the Week: Hands On Press

This is Chelsea LaBate (a.k.a. Ten Cent Poetry) printing a series of short poems on a Vandercook printing press in the Fall Concentration taught by Beth Schaible (a.k.a. Quill and Arrow). Chelsea is a singer, songwriter, poet, and traveler, but she says, “letterpress is my new love.”

 

This is is the workshop’s studio assistant Celia Jailer (a.k.a. Afterschool Detective) making a pressure print onto a vellum press sheet. Pressure printing is an image-making technique in which a textured, flexible sheet is placed between the press sheet and the drum and then passed over a smooth, inked surface in the bed of the press. The image is transferred to the press sheet because it gets inked more heavily where there is pressure created by the textured sheet. It’s one of the many ways to work with these presses that Beth is covering in the workshop.