My very first (successful) drypoint printed on the mangle...
This is the mangle I mentioned earlier. I bought it at an auction for 50p eons ago when I lived in Norfolk in England. At the time I was in my art-less wilderness years and bought it because it was cheap, no-one else wanted it and I thought it might come in handy one day. It still has the lot no. 547 on it and has sat in the basement unused ever since I bought it to France with me. Well, apart from the time I was without a washing machine for a few months it came in rather handy.
A bit of a clean up and tighten here and there, I treated myself to a lovely new drypoint tool and some Charbonnel ink I've been drooling over, rolled up my shirt sleeves and got stuck in.
Yes well. Getting the right sort of perspex, the pressure right, finding the right sort of paper, the required level of dampness of the paper...bref, lots of trial and error and swearing until I found how to get it to work.
I made a sandwich of hardboard, a towel, newspaper, my dampened paper (I used some of the woad dip-dyed paper I made a recently) the inked plate, more newspaper and a sheet of calico. I found this gave me just the right amount of pressure.
Rolled it through the mangle 6 times just to be completely sure it was printing OK. A bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, granted.
