Dry Ink

There is a transformation that something printed on a letterpress goes through as the ink dries.

It is, perhaps, an indescribable transition, but one that hits me over the head, every time, when I walk into my shop the morning after printing. I encounter objects that, only 12 hours earlier, were in some indefinite transtitional state, closer to raw materials than finished product.

Overnight, though, the ink has dried, and the print has settled into permanance. The raw materials — ink, paper, pressure — have become a real thing.

It is magical.