Who needs a press when you have feet?

I came across this image that accompanies an article in the May/June 2010 issue of New England Home magazine. It grabbed my attention because I immediately recognized block printing going on in the middle three rows...but I wondered what the heck is happening in the bottom row. It turns out that another terrific photo explains.


The article tells the story of a printmaking guild called the Folly Cove Designers that was active throughout the 1940s-60s in Cape Ann in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The group was known for its block-printed fabrics whose designs drew from medieval craft imagery and nature surrounding Cape Ann. Their work became quite popular as it appeared in department stores in the form of placemats, tea towels, tablecloths, napkins and other practical and useful everyday items. I like this idea of art for utility's sake rather than just for its own.


The founder of Folly Cove Designers, Virginia Lee Burton, was a Renaissance woman of her time. She is perhaps most known as a children's book author and illustrator, winning the 1943 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in The Little House. For her printmaking, she used linoleum affixed to wood (it was inexpensive) as her medium and her sense of place and surroundings as inspiration. Soon, she began offering a printmaking course; by 1968, this had evolved into the Folly Cove Designers. "Graduates" of her class could submit a design, which, if accepted, was printed onto fabric and made into products.


I was most delighted by her method. Since she didn't have a printing press, after inking the cut linoleum, she would jump up and down on the block to create the print. Take another look at that bottom row in the image above--then see the photo below!). The group later acquired a 1865 Acorn Press. I still like the jumping technique, although I'd bet it works better on linoleum than shino wood. In the absence of a press, the back of a wooden spoon is still my go-to.


Apt timing. After a day of sailing yesterday, I was considering doing some kind of sailboat print. Understandably, this was a popular motif for Folly Cove. Time to start sketching...

 

(Due credit... Photos from The Cape Ann Museum, as seen in New England Home magazine, Vol. 5, No. 5, pp. 70-74)