The Rubber Stamp Tablets

Yes, we're still on tablets started before the wool. Honest, I'm sewing away at the new ones and they'll be ready ASAP.

....Years ago, I bought an old set of rubber stamps at a garage sale. 

I wanted to photograph them for a tablet.... but black on black is not especially easy to photograph.

Even photoshop wouldn't have an easy job of it. No clear contrast to work with, and the wax residue didn't help (I've used the stamps for batik - the wax has to be hot enough to soak into the cloth, but not hot enough to melt the rubber. Tricky).

So I pressed each stamp on a wet sponge and dipped them into some flour. That gave me just enough color contrast and a cool texture on the letters.

After I had the basic letter forms, I spent days adding extra texture between the letters.

  unknown stuff                             photoshopped stuff                        raku glaze crackle

Sorry, I don't remember what that first picture is. One of many images I collect in my Image Bank. The photoshopped version of that, and the raku crackles, gave me all the texture I needed. 

Top row: printed letters, dye painted with only a black line embroidered around each letter. Bottom row: with some of the extra embroidery.

Almost finished. This one has no researched back story, just visual fun. I made another one, which also has the reverse-letter of type, but with a bit more history. For this one, I used images found while researching for my Moveable Type Tablet:

Just liberate these guys from their original prints and photoshop them...

..and then relocate them to a field of lower-case type.

An early version, with a different group trying out for the roles of printers in this tablet production. 

Not bad for the out-of-town trials, but....

...the composition is better if two of the side characters are turned around to face center. 

Finished! Dye-painted, embroidered AND mounted on a stack of cloth, with an edge of dyed old calendar towels ( with the dates showing on the bottom).

Just before the wool began, I was starting to mount my tablets on stacks of cloth, (instead of hard upholstered blocks of ceiling tile material). Here are three finished tablets with the new mountings.

 OK, that's all for this week. There's one more tablet  from the pre-wool era (Geez, I really did stop cold when I hit the wool, didn't I?) which you'll see in the next post, and by then I should have new tablets to show you.

Happy to answer all email sent to dianesavona@aol.com