Printing at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Craft Café kicked off on Sunday 8th March with a session where we were creating handmade cards and posters using foam printing. On the morning of the session it was all stations go to get everything prepared and the room looking welcoming. At 2pm on the dot our first guest arrived.

 1900.55.165
http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID1304.html

When everyone had arrived I began our tour in the Pitt Rivers Museum. We looked at various objects that have simple, bold patterns and designs, as these would be useful for inspiration in our printing. We started by looking at Aboriginal shields some of which, like the example from the collection below, are decorated with striking shapes and patterns. Something new I learnt about the shields is that some of them were also used to make fire – a piece of hard wood would be rubbed across the soft wood shield to create a spark. We also talked about Aboriginal art, and some of the museum’s Haida objects including the totem pole and a dance apron, which is decorated with a strings of deer hooves and puffin beaks.

 

 Then we headed back to the room to get crafty. Printing can take some experimentation and practice but after a while everyone got into the swing of it and the results were impressive. We etched designs into safeprint foam and created prints of them using printing inks and rollers. There were some beautiful posters and cards made including an elephant, tile effects and even some writing. Writing is always difficult when printing as you have to write the mirror image for it to print the right way! A popular choice was printing Mothers Day cards in preparation for the following weekend - let’s just say there were some very lucky mums in Oxford this year!

I also asked people to print their designs on to card triangles, which I then made into bunting. The idea is that each week the group can make bunting using the materialsused on the day, and each week we can string them up to decorate the room. I will also encourage people to write a comment on the back, making feedback a bit more interesting. Week one is looking good!

I was really pleased with the first session and I got some really good feedback. I’m looking forward to out next session this Sunday in which we will be customising canvas bags.

Book to join us customising canvas bags on Sunday 22nd March here