Printing Damp

Whether to print dry or damp — and if damp, how damp — is one of the key tools in a printer's toolkit. Dampened paper almost always prints better, as it aids ink transfer. This means you can use less ink, which in turn means you can achieve a crisper, cleaner result. It also means you can use less pressure — again, a cleaner result.

I think many collectors know this, but it can be difficult to show the difference in photos, because the quality of letterpress is a three-dimensional up-close affair. Intaglio can show the difference more clearly from afar, and all the same printing dynamics exist in intaglio as in letterpress.

This morning, I made a side by side. These two prints are made by the same printer, using the same etching press, same plate, same amount of ink, and they are even made nearly at the same time (within minutes of each other). The only difference is that one was printed on paper which was dry, and the other was printed after the paper was slightly dampened.

>1 grifgon:
Wow! The difference is just astonishing. Thank you for this elucidating comparison

>1 grifgon:

That's a huge difference and quite fascinating to me.

>1 grifgon: Thanks for sharing. Very revealing.

>1 grifgon: A bit of a tangent, but have you experimented with vellum/parchment?

>1 grifgon: .

>6 SuttonHooPress: I was always taught that properly dampened paper feels like the underbelly of a Peruvian gecko on a foggy April morning.

>5 Sport1963: A bit. I'm glad that a few printers still use parchment and vellum, but the more experience I gain the more I come to the opinion that whether you care about fineness (bookmaking as craft) or expression (bookmaking as art) there's no reason to use anything other than paper from top to bottom.

>7 grifgon: That would be way too damp!

>1 grifgon: Thanks for this!

Henry Morris writing about the printing of Three Erfurt Tales: "The bold type on dry, rough, hand-made paper took all the impression and ink I could lay on, and still did not print to my satisfaction. It was at this point I first learned a little about damp printing, and when I tried it about halfway through the book I was amazed. With half the impression and half the ink, the printing was far better. I still did not know how to print damp paper properly, and would not know until five years later, but I always printed damp after that time".

>7 grifgon: I print damp after I jog or hike up my hill. . . .

>10 duncjl: I own this book and it seems to me the paper was a little bit too wet during printing. So many wrinkles etc.

>12 Lukas1990: Mine too, but more positively I think it was an inspired choice of typeface for the nature of the text.

>7 grifgon: I was always taught that properly dampened paper feels like the underbelly of a Peruvian gecko on a foggy April morning.

A great rule of thumb, because everyone can immediately picture it exactly.

Seriously though, very useful side-by-side, it truly shows off the difference. And it looks like you are achieving a good degree of dampness, given the crispness of the resulting image detail. Kudos!

At the risk of seeming to be an agent of spam, this thread brings to mind this bit of dampness-related jollity: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oGryc7mCRoE, the joke starting at 4:34.
”Dry? Hardly!”

I was always taught that properly dampened paper feels like the underbelly of a Peruvian gecko on a foggy April morning.

Unfortunately, my experiences with the underbelly of Peruvian geckos is limited to August and September... dang it :)

That said, very nice! Is that a print you're producing for a new book?

>14 Shadekeep: Interestingly, there is literally no skill involved in dampening in this case. Spritz spritz with a water bottle and blotting with a paper towel, that's it.

>16 astropi: Just test prints to hone my intaglio process. I've been learning from Zach Proffitt (who made this plate) and Ray Bidegain. Falling head over heels for intaglio! Can't wait to make it a regular part of my practice, since it expands enormously the breadth of hand-printed art that I can utilize.

>17 grifgon: Hah, it may be foolproof for most, but you're talking to someone who can't seem to keep indoor plants properly hydrated. I imagine if I dampened paper the result would be like trying to print on porridge.

Glad you're experimenting more with intaglio Griffin! Different papers require different dampening techniques but the result is always worth the effort. I don't think it's even possible to print intaglio without though!

That’s true, I was taught to always print intaglios on dampened paper. My linocut instructor always prints damp, but she seems to be an outlier.

I still need to experiment with damp printing letterpress. I’m curious what Peter Koch will say about it when I see him.

>19 DWPress: Thanks Chad!!

Yeah I don't think any serious intaglio printer prints dry. The example above is just to show the difference on a scale where the results are glaringly obvious, because it can sometimes be difficult to communicate the difference in dry/damp letterpress through a screen.

>19 DWPress: >20 Another_Bibliomane: I was thinking why anyone would print these dry with those drastic differences in quality.

Anyone who would print dry would letterspace lowercase. Or was it the opposite? Either way, I have some newly acquired sheep to attend to.

More on topic, though, and I'm sure many have seen this, is the Ould School Press' video on them doing the intaligo work for Plates for a Herbal.

Walter Hamady printed all but two* of his 131 Perishable Press books dry, a fact that he was quite proud of and which he occasionally mentioned in the colophon. I don't recall his every having fully explained his reasoning for printing dry, except that he had always done it that way. I would speculate, however, that his preference for hard-packing might have had something to do with it. There's the concern for ink-bleeding on dampened paper, although I have no idea whether this was a concern of Hamady's. Also, especially toward the end of his career, he employed some very thin papers that would have been especially prone to ink-bleed, I imagine. Finally, as with many aspects of his printing, it must have been a point of pride that he could print so incredibly well dry.

*The two letterpress books he printed on dampened paper are "The Quartz Crystal History of Perry Township" (which is printed in 6 pt. Sabon), and "The Omitted Journals" by Paul Blackburn. The latter is interesting because he was using a new typeface, Meridian, which he referred to as "defective," with serifs breaking during the printing process. I suspect he either gave away or sold the fonts of Meridian, as he never used it again, although some of his former students printed with it (notably, Barbara Tetenbaum). There was one offset Perishable Press book, "What His Mother's Son Hath Wrought," so the real tally is 128/131 printed dry.

>24 DenimDan: I have this little blurb saved from one of the articles on Hamady in Parenthesis:

The typography is clean and straightforward, respectful of the author’s manuscript, and all in lowercase, but there is one other point. The acute accent on the “o” in the title is printed in dark red. It’s almost imperceptible. I asked Walter why he had done this. “If you are going to run the page through the press 228 times just to put on an accent you may as well let the reader known you’ve done it,” he explains. Multiple colors may also explain why Hamady prefers to print dry.

Something to aspire to, in my mind (though I would ideally do it in such a way so I only had to run it through 114 times, natch).

Yes, color work makes printing damp very tricky especially with a large sheet. The paper needs a decent amount of internal sizing and grain direction when printing is important.

It was probably the most difficult part of printing The Wind in the Willows to keep the paper consistent in the damp box between color runs because I would frequently use the same color on more than one image so it would sit until another 85-200 impressions done. The paper David created for me at St Armand was perfect for this sort of work. Sadly, this was right before Covid and a greedy landlord killed the mill so I've less than 150 sheets left which I'll use for future deluxe copies. Somerset book might have worked but a true handmade with no grain direction is best but also $$$.

>24 DenimDan: >25 yikou: I didn't realize that Hamady printed only dry! That's rare for such a highly regarded printer. The amount that he puts on one page could indeed be an explanation, as well as his hard packing.

Of course, printing damp is a major tool — but just one tool in the toolkit. Printing damp ≠ fine printing, printing dry ≠ mediocre printing, and different roads can lead to the same place.

In the initial example, I actually did manage to get a high quality print dry, but only on Ray Bidegain's etching press, which is several times larger than mine. Dampening aids ink transfer — but so does exerting x10 the amount of pressure.

>26 DWPress: Sometimes I wrap the paper stack in plastic pretty tightly and put it in the fridge between runs to keep it damp without mildewing. I even once froze some packs of paper! Gotta live on the edge in this business sometimes. . . .

>27 grifgon: Really depends on the paper. Biblio prints letterpress brilliantly dry but it prints intaglio beautifully too when dampened. Hard packing and unworn type are always the best option. Somerset takes a good impression dry too.

>28 SuttonHooPress: I used a fridge for Wind to manage the piles of 14x22" folios. I was so glad to get it out of the studio after that project. I have a damp box I made years ago that works great for smaller runs and necessary for overnight holding of something like 20 sheets of Arches for an intaglio edition.

>29 DWPress: Cool. My damp box is an old rubbermaid tote with a hinged lid that I line with soaking wet towels or my wife's old pajamas.

>31 duncjl: haha, well done! What's the origin for the illustration?

>32 astropi: It's a keepsake by the Old School Press for the 1997 Oxford fair. The woodcut is from a 1518 book printed by Joannes Groninger and whilst the keepsake attributes it to Thomas Murner he presumably would only have been the author of the book from which it was taken, not the illustrator also.

>33 duncjl: Thank you!