#printmaking process

Printmaking Studio & Artist:

アダチ版画研究所   Adachi Hanga  &  James Jean

“Parasola”

“A look behind the process for Parasola. A traditional hand cut woodblock print, it is printed by @adachi.hanga and will be available Dec 17 at 10am Japan time (Dec 16 at 5pm PST).“

https://www.adachi-hanga.com

Milwaukee Handicraft Monday

Every Monday for the past several months we’ve been showcasing block-printed patterns on textiles and paper from the1930s WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project (MHP) in our digital collection “Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA.” Besides the prints themselves, the collection also includes other materials documenting the MHP, including photographs of process and activities from our sibling department, UWM Archives. 

Presented here are photographic images of the block-printing process, from cutting or engraving the wood block to the finished block ready for printing, and from hand-printing textiles and paper to trimming the final print. The last image is of three MHP supervisors who would have been responsible for directing the work of different departments. The individuals are not identified by name, but we believe that the woman standing at center may be Barbara Warren Weismann (1915-2005) who was the head of the blockprinting department. She would have been in her early twenties at the height of the MHP’s activities.

These images were digitized from the originals in the Elsa Emile Ulbricht Papers, 1905-1978, UWM Manuscript Collection 59. 

View our other Milwaukee Handicraft Project posts.

The MHP was founded in 1935 by Harriet Clinton, head of the Women’s Division of Wisconsin’s WPA to help unskilled women laborers provide income for their families. Clinton hired Elsa Ulbricht, an art professor at the Milwaukee State Teacher’s College (one of UWM’s predecessor institutions), to direct the project. The MHP hired around 5,000 people in total throughout its highly successful seven-year existence.