The letterpress Manifesto - Thoughts on a workshop

THOUGHTS ON A WORKSHOP WITH AMOS KENNEDY AND PAOLO LAZZARELLI

I did hope it would be an exciting workshop because I know that Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is an extraordinary person, but I couldn't have imagined the catalyzing effect of the meeting between Amos and Paolo Lazzarelli, the owner of the Tipografia Sociale. Each man represented a distinct world: Letterpress printing in the USA and in Italy.

Generally those who teach letterpress printing do so in University facilities, centers for book arts or in their own shops. In this case we invited Amos to the Tipografia Sociale in Arezzo, a privately owned business run by a husband and wife team who have been printing letterpress posters for more than 40 years. The shop now survives mainly by printing simple one color sale signs and posters for local events. It is one of the few letterpress poster shops still working in Italy.

Amos arrived one day early to familiarize himself with the shop. It was immediately clear that Amos and Paolo Lazzarelli, the owner, had good feelings for each other. Slowly Paolo began to show us all the wood type he has in the shop, included some from the late 1800s: drawers filled with letters, numbers, borders, engraved figures, printing plates of all the leftist political party emblems dating from 1921, and old large multicolored posters. Amos showed an irrepressible enthusiasm for those huge typefaces, unobtainable in the United States, where the traditional poster generally measures 30x50 cm.

The shop space was not very large, but we had two 1921 hand presses for 11 students coming from all parts of Italy. Soon, we had two teachers, calling each other maestro, working side by side, each with one press and surrounded by a group of students.

The ability that Amos and Paolo showed in working together, despite the lack of a common language (I was the translator), was such that their teamwork became a fundamental element of what the students were learning: the love for letterpress printing alongwith a sincere respect for those who know this art in depth. Paolo discovered that all his knowledge was extremely appreciated, Amos found new ideas for his work. They shared two worlds and glimpsed possibilities of further developments.

Each student made several posters, learning how to set up type, lock it in place and print. They learned that a job is made of several stages, included the cleaning of type and distribution of type and furniture back into the shelves and drawers! They also learned different ways of working. Paolo's traditional method called for printing the posters with perfectly full colors, inking the type throughly before printing each sheet of paper, while Amos likes to reprint over the same inked letters, until no more ink shows up. He does this reusing the same paper, so that several "ghost prints" create layers of forms and overlapping of transparent colors.

When I first went to meet Paolo in his shop, he told me of his intention to keep the shop open for a couple more years and then retire and sell everything. When I returned to see him a couple of days after the workshop, he had changed his mind. When he retires, he will keep everything and start making his own art!

In the interview published in the italian magazine Progetto Grafico, Amos says he doesn't like the word "art", I totally agree with his views, but I think that we can also say that we are all artists and that creativity is never only personal, but originates in the society, the people. Some then visualize it, and find ways of communicating it.

Amos is a printer with very clear social views, powerfully grounded in a deep respect for all human beings. His work preserving Negro culture and supporting human rights is a terrific lesson nowadays here in Italy, where we read and hear news of human andcivil rights lack of respect and abuses daily.

We are already thinking about other workshops: Paolo is available to teach beginning classes to learn all the traditional skills and Amos is proposing advanced courses, we are also planning an exhibition.

I want to thank Maria Chiara Belia, Luca Belli, Matteo Bertin, Daniele Capo, Leo Colalillo, Giulio Laurenti, Laura dal Maso, Mauro de Toffol, Enrico Rudello, Gigliola Terenna, Nicola Zucconi, the students who worked with passion and have made many beautiful posters, my husband Massimo who has done all the web communication work with me and the two maestri who carried us through this adventure: Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., the first Black professor of Art at Indiana University in the United States and Paolo Lazzarelli, Italian typographer at the Tipografia Sociale, historic leftist letterpress shop in Arezzo. Thank you!

Monica Dengo

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