A Brief History
What is Printmaking?
When German printer Johannes Gutenberg rolled off his first edition of The Gutenberg Bible in 1455, he changed the shape of western printing forever. Gutenberg used a popular form of printing called relief, that had already been used for centuries to print images and text.
In relief printing, an artist uses sharp tools to carve a design into a piece of wood or linoleum, removing portions of the surface. The parts of the surface that remain are used to form the image. This surface is covered with a thin layer of ink, and a printing press or a hand-held printing baren is used to press paper against the inked surface. This way the ink is transferred to the paper. When the paper is removed, the design is successfully printed.
From 1455 until the late 19th century, relief printing was the technique used to make books, posters, magazines, and more. Until the revolution of photography and computer aided design in the early 20th century, the physical print process involved skilled artists and artisans that carved images, created print blocks, set type, and ran printing press machines.
Where does Towson University come in?
In 1927 the Maryland State Normal School (later called Towson University) wanted to reproduce pictures of the four buildings the school had occupied since it was founded in 1866. To do this they relied on relief printing. In the January 1927 edition of the student newspaper, the Tower Light, the first image of these buildings appeared, a reproduction achieved by using relief printing.
Later in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the yearbook and the student newspaper also relied on relief printing blocks to reproduce photographs, comics, maps, cover designs, and more.
A number of these original printing blocks are in the Towson University Special Collections and University Archives. While there is evidence that the school used printing blocks much earlier and much later in its history, the blocks that remain are from a very short time period. This exhibit will highlight those blocks and the original places they appeared through TU’s historic publications.