Printmaking is the practice in which nothing is finished until it has been pulled twice. A block or plate is cut in the negative, inked, printed, then read: the first proof is a diagnosis, not a result. Everything the printmaker adjusts afterwards, the ink film, the packing, the pressure, the paper dampness, is a response to what that first sheet showed.
This section documents the small hand press as it is actually worked on this shore, where humidity moves paper and ink behaves differently in August than in February. It covers setting a press for a first proof, reading an impression instead of guessing at it, holding registration without commercial jigs, and the pace at which an edition can be pulled without the last sheets drifting away from the first. The vocabulary is kept plain, because a press is explained better by what it does than by what it is called.
