Workshop and studio

Spit Tackle

Studio notes from Spit Tackle

Spit Tackle is one bench, one room and a long habit of letterpress printing. These pages are a placeholder while the studio settles in, nothing more. Three short pieces follow: what the studio uses, how it works, and where.

Method

Everything is drawn before it is made, and drawn again if the sheet argues back. Every trial is logged with what was tried and what went wrong, in pencil. The last step is to look at the piece from across the room and wait.

The room

The work happens in one room with a high ceiling and a worn floor. Shelves of samples run along one wall and a kettle is nearly always on. The door is usually shut, less for privacy than to keep the dust in.

Sources

Most of what leaves the bench starts plain: raw stock chosen for how it behaves. Buying small means a bad batch is a small problem rather than a large one. Whatever is left over is sorted by kind and waits for a smaller piece.

Drawing

A drawing is redone until the proportions read cleanly from across a room. Only when the sheet is settled is anything cut, mixed or printed. Notes about the light in the room where a piece will end up travel with the drawing. A shape that is hurried at the sketch stage tends to stay hurried all the way through.

Materials

Pigments are ground by hand from a short list: raw umber, yellow ochre, bone black. Materials are kept simple and local where the supply allows it. Sheet brass is left to darken on its own rather than lacquered. Wax and chalk sit on the same shelf as the sandpaper, within reach of the bench.

Place

Shelves of samples are photographed under the same daylight throughout the seasons. The kettle, the sharpening stones and the glue pot share the corner nearest the door. The building has kept its skylights and a concrete floor that stays cool in summer. A desk by the window is for drawing; the bench is for everything that makes dust.