Printing from Carved Leather Blocks

Over the past couple of months both my work rooms have had a good clear out and revamp. One because of the acquisition of a sewing cabinet the other because of the presence of a well buried and extremely smelly dead furry thing. This second room has been used mainly for storage for a good long while and it was an enormous job clearing and sorting years of accumulated "stuff". But I have found things long lost and re discovered other things completely forgotten.
One of the things re discovered was a short paper I wrote on printing from carved leather blocks. I majored in printmaking at Uni and was asked to do this at the last minute as no one had used this technique before. I'm not saying it hasn't been done before, just not at this particular University, so here are some pictures of the carved leather blocks and the prints that resulted from them.

This was the first block I carved and as you can see from the prints below
could also be printed like a lino block.
To read more about the process go here

This is a large block so I can only show you what would fit on the scanner bed.

The prints below are of course reversed so you will see different parts of the block.

You will need to click on the pictures to see the full width as they will not show fully on the page.

No doubt you will recognise these characters inspired by a well know illustrator and author.

If you look at the three characters below you will notice that they are holding a brush, pick axe and print roller, the hierarchy of the art department.

Unfortunately I have one, not very good print left from these blocks.

Don't forget, you can go here to read more about printing from leather carvings.