Printing plants Robert Little style
Robert Little was a Pennsylvania botonist and an artist who, in 1976 along with Chris Dewees and Eric Hochberg brought the art of printing from nature to the United States when they founded the Nature Printing Society. I’ve been a member of the Nature Printing Society since 2014.
Little was known for using fresh plants and a soft brayer, and I used the same approach to print these culinary herbs from my kitchen; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. Working on my kitchen counter, I used a non-toxic printmaking ink and a beautiful handmade washi paper. I’ve been wanting to print these four herbs for a long time and thanks to COVID lockdown, I finally found the time. I never use color straight out of the tubes. I mixed the inks for this project from yellow, black, and blue to make a dark green. I printed them all from the same ink palette and on the same paper so that they could be hung together as a set.
The washi paper is delicate and tissue thin, so once the ink was fully dry, I mounted the imprints onto a backing paper using an archival Japanese method of mounting that is traditionally used for scrolls. It gives the prints a smooth, firm, wrinkle-free hand that is archival and permanent.
