rhymes with “cocoa”

Our Christmas present to ourselves this year was a Print Gocco, a clever Japanese small scale screen printing device. This was our first experiment with it and we are very pleased with the results!

First, we created the image on the computer, using type and clip art. Then, we printed out the image and inserted it into the machine. The Gocco actually burns the image out of the screen emulsion, using the heat from its special old-fashioned flash bulbs and the carbon in the laser printer toner. The screen is then inked inside its plastic bubble and inserted into the press, and voila! Many, many impressions can be made of the highly detailed screen, on paper, cloth or any number of surfaces, and it can then be cleaned and used again later.

We plan to use this as much as possible! Fans of the West Philly t-shirts can look forward to new hand-inked designs, as soon as we get the right kind of ink for fabric. We also have an upcoming in-store event in January with Amy Walsh, a local artist who uses a Gocco to make prints of her original images on the pages of old books and other interesting paper surfaces. Watch this site for details…