Botanical Pressure Prints with Ferns

Common Press is hosting a botanical printing workshop at the Fisher Fine Arts Library on Friday, November 6, from 1 PM to 3 PM. It's part of Pressed in Ink: Art + Nature, a series Common Press is running in partnership with the Morris Arboretum & Gardens. The session is led by Jessica Peterson, Director of Common Press at the University of Pennsylvania, and Stephanie Bruneau, Assistant Director of Adult Education at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens.

The workshop focuses on pressure printing, a method where you make printing plates from low-relief botanical materials and then run them through the Common Press Vandercook presses. For this particular session, the materials are fern fronds collected from the Dorrance H. Hamilton Fernery at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens. That fernery is the only remaining freestanding Victorian fernery in North America, so the prints start with something pretty rare. Along the way, you'll learn about ferns in general and the specific types you'll be printing with, so you walk away with both a print and some actual knowledge of the plants behind it.

It's a two-hour session on a Friday afternoon, and you'll be working inside the Fisher Fine Arts Library on the UPenn campus. Registration is required, and the cost is $30 for members and $35 for non-members. If you're already a member of the Arboretum, it's a bit cheaper.