@[email protected] asked

What is "mimeography"?

I'm glad you asked! This is my shit :]

Mimeography is essentially a form of making copies of something before printers, done using a stencil, metal drum, ink pad, and other parts but those are the fundamentals. (Besides Xeroxgraphy and Dry Transfer it is the last form of copymaking before digital. It is a successor to hectography, but I won't get into all this stuff)

How it works is you have a hollow and smooth metal cylinder (usually also porous with holes punched into the side of the cylinder) that you adhere a fabric pad onto the side to hold ink (either with a reservoir you fill up or a brush, manually). You adhere a special paper stencil (that is waxy on one side and not on the other) onto that setup from which the ink will selectively come out of depending on where you etch / type / cut / etc off wax from it, so that ink will come out of the unwaxed areas.

This stencil-pad-drum setup is usually hoisted onto a paper bed, series of rollers, and crank, which when you turn, feed paper from its bed through the rollers and past the drum which will also rotate and impress an image onto the paper as it passes through the other end.

Mimeograph machines (which i'll call MMs, which coincidentally enough happens to be my initials) range from a bit more complicated 'tower' models such as Gestetner brand to ones that use alcohol/spirit solvents to create copies known as Spirit Duplicators in tandem to ink to create copies (which, usually were found in churches, government, schools, for their relatively fast duplication of say, tests, bulletins, leaflets, etc.). The latter are famous with Gen X, as a classic solvent mixture from Spirit Duplicators had a pleasant flowery smell from their freshly printed homework assignments (which was actually carcinogenic! so that was phased out over the years).

MMs are generally considered obsolete antiques now, but still actually exist, having evolved into / providing the fundamental process of 'Digital Duplicators' such as Risograph duplicators. These also were mostly found in settings where copies at a fast, industrial level were needed and still are used in those contexts -- but this is where artists like me come in! The unique grainy imperfections of more/less ink and slightly on or off alignment of the image you want per each copy (inherent to mimeography) is beloved amongst graphic designers, cartoonists, zine publishers, printmakers, etc. (which i guess i am all of, if i would just upload my shit lol)

They are best described as when a MM and thermal printer have a giant unwieldly baby, as the thermal head inside fax machines and thermal printers can be used to burn stencil designs onto the special stencil paper -- a process that alongside the mimeographing happens all in one machine!

I actually bought my own MM (A no. 78 from AB Dick Company, it's from the 1900s, not the century, the decade, this thing is OLD but in great condition!) that i've been working on restoring and retrofitting to breathe some new life into so I can use it for printmaking at home (since Risos are prohibitively expensive maintenance and upfront-wise for a single person). I will post my progress on it! It is something i've been excited for a while but haven't posted much about online.

You can even replicate this technology at home with a paint drum, flannel, and ink!
https://youtu.be/eo06ZRXbgao (start at 12:27)

(If nothing else, I hope these gifs from athleticsnyc and isitzen respectively visualize how they work :3 )

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