Book Lab Takeaways
Title: Book Lab date: {{Jan 30 2023}}
Summary and Key Takeaways¶
The Booklab was hosted by Carleton University's Master Printer, Larry Thompson. After settling in around a table filled with various printed sources, he asked us a question that he said he had previously posed to many of his students. The question was, "What is a book?" As simple of a question it might be, it had most of stumped. My first thought was that it is a bound collection of printed material, whether those are drawings, diagrams, or writing.
But he pressed us - a scroll used to be a book, but would we not consider it one today? A clay tablet used to be the main method of sharing information, what would we call it today? What does it compare to? He had us lift our hand and see how a sample Bronze age clay tablet is fairly similar in size to our phones today.
We talked for most of our time about the ways printing and collecting information has changed over the last thousand or so years, before he introduced us to the various printing presses he has in the Book Arts Lab. We got a hands on experience and were able to use his more modern printing press (1960s) to print something of our own.