A term dating back until at least the late 1680s, a “wayzgoose” once referred to a banquet, held annually on St Bartholomew’s Day, organised by the Master Printer for the Journeymen printers to mark the end of summer1. The name lives on in contemporary gatherings of printmakers across the world to this day (though with decidedly fewer geese involved).
Of those modern events, none are perhaps as well known within the community as the Hamilton Wayzgoose. The annual conference sees printmakers & historians from across the US as well as internationally descend upon the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, USA – inside one of the old factory buildings of Hamilton Wood Type Manufacturing, once the largest and longest operating wood type manufacturers in the United States.
The conference hosts printing workshops, displays, print sales, and keynote speeches from many respected printmakers within the practising community. Among the lineup this year was a segment for emerging letterpress printmakers, Print Futures Live, organised by Partners in Print (PiP) – and incredibly kindly, I was one of the three practitioners invited to co-present this talk, alongside talented printers Erin Moore & Maddy Underwood.
Erin is a printmaker from Portland, Oregon, and presented their incredible work digitising & replicating hand-drawn typefaces from queer & lesbian zines.
Maddy is a printmaker from Nashville, Tennessee, and she presented her fantastic work, including utilising AI tools to replicate the letterpress aesthetic in generative artworks.
Both absolutely blew away the crowd & did a brilliant job, it was an honour to present alongside them – links to their work are below, and well worth a look.
I discussed my usual nonsense, using 3D printers & digital fabrication tools to intersect with the letterpress printmaking craft, and my journey through building this Hybrid Print R&D lab and my PhD research.
It was such an honour to be asked to present my work and to network with incredible printmakers & researchers from the US and beyond (including many practitioners whose work I had admired for a very long time!).
Okay, so maybe there are a few geese still involved with the Wayzgoose.
Links & Resources
Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum: Web – woodtype.org | Instagram: @Hamiltonwoodtype
Partners in Print: Web – partnersinprint.org | Instagram – @pipletterpress
Maddy Underwood: Web – munderwood.design | Instagram: @mmmunder
Erin Moore: Web – emoore.design | Instagram: @bugprints
References
- Liberman, A. (2009) – A Cooked-Goose Chase, or the Murky History of Wayzgoose. Available at: https://blog.oup.com/2009/12/wayzgoose/ [Accessed Nov 2023] ↩︎
- Nardi, H. (2023) – Hamilton Wayzgoose 2023 Album. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tipocracia/albums/72177720312571069 [Accessed Nov 2023] ↩︎
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