Screen Printing - August/September 2013 - (Page 32)
sh o p ta l k
DocuMenting the Screen Scene
Andy MacDougall
H
appy 100th birthday, screen printing! Although that’s
not technically true, it’s close enough. Not too many
manufacturing processes last 100 years in this fast-paced
and ever evolving world. Ours remains endemic in human
culture, used in the manufacturing of consumer products
from T-shirts to touchscreens and everything in between,
so there’s no danger of it disappearing from use any time
soon, regardless of what the digital prophets and their
salespeople tell everyone. Ever wonder where and how it
all started? There’s a lot more than a few paragraphs on
Wikipedia to the story, but there has never been a book on
the subject. Until now.
The new book, “History of Screen Printing—How
an Art Evolved Into an Industry,” tells the tale. Written by
Swiss author Guido Lengwiler, and available this fall in
English from ST Books, it has what is considered to be the
first photograph of a screen-printing operation, taken in
1913. From this shop, Brant & Garner Studio on Market St.
in San Francisco, and a few other pioneers of the process
clustered in California, grew the industries we are all part
of today. Concentrating on the period between the late
1800s up to the end of WW II, the book is full of previously
unpublished information, stories, and photos. Although
this is a historical text, cross-referenced with sources,
it reads like an adventure novel at times, and has the look
of an art book.
The DNA of those first shops spread internationally
in the 1920s and found new markets and new uses through
the 1930s. It spawned the printed-electronics industry and
played a significant role in WWII on all sides. The book
traces how it happened, with firsthand accounts uncovered
through meticulous research, tracking down and interviewing family members of the pioneers of the process throughout the world.
Connecting thousands of bits of information into
a well written narrative is a challenge, but Lengwiler, a
teacher of screen printing, has made sense of it all by painting a clear picture of what came before, and how screen
printing arrived just as the American advertising industry
began. One drove the other. The book addresses stenciling
techniques in 19th and 20th century, origins of the process
in the USA, the spread of the technique from the USA to
Europe, technical developments, specialty applications,
patents, and more. Richard S. Field, retired professor at Yale
and a noted author of many books on art and biographies
of artists, writes, “… .what a wonderful, much needed, and
long overdue book this is… .”
Signs of the Times and Screen Printing (then
known as Screen Process) were both early chroniclers
of its growth, and the book has lots of old ads and pictures.
32
screenprinting
One name readers will still recognize is Nazdar, one of the
industry sponsors who have helped to make the project a
reality. The book was made possible with the early encouragement and support of Christophe Tobler, CEO of Sefar,
and the late Richard Eisenbeiss and his son David from
Kiwo/Ulano, Mike Fox from Nazdar, Rich Hoffman from
M&R, Ryan Moor from Ryonet, SGIA, and a number of other
companies. Members of the ASPT also stepped up to help
make the book a reality.
The ‘Selectasine Process,’ a patented version of
screen printing, was the first to come with instruction
books, supplies, and even automated presses back in
the 1920s. Through aggressive salesmanship to printers,
sign shops, and manufacturing companies, the knowledge
spread. Due to low startup costs compared to other printing processes, plus adaptability to an ever widening range
of substrates and products, screen printing caught on.
Selectasine eventually fell by the wayside, but not before
the process had been adapted worldwide, all in a few short
years. Many of the families that helped Lengwiler in his
research found old photos and diaries and made them
available for inclusion in the book. In some cases, Guido
was able to provide descendants new information about
their relatives.
It’s these connections being lost to the past that
spurred the author to start his research in 1998. As a young
screen printer in Switzerland, Lengwiler worked for a man
who had worked for Hans Casper Ulrich in the 1940s, and
told screen-printing stories from the good old days. Ulrich,
an artist and trained lithographer, had gone to the USA in
the 1920s on behalf of the Swiss bolting-cloth industry—the
members of which wanted to know why a small group of
artists, sign shops, and manufacturers in the USA were buying up ever increasing amounts of their silk fabrics. Ulrich
learned the basics from the Americans, kept copious notes,
then brought the process back to Europe and continued to
refine it, and then spread it through supply company Serico,
which is still in business today.
Screen printing is used in numerous markets: consumer goods, solar and fuel cells, electronic products, automotive, medical, glass, and ceramic—did we miss anyone?
The list is ever expanding, and Lengwiler has rescued this
forgotten and rapidly disappearing history of the birth of
the printing process we all use today.
Andy MacDougall is a screen-printing trainer and consultant based on
Vancouver Island in Canada and a member of the Academy of Screen
Printing Technology. If you have production problems you’d like to see
him address in “Shop Talk,” e-mail your comments and questions to
andy@squeegeeville.com.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - August/September 2013
Screen Printing - August/September 2013
Contents
Editorial Insights
New Products
The Social-Media Revolution
Color Management for Screen Printing
Slam-Dunk Solutions for Screen Cleaning
Tools and Techniques for the Inkroom
Distributor/dealer Directory
Classifieds
Ad Index
Shop Talk
Screen Printing - August/September 2013
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