Bill Schwab

It is with great sadness that we must report that Bill Schwab, one of our instructors over the last few years, has died unexpectedly. He was a knowledgeable, friendly and talented instructor in our workshops. He was a good friend and all-round good guy. We will miss him deeply.

Bill was a wonderful photographer and teacher. His beautiful photographs brought delight to many collectors all over the world. He had a distinct visual style that you could spot across the room. Achieving that unique style is not easy. He could make difficult photographic technical topics seem easy once you heard him explain them.

Here is a Bill story:

I was preparing to teach a workshop at his North Light Studio the next day, and we went to have lunch at the little outdoor restaurant near his house in the tiny community of Cross Village. While we were eating, every local person that walked by waved, and walked over to say hi to Bill and his out-of-town guest. Bill knew everyone.

Then this silver-blue Weimaraner hound walked into the restaurant. This startled me, because the dog was a spitting image of my Weim, Robie, who was 800 miles away at that moment. We both love dogs, so we coaxed it over and looked for an owner's tag on its collar. There was not a tag.

This is a classic Bill problem. He gets the restaurant to bring out a water bowl and a snack for the dog. He hitches it to a post with a leash he has in his car. And then starts calling everyone he knows in Cross Village, which best I can tell, is - well everyone in Cross Village. He gets a lead that someone has seen the dog wandering down a road about a mile away. We jump in his truck and drive there and he knocks on doors and asks if anyone knows whose dog it might be. He finds someone who has seen it around a seasonal rental house owned by an out-of-towner. He then finds out who cleans this house and then calls this person. They tell him that the dog might be owned by the college-age daughter of the house owner who showed up for the weekend.

We drive around some more collecting information as he chases down the clues. Did I tell you he knows everyone? He finally is able to find a person who is friends with a person who might know the number of this young woman. He calls the number, and finds that his detective work has paid off. He puts the dog in his truck and drives it two miles to deliver the dog back to its owner.

All of this takes around 3 or 4 hours. This is the type of guy Bill was. He would spend close to half a day to make sure that a complete stranger doesn't lose their dog. People like Bill are special, and I am going to miss him mightily.

Paper!

We are now an official Hahnemühle paper dealer. We will primarily stock Hahnemühle Platinum Rag and a small selection of the printmaking papers that cannot be sourced from larger online retailers such as Dick Blick and Talas. Because we are a small online-only retailer, our philosophy has been to sell only a small line of curated products that are difficult to find other places or require prohibitively large order quantities.

Workshops!

We are hosting workshops in alternative photographic printing techniques, printmaking and book arts. Currently scheduled workshops are located here.

New polymer plate material now in stock:

Torelief WS73 HX4

For over two years, we have been dealing with the fallout from Kodak’s decision to close their Osaka photopolymer manufacturing plant. Jet Corporation contracted with this Kodak plant to manufacture their proprietary formula polymer plates. When Kodak closed their plant, Jet made one last huge run of material.

Jet has been in the process of finding another contract manufacturer to make their plates ever since then. They have been having difficulty sourcing some of the constituent materials for the plates due to Covid-related supply chain and geopolitical issues. The net result of these factors is that we still do not have any idea when Jet plates will be available again.

Over a year ago, we began a process of trying to find a comparable steel-backed polymer material that had the same desirable characteristics as the Jet plates, namely easy plate washout in water, lack of mottling defects in the slip coat and no weird chemical odor, which were all maddening problems in some other plates being sold. We investigated three other manufacturer’s offerings. One of them turned out to have consistency issues for use in intaglio printing. Thankfully, the other two plate materials turned out to be similar to the original LSL73SP plate we started selling 4 years ago.

Toray Torelief WS73HX4

Toray Torelief WS73HX4 is a plate material we are now selling in addition to the Jet plate material. It has the same 0.73mm thickness as our original LSL73SP plate material. It washes out in water without any weird chemical smell, and is easily dried without frantically avoiding water drops continuing to etch the plate. And we have seen no evidence of slip coat mottling on these plates.

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