Dante Prints

A series of prints and postcards to accompany ‘The Typographic Dante’, an exhibition of letterpress and typewriter art by Barrie Tullett, National Print Museum, Dublin. The works exhibited were typographic interpretations of cantos from Dante Alighieri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ first published in 1472.

By its nature typewriter art is not readily reproducible, a piece can take numerous typewriter ribbons and many hours to create. Tullett’s letterpress prints comprise multiple layers some added to over several years. In order to capture the richness of the exhibition it was important that the accompanying printed material was more than just a cmyk reproduction of the original works.

I reinterpreted seven artworks using five pantone spot colours; teal, red, two shades of silver and black. The cantos are printed in silver on each piece. The four large prints (260mm X 390mm) are based on the format of a fifteenth century edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The typesetting of the cantos is influenced by early printed editions of the book. Our ambition is to develop this aspect of the project in parallel with the main body of work to create a separate interpretation with its own unique voice. These and a number of additional prints will be exhibited with Tullett’s work in the National Poetry Library in London’s South Bank Centre in 2019.

The larger prints and presentation folder are on Munken Lynx. These and the set of A5 postcards were printed by Plus Print. Photographs from the exhibition opening are by Mark Henderson. Additional photography by Kate O’Brien.