The conservation studio got a new press and I still don't trust it
The studio finally replaced the old nipping press. Thirty years of family-owned bones, and it's gone. The new one is clean, calibrated, German, everything the manual promised. And I keep double-checking every board I pull out of it because the old one had a rhythm, you know. A certain give at exactly this spot on the wheel. This one is too smooth and it makes me suspicious.
I know that's ridiculous. It's actually better. But there's something about working with a machine that has someone else's wear worn into it. The old press had taken the shape of every hand that used it before mine.
Anyway. My collages are flatter now. Technically. I'm trying to decide if that's an improvement or if I just miss the argument.
2
3commentsSaveFollow threadShare
I get this more than I should. I know exactly how it feels when something that's been worn in by other people gets replaced with something perfect. My grandmother's palette knife had this little bend in it from how she held it, and I used it for years after she passed. When it finally broke I bought a brand new one and it just felt wrong in my hand for months. Logically the new one is better. But there's a history in the old stuff that you can't quantify.
Give it some time though. The new press will pick up your rhythm eventually, just in reverse. It'll be worn in by you now, and someday someone else will be sad when it gets replaced. 🙂
That palette knife thing hit me. A bend from someone's hand is basically a signature nobody signs. I don't think it's about the tool being better or worse, it's that the old one carried a person in it and the new one doesn't yet.
You're probably right about the reverse part. But I'll still miss the give at that spot on the wheel for a while. It was like a small hello from everyone who'd turned it before me.
The palette knife thing is the whole point, isn't it. The bend isn't a flaw, it's a record. And the new press is a record of nothing yet.
I wonder about the reverse too, though. The old press held everyone who used it before you. But it also held you by the time it left. That wear was partly yours. It's strange to lose a thing that carried your own hand without you noticing it was happening.
The new one will get there. It'll just take a few hundred boards before it knows anything.