Motif Design and Stamp Printing
Senior 1 · Fine Arts
Motif Design and Stamp Printing
Lesson 5 of 5
22 min
A stamp that prints well on paper can decorate far more than paper: tote bags, T-shirts, cushion covers, table napkins, wrapping paper, paper bags, exercise-book covers, wooden boxes and even clay pots before they are fired. Hand-printed products are sold in craft shops and markets across Rwanda, and a few good stamps can be the start of a small business. Each surface needs the right paint, the right preparation and a finishing step so that the print lasts.
| Surface | Paint or ink | Finishing |
|---|---|---|
| Paper and card | poster paint, block-printing ink, stamp-pad ink | dry flat |
| Cotton cloth | fabric paint, or acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium | dry, then iron to fix (heat-set) |
| Wood | acrylic or poster paint | dry, then a coat of clear varnish |
| Soft clay | no paint: press the stamp in to leave a pattern in the surface | dry and fire the clay as usual |
Natural fibres such as cotton take paint best. Shiny synthetic cloth lets paint crack and peel.
A hard block cannot print well on a round calabash or a bottle. Use a soft stamp, such as foam or rubber, and roll it gently across the curve. Potters in many parts of Africa, including Rwanda, have long decorated pots by pressing or rolling carved and twisted tools into the soft clay before firing: printing without ink.
Measure before you print. To centre a group of stamps across an object, add up the width of the stamps and the gaps between them, subtract that from the width of the object, and share what is left equally between the two sides.
Ishimwe prints a row of three stamps across the front of a cotton tote bag 36 cm wide. Each stamp is 6 cm wide and he wants 2 cm between them.
The photograph shows a master printer at work in Ntonso, a craft village in Ghana, stamping adinkra symbols onto a bedspread with calabash stamps and a dark dye made from tree bark.
People have block-printed cloth for a very long time. This small piece of cotton, about 19 cm across, was printed in the 13th or 14th century and found near Fustat (old Cairo) in Egypt. The printer stamped the cloth with a mordant, a chemical that fixes dye, and then dyed the whole cloth: the red dye stayed only where the block had printed, and washed out of the pale lines.
Warning
Safety
Tip
Wash, pad, press, fix. Pre-wash cloth, print on a padded surface, press straight down without rocking, and heat-set when dry. In a project, a test print on a scrap of the same material saves the real object.
Why should new cotton cloth be washed before printing?
Solution: new cloth has a stiff finish that stops the paint soaking into the fibres, so the print would wash out easily.
Why do you slide a piece of card inside a T-shirt before printing its front?
Solution: so the paint cannot soak through to the back of the T-shirt.
A cushion cover is 40 cm wide. You will print two stamps, each 8 cm wide, with a 4 cm gap between them. How far from the left edge should the first stamp start so the pair is centred?
Solution: group width = 8 + 4 + 8 = 20 cm. Space left = 40 − 20 = 20 cm, so 10 cm on each side. Start the first stamp 10 cm from the left edge.
How is the print on a fabric bag made permanent?
Solution: let it dry, then heat-set it by ironing the back of the print (or through a cloth) as the paint's instructions say.
How can you decorate a clay pot with a stamp without using any paint?
Solution: press or roll the stamp into the soft clay before it is fired, so the design is left as a pattern in the surface.
Remember
Sources and credits
