The Black Art - Geoff Han

Sometimes referred to as the black arts or die schwarze Kunst – a term referring to the dark, soot-based ink of 15th-century European letterpress production – printing has always involved physical work in perilous conditions and enterprise for profit. In medieval Switzerland, prior to the invention of the printing press, scribes copied books by hand in writing rooms within monasteries called scriptoria. As a result, italic letterforms can be linked back to the brush strokes necessary to reproduce manuscripts by quill as precisely and quickly as possible. Commercial scriptoria became a significant industry across Europe by the 14th century for wealthy buyers and monasteries. The workforce was often made up of women, including medieval nuns and Jewish women working from home as early as the 13th century, working precariously in cold and dimly lit rooms.

The origins of printing in Switzerland can be traced back to the first printing press in Basel, in the 15th century, shortly after Gutenberg’s press was established. Bibles were often printed on parchment stretched from the skin of sheep, calves and goats and each copy required the skins of around 300 animals to produce. Printing technology advanced significantly through the 19th century, including the introduction of the cylinder press, typesetting machines, mechanical binding and color lithography. The Arts and Crafts School of Zurich City, which eventually became Zurich University of the Arts, was established around this time in 1878.

At the turn of the century, Swiss publishers offered a safe haven for the cultural community, including pacifists and writers in exile such as Robert Walser. Between 1960–80, small left-wing, anarchist and cultural presses prospered. However, by the 1980–90s, with the deregulation of global markets and birth of the Internet, a few large media houses flourished and the Swiss publishing and printing industries entered a crisis. Zurich’s first official printer, 500-year old Orell Fussli, who played a pivotal role in Swiss literature and cultural history, has recently shifted focus to security printing for money, stocks, bonds and credit cards.

Today, publishing in Switzerland is in decline. Similar to patterns around the world, the rise of the knowledge economy has contributed to the steady deindustrialization of Switzerland. The original location of Orell Fussli in Zurich Central is now an Aesop store; the 1000-year-old Swiss monastery Einsiedeln, which has a preserved scriptorium, has an Instagram page depicting Benedictine monk life – medieval printing has become a global tourist attraction. In this workshop, you will be asked to reflect on the topic of printing, considering the local context and history of Zurich and Switzerland.

For our workshop, working in teams of three students each, you will research, edit, design and produce an A4, 16-page, image-based chapter centered around a topic related to print production in Switzerland. Your chapter should be printed using locally available production methods within either ZHdK’s facilities or within Zurich including laser printers, inkjets, plotters, digital indigo, stencil, linocut, vinyl and laser cutting machines or using more analog, physical techniques including frottage, carbon print, cyanotype, or other methods.