Making the Mini Halfwood

The Mini Halfwood Press was first shown publicly in a park. The designer, artist Bill Ritchie, brought the press along on a family picnic and set up his brand-new, first-ever miniature etching press and began making prints from plates he made on the spot. He drew a tree on a small, shiny copper plate using a sharp steel needle. People walking by on the pathway stopped and stared, and kids ventured up and asked what he was doing. "I'm a printmaker," Bill said, and they watched him pull the first proof. This book, "Making the Mini Halfwood," is his notes that he wrote when was making the press in his press-making workshop in Seattle. It started out to be a how-to book, but the process became so complicated that it was not published, after all. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that day in June, 2014, it was decided to proceed despite that the reader may find that making the Mini Halfwood Press is not as easy at it may appear.