Vruatrix · Krakow
The studio
Krakow · since 2014
How the studio grew
Zofia took on a former bookbinder's workroom in Krakow, up one flight of stairs, and moved in one secondhand etching press, the one that is still the large press, and a ferric chloride tank she built herself. The first course ran that autumn, and there has been a course every term since.
A second, smaller etching press arrived, with a 50 by 90 centimetre bed. It took proofing and A4 work off the big press, which freed the large bed for the long runs that key-holders and editions need.
The relief room opened, with a cylinder proofing press for blocks up to A2 and a cast-iron hand press from the 1890s with a 45 by 60 centimetre platen. Lino and woodcut joined etching on the course list.
Four presses, two rooms, one ferric bath and a plan chest full of key-holders' drawers. The autumn courses run from September to December, and the presses are for hire Tuesday to Saturday, and on Sunday afternoons for key-holders.
Why ferric chloride
There is no nitric acid in this building, and there will not be. Nitric throws off fumes that need serious extraction and steady nerves, and a small room up one flight of stairs is the wrong place for either. Ferric chloride is a metal salt that eats copper without boiling off gas: it bites more slowly than nitric, but it bites more cleanly, with crisp lines and none of the bubbling that roughens an edge. Our bath has been topped up rather than replaced since the studio opened, and it still bites as well as it did the week it was mixed. I learned on nitric at art school and I do not miss the smell, which stayed in your hair for the rest of the day. Slow biting also suits beginners, because a mistake can be caught: you lift the plate, look at it, and put it back, and five minutes either way rarely ruins anything, which is most of what the induction teaches at the bath. The grounds are water-washable for the same reason, so nobody here cleans a plate with solvent. And while a plate is in the bath, the paper goes into the deep sink to soak for exactly twenty minutes, not fifteen and not thirty, because that is how long our cotton sheets take to soften all the way through without going limp.
Zofia
Editioning service
For artists who want an edition printed for them. Bring us a plate, or etch one here, and we print the edition to match the proof you approve.
The proofing fee is 220 zł and includes two proofs. Once you approve one, the edition is printed from 38 zł per print for A5 etchings, in editions of 10 to 100; larger plates are priced when we see them. Editions take 3 to 5 weeks from the date you approve the proof. Collect them in Krakow, or have them posted within Poland, flat-packed between card, for 35 zł.
To start, write with the plate size and the edition you have in mind, and read the list just below first.
What we will not do
- No nitric acid and no solvent-based grounds.Copper is etched in ferric chloride with water-washable grounds only. If you want to bite zinc in nitric, we will point you elsewhere.
- No screen printing and no digital or giclée reproduction.Everything that leaves here was printed by hand from a plate or a block, on one of four presses.
- No editions of work you do not hold the rights to.We print your own images, or images you have permission in writing to edition.
- No rush editions in under two weeks.Plates need proofing, paper needs soaking and prints need drying flat. Three to five weeks is the honest time.
- No editions larger than 100 impressions.A hundred hand-wiped prints from one copper plate is already a long run.
- No drop-in sessions for children under 12.Relief courses take ages 12 to 15 with an adult booked alongside them.
Safety and the room
The etching room is kept ventilated whenever the bath is uncovered, and nitrile gloves are supplied at the bench for anyone handling plates in and out of it. Spent solution is neutralised before it leaves the building, never poured away as it is. Paper is soaked in the deep sink, well away from the bath, so it stays clean of ferric. On Mondays the studio is closed while the bath is checked and the press blankets are washed, which is why the presses feel the same on a Tuesday morning as they did the week before.
The etching room is for ages 16 and over. Everything here is covered in the induction before your first booking.