Katharina Jesdinsky rookie

How long have you been printing?

Letterpress printing in 2000, linocut around 1988

Describe your first encounter with letterpress

I started to work with letterpress while studying Fine Arts at University, working on small artist books.

Where did you learn?

Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel

Who was your most influential teacher?

My professor was Uwe Meier-Weitmar, he advised me to get into letterpress.

What super power would you like to have?

To be able to find every spelling mistake (in time!)

Do you prefer to work alone or with others?

I can enjoy both.

What do you most value in your friends?

Tolerance and humor, and to be patient with me ...

When do your best ideas occur to you?

When I work in a concentrated way, which can also be while cooking.

If you were to die and come back as a typeface, which would it be?

Maybe a wooden Garamond?

What tool do you use more often than any other?

Oh, I don't know what it is really, maybe a cliché-lifter? I use it for nearly everything.

What books are currently on your nightstand?

Hannah Arendt, Banalität des Bösen (with the Drawing and printmaking-class at the university we realize an exhibition project at the KZ Ravensbrück Memorial Museum this year)

If you could study with any printer throughout history, who would it be?

still alive: Marthe Armitage (printing wallpapers!)

If you have your own shop, what equipment do you own?

a Heidelberg windmill, a FAG proofpress and a Grafix in 50 x 70 cm, around 20 type cabinets with lead type and wood type and a few smaller, useful machines
and I collect old clichés (galvanos)

If you could change one thing about your shop, what would it be?

My print workshop is in the basement of an old house, I would love to raise it and then it would be on the ground floor.

When and where are you the happiest?

By the sea, with my daughters and in my workshop.

What is your greatest fear/worry?

... that I might lose one of my senses.

What do you think is useful about what you make?

I am not sure if it makes sense. Maybe one point is to keep an old technique alive and teaching the next generation.

What’s your day job?

Workshop leader for artistic printing techniques at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design

Do you use any other techniques or media besides letterpress?

different etching techniques, woodcut, linocut and lithography