Join visual artist Poonam Jain for a two-day workshop introducing participants to the material and historical worlds of letterpress printing. Through direct engagement with movable type, the workshop invites participants to explore how scripts from across the subcontinent were shaped through printing technologies and processes of standardisation.

In letterpress terminology, a “case” refers to the wooden tray where types are organised and stored, much like the layout of a keyboard. The workshop uses this idea both literally and conceptually, opening the “case” of type to examine how languages, scripts, and print cultures were organised, circulated, and sometimes excluded through printing practices.

Drawing from Jain’s ongoing research project Degrees of Exclusion of Languages, participants will work with letterpress types in scripts such as Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Urdu, Kannada, and English, collected through her fieldwork across Udaipur, Amritsar, Lahore, and Gadag. The workshop introduces participants to the processes of composing, proof-reading, inking, and printing using a traditional proofing press.

Working collectively, participants will take on roles found in a letterpress studio while experimenting with numerals, punctuation, and spacers to produce printed compositions. Each participant will leave with printed works created during the workshop.

About the Artist:

Poonam Jain is a visual artist whose practice spans drawing and installation. Her ongoing research and archiving project, Degrees of Exclusion of Languages, focuses on collecting letterpress types in scripts on the verge of extinction across the subcontinent. Supported in part by the India Foundation for the Arts, the project also includes the production of 3D-printed types for scripts such as Modi and Mahajani. Jain has exhibited internationally, including at Sapar Contemporary and Kadist Art Foundation, and was previously a member of Clark House Initiative, Bombay (2011–2016). She lives and works in Bombay.

While you’re here, explore KNMA’s ongoing exhibition
TYEB MEHTA Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being).