Students from the Stamps School of Art and Design’s Florilegium: Creating a Plant Compendium class visited the U-M Library’s book arts studio to get an introduction to letterpress printing.

Working with U-M library’s Kyle Clark, students had the opportunity to experiment with the printing processes using real plants collected locally and a writing piece by recent U-M creative writing graduate, Carl Lavigne.

The students will include the piece they made in the book arts studio into their final project, an accordion book made with original drawings and paintings from field observation, photographs, and studio work.

“I hope the students were able to take away something valuable or at least instill a deeper interest in the book arts and the Book Arts Studio,” says the library’s Kyle Clark.

The unique project allowed Stamps students and Lavigne, a recent graduate of the  MFA creative writing program, to collaborate on this beautiful broadside.

The book arts represent a truly interdisciplinary field integrating separate areas of study in the context of artists’ books, prints, or other creative projects.