From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 02/07/03-08:30:39 AM Z
An afterthought: It seems to me that the fact that experts disagree
doesn't necessarily mean that they're all wrong. I learned gum printing
the way I cook. I've told this story before but I think it fits here
again. When I want to cook something, I get out all the cookbooks and
look at that recipe, let's say macaroni and cheese. I look at all the
recipes for macaroni and cheese, note the commonalities and the
differences, and then I set out to make macaroni and cheese. What I make
is delicious, and it is definitely macaroni and cheese, but it doesn't
follow any of the recipes in any of the cookbooks exactly. I like my
macaroni and cheese, but I don't say that Julia Child is wrong because
she makes her macaroni and cheese a little different. When I went to
learn gum printing, I read all the sources I could find, and then I set
out to make gum prints. I didn't follow anyone's instructions exactly,
but I extracted the basics that were common to all the instructions, and
you can't go too far wrong with just the basic instructions. I did find
that I was gettiing too much pigment staining, so I did the pigment test
in Crawford (Scopick hadn't been published yet) and solved the staining
problem immediately.
The point is that all sources are useful, that few of the statements
made in the various gum sources are flat out wrong, and that maybe all
the disagreement means is that our processes are complicated, and it's
like the blind men and the elephant; the truth is contained not in any
one source but in the aggregate. I certainly don't think anyone has got
gum printing down to a science, and the fact that we all disagree about
what works and what doesn't, doesn't mean any of us are wrong but we're
just feeling different parts of the elephant. I can't speak to other
processes, of course, but I've watched the platinum folks discuss and it
doesn't look so different to me than the gum discussions, it's just that
the platinum folks are respectful enough of one another not to claim
that the other one must be wrong, if something works a little different
for them.
Katharine Thayer
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