The printing table upon which Svenskt Tenn’s fabrics are printed is 60 metres long. Here one colour is printed at a time, for each core, so that the dye has time to dry before the rest of the cores are filled in. Nowadays a robot takes care of the hard work of moving the heavy frame, but nevertheless, two people are required, one on each side of the frame, to pour in dye and to control the process.
When the printing is finished, it is time to fixate the dyes under heat. Surplus dye must be rinsed off and the fabric has to be re-stretched. Before the fabric is ready for delivery, it is inspected manually. Stencil printing on textiles has a long history. The printing method was employed thousands of years ago in Egypt, China and Greece, where the “open” sections of the stencil let dye through. Stencils were made by leather, greased paper or metal. In order to fix them during printing, they were fastened with thread of silk or hair, which sometimes appear on old prints like thin lines between the stencils.
The next step of the development was to stretch a weave of silk onto a wooden frame and then fasten the stencils directly on the weave. The technique spread from China and Japan throughout Asia and arrived in Europe in the 18th century. It was frequently used for printing exclusive wallpaper on linen or silk. The first photo-based method was introduced in the early 20th century in the United States and revolutionised the technique. William Morris, who inspired many of Josef Frank’s patterns, is one of many designers and artists who have worked with screen printing. Louise Bourgeois, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol are others.
