Back in October, an article in the New York Times discussed Parsons Illustration Alumna Jill Bliss and her efforts to revive production of Gocco printers. What is Gocco, you ask? According to Jill’s site…
In the 1970’s Noboru Hayama, a printer and the japanese inventor of the “print gocco” system, wished to develop a quick and easy household color printing system. cleverly combining the basic priciples of screenprinting and rubber-stamping, “print gocco” is a clean, easy, and fully self-contained compact system that exposes and prints all in one unit.
And here is an excerpt from the New York Times article, written by Rob Walker:
Turns out that Print Gocco is both better known and somehow cooler than it has ever been here. And this is almost certainly because in late 2005, the Riso Kagaku Corporation, now an international and largely digital business, announced that Gocco was dead.It was this surprise announcement that inspired Jill Bliss to start a Web site called Save Gocco, which became a centerpiece of a product-fandom community (or at least a cult). Bliss, who used a Gocco machine she bought on eBay in her handmade stationery business, Blissen, says she threw together the site “on a whim.” She handed out some press packets at the Bazaar Bizarre craft fair in Los Angeles, and soon SaveGocco.com became ground zero of Gocco-withdrawal angst. The site ultimately collected more than a thousand names of enthusiasts, in a show of strength that the signers hoped might inspire some entity to start making the product again. It also carried news of Gocco art shows that started to pop up, and it listed retail resources. Wang says interest in the process among artists and crafters was already gaining momentum when word got out that the device was going to disappear. “Then there was just this urgency,” she recalls, “to find a Gocco.”
Read the rest of the article here. Visit SaveGocco.com for more information about Gocco printing.
If you live on the West Coast, don’t miss Jill Bliss’s show, currently at Giant Robot in Los Angeles. See more of her work and wares at her personal website.
(image from SaveGocco.com)