During this workshop, you will get hands-on with a classic platen press from the first half of the 19th century. You will print a domino, an early form of wallpaper, using a wooden block.
After printing, you will finish your print with color, applied using a stencil and brush. For this, you will use an ink prepared according to a historical recipe, based on gum arabic and pigment.
You will learn how printed matter was constructed in the past: applying ink, positioning the paper, setting the print, and finishing. No theory, just doing.
You will work with authentic materials: wooden printing blocks, traditional inks, and Arches paper.
Afterwards, you will take home a unique, handmade sheet.
Everything happens continuously: you can join in, participate, and move on. Short, tangible, and direct.
Atelier V.V. creates hand-printed wallpaper using a technique that had disappeared from Belgium for more than half a century: printing with the slab. Dimitri and Vicky print their patterns block by block, color by color, using large wooden printing blocks and paint they make themselves based on historical recipes.
Where industrial wallpaper is flat and uniform, here a surface emerges with nuance, depth, and small variations — visible and tangible.
In addition to rolls of wallpaper, Atelier V.V. also prints dominoes: early forms of printed paper that served as precursors to wallpaper. These are printed sheet by sheet, just as in the past.
The atelier works on both new interiors and restorations, always with respect for materials, techniques, and history.
Dimitri Vermeylen is the driving force behind Atelier V.V., which he founded together with his wife Vicky Vermeire. After a career of more than twenty years in the business world, he returned to a craft practice, with a strong focus on historical printing techniques.
He immersed himself in the subject through volunteer work at the Industrial Museum in Ghent, among other things, where he worked with typography and lithography. Today, he and Vicky combine that technical craftsmanship with their own research into historical dyeing and printing methods.
Atelier V.V. has grown into one of the few studios worldwide that prints wallpaper in this way again.
During workshops and demonstrations, Dimitri shares his knowledge in a direct manner: not academically, but by doing, with attention to materials and techniques.
Thanks to Erfgoedcel Vlaamse Ardennen (Variant), FILA Benelux for sponsoring the Arches paper, and thanks to Patrick Goossens.
