Rembrandt's Ghost in the New Machine

In 1652, on a backstreet in Old Amsterdam, a paper mill is working into the night as Rembrandt van Rijn, a regular customer of this establishment, makes one of his orders for fine etching paper. The 7-year old son of the owner, Arent de Gelder, goes with his father to deliver the finished paper. A casual gesture by the famous Rembrandt-a gift of an etching to the boy-changes the youngster's life. Another life-changing experience begins on October 31, 2012, when William "Mac" Handyside MacRitchie collapses in his printmaking studio. Mac comes to in a few minutes-but he is a little disoriented. There must have been some magic in the old copper etching plate he had been cleaning with lacquer thinner because, in the time of just those few minutes that he was passed out, he takes a week-long, trouble-filled quest to Rembrandt's time and place: 1660, Amsterdam. Mac's time-travel journey starts out badly as he discovers himself stowed-away on a putrid dung boat along with his Mini Halfwood etching press and printmaking chest. He embarks on a deadly liaison with a wicked procuress, poses as a scholar from the American colonies, and seeks to meet Rembrandt van Rijn. The famed artist, Rembrandt, desperate for money, believes Mac can help him make a comeback as a printmaker and so he covets Mac's Halfwood press. Mac will encounter Arent de Gelder, along the way. The rest is history!
About the Author: Educated in state colleges in Washington State and California in the 1960s, he taught print-making at the University of Washington from 1966 to 1985. A year after his last sabbatical Ritchie left the university inventing a new printmaking teaching method for blended distance learning. Using video and computers, he has strived to restore the unique, personal aspects of art professors' offerings which he thought were being devalued and lost. His life-work became an "asset management and legacy transfer scheme," a game-like practice that he code-named Emeralda: Games for the Gifts of Life. Ritchie teaches that printmaking is greater than the sum of handcraft and techniques or the manners of drawing and painting. His own printmaking has been a seamless blend of video, film, and computer graphics. "Everything in art is printmaking in one form or another," he tells his students. "When I opened my eyes to art, I was looking at a print." Creative writing, especially historic fiction, is another way to teach. Story-telling, video games and distance learning call for a balance of creativity and invention in which any experience-including printmaking, can be shared. Toward this end the books that Ritchie publishes are exercises that ad-vance him in a teacher's role. In 2004 Ritchie designed his first Halfwood Etching press with a 24-inch wide bed. A profes-sional steel Wright, named Tom Kughler, produced a one-fourth scale model of it, and Ritchie named this one, "Mini Halfwood Press," and later he de-signed the Printmaker Chest (both of which he in-cluded in this story). Most recently, he designed the "WeeWoodie Rembrandt" press pictured in this book. His Website for the Halfwood Presses is www.printmakingworld.com and his personal, art-ist/teacher's Website is www.ritchie-art.com.