Week 1 Studio: Getting started

The first studio — setting up the bench, handling the materials safely, and making the first deliberately bad copy of the semester.

29 July 2027

Before the session#

Read the policies page safety section before you arrive — the studio issues a short safety briefing on your first visit to any material, and you’re expected to have read the general rules first so that briefing can be specific rather than starting from zero.

In the session#

Anselm runs the bench setup: where materials live, how to sign them out, and the one rule that matters more than any technique — stop and ask before using anything unfamiliar without a demonstration. Then a short, deliberately low-stakes exercise: copy a single simple mark (a printed letterform, a straight ruled line) as closely as you can by hand, in about twenty minutes. Nobody’s copy will be perfect. That’s the point of week 1, not a problem with it.

Afterwards#

Nothing here is marked. What you leave with is a bench you know how to use and a first, honest look at the gap between what you intended and what your hand actually did — the gap the rest of the semester is about closing, one material at a time.