Rubber Stamps As An Art Form
As rubber stamping increasingly gains popularity, mostly in the United States, it also gains a reputation as an art form. Some participants choose to carve their own rubber stamps, either of old-fashioned gum erasers or eraser-like rubber. Companies like Speedball or MasterCarve supply carving sets to amateurs wishing to carve their own rubber stamps, with some including linocut tools. The print from the carved rubber stamp is viewed as work of art on its own, or one or more stamps are used to embellish a work of art with other components.
Other materials besides rubber may be used to produce a stamp. Woodcut and linocut, the carving of linoleum, are art forms based on the same principles. Linoleum is much harder than rubber and thus requires special tools. Woodcut is mostly used by professional artists, requiring much talent and patience. Rubber carving material can be purchased, but is marketed as a child's toy and not widely used. Additionally, photopolymer stamps are growing in popularity. They are most often produced in a set of coordinated images using a clear polymer material on an acetate carrier sheet for storage and packaging. The stamps are peeled from the carrier sheet and applied to a clear acrylic handle. This allows the stamper to view the image through the handle and effect precise placement of the image where desired. Photopolymer stamps are generally produced in the United States for sale domestically and internationally. Similar clear stamps made of silicone are produced by U.S. companies in China. Silicone stamps have many of the same properties of the photopolymer stamps. The production of clear stamps makes storage of a large collection of images easier, since they are all used with just one set of various sized handles. They are also often very economical being produced in sets of several images which work together to form a cohesive look.
There are several possibilities to vary the look of carved stamps. Paints, pigments and dye inks create different effects, extending the use of rubber stamping from paper to fabrics, wood, metal, glass, and so on. Ink pads can be purchased that allow for embossing and there are markers that can be used to ink stamp pads with colors for a multi-color look. The use of rubber stamps can be combined with other materials. The image may be embellished by the addition of chalks, inks, paints, fibers and a variety of other ephemera and embellishments.
Hand-carved rubber stamps are often used in mail art or artist trading cards because they tend to be small and allow the making of series. The TAM Rubber Stamp Archive has a collection of prints of rubber stamps mail-artists used since 1983 (see link). Stamping is also often used in handmade cardmaking, scrapbooking, and letterboxing.
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