Enchantress of Numbers

This is the on-going saga of my block print of Ada Lovelace (previously mentioned here and here). So, after drawing her on paper, and deciding that the equations did not look right on the gears, I re-drew her on lino with the equations around the circumference of the gears. Yes. Carving three equations with super- and subscripts is a new level of insanity in my printmaking. Enjoy!


My first move was to print several proofs on sketchbook paper. Then I moved to Japanese kozo (mulberry) (11" x 14") paper. I printed the single block into two colours: silver and turquoise. I found that this was pretty, but not quite what I wanted; the colours were insufficiently saturated and the detail was not as visible as I wished.

So, I did a run on mauve Japanese gampi paper (10.5" x 15.25"). This time, I used gold for the gears and face with a mix of purple and turquoise for her dress.

The equations depicted around the gears relate how to calculate Bernouilli Numbers. This is not only because Ada published how to do this MECHANICALLY, but because she foresaw that machines would one day be able to work with SYMBOLS (like those used, for instance) and not just numbers!