Vicolor

A technique which Shelby Vick developed to produce multi-colored mimeography in his fanzine ConFusion, using an Edison-style mimeograph (like A. B. Dick, e.g.) with cotton pads rather than a silk-screen inking system like Gestetner or Rex-Rotary. Color mimeography generally required a separate run-through for each color, with separate stencils, requiring close registration – which needed both skill and a willingness to "waste" copies that failed to align properly. Since cotton ink pads were relatively inexpensive – a dime apiece or less – and thus could be discarded after a single use, Shelby hit on the idea of "painting" different areas of the ink pad with different colors of mimeograph ink from the outside before applying the stencil. There was often a degree of color "bleeding" on the pages which went through the process, as one color might blend into another, but it was a striking effect anyway and the problem of "close registration" was effectively eliminated since it was produced in a single run-through. The name of the process comes from "bleeding" his last name ("Vick") into the word "color."

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

(Shelby Vick) A method of producing multicolor mimeo work by painting a clean ink-pad with different colors of mimeo ink. Different areas could be done in different colors by this method, but of course varicolored overprints were impossible. From the appearance of the result this was sometimes called "using plaid ink".

See also Rexstripe.

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