Letterpress is the graphic designers equivalent to slow cooked food

Fantastic quote. An awesome description of the letterpress craft.

From handmade hair accessories to artisanal pickles, there’s a metaphorical back-to-the-land movement for every profession. For graphic design, it’s letterpress, a labor-intensive printing process that creative types are taking up as an antidote to days spent staring at their iMacs. Produced on antique presses and characterized by heavily impressed lettering on thick paper, letterpress cards and stationery — if you’ve received a wedding invitation from an even vaguely arty couple in the past few years, chances are it was letterpress printed — are the graphic design equivalent of slow food. For designers who want to unplug, literally, letterpress is a chance to spend time refining their craft using a method that was considered old-fashioned long before the days of Photoshop. “People miss the hands-on experience of printing,” says Daniel Gardiner Morris, a fourth-generation letterpress printer and the founder of the Arm, the Williamsburg studio where many local printers have learned the basics of handling Industrial Revolution-era machinery. “Even if you don’t know anything about the process, when you pick up something that was printed on a letterpress, you know there’s something different about it. It was touched by human hands.”

for the full article, read on here

Save the date 'Branches'

A first run of my 'Branches' Save the date notes. No too bad! Perhaps I will make the ink a little heavier and I need to pre cut the paper to exact size so I can get everything centered a little better but all in all not a bad effort!.
They are intended to be imprinted using an inkjet or lazer (depending on the printer) or hand written. A heart stamp can be used to 'stamp' the date out.  I will mock one up and post later.

More 'stuff'

Latest Ebay offerings.  I'm going to try my hand at type-setting.  Ill add it to my list of things I haven't done before and I expect to be expert at in 30 mins...  Husband reminded me that 'back in the day' people would spend 3 years apprenticing at this trade.  Doesn't do the trick of making me any easier on myself.

More things I have learned

My Golding Pearl (Mavis) is a bit of a temperamental thing. She's old and as such doesn't like being overworked...pushed to her limits... as a consequence, the designs I had in mind to print on her that were moderately large just wont work.

If any more than 1/8 (possibly a little more)  of the chase is required to make impression in a solid print area),  its difficult to get a good uniform impression, and you can forget about deep impressions.

So there go those designs - never mind, I will keep the plates and use when I have a larger press (ha!) or get the wonderful Phil to print them.  I need to modify them, and get more plates made.

"For a Pearl #3, I am throwing out for discussion that an image area 1/8 of the chase size is probably closer to the ideal maximum. So, for a 7 X 11 press, which is 77 square inches, the ideal maximum would be 1/8 of that or 9.625 square inches. This would mean for example, that you could print one solid just over 3 X 3 inches, or that you could print a whole page of text, as long as the total image area of the type was not over 9.625 square inches."

(thanks to Pearlrestor list serve)

As seen below; The text will print ok and the trees from the first design, but not the hounds tooth, wood or damask. (see below) 

I am also experimenting with a press mat which is a thin (2mm) rubber mat that goes directly onto the platen and is then covered with a few sheets of plain photocopy paper and then the tympan sheet. as suggested by a member of Ladies of Letterpress.

The press mat allows you greater impression  but the downside is I have had to re level the platen to accommodate for the thicker bed. Leveling the platen is giving me grief. but that all part of the fun...isn't it?...

New Blog Background

I have changed the look of my blog several times and was never satisfied. I think finally, this is the one. I'm happy with it now - it only took 4 hours (sigh!)

Vintage image of my press