Letterpress Success

Printmaking is coming into vogue in the art and crafting community. After centuries of quietly printing away in their studios, letterpress printmakers in particular are being courted as the coolest thing since... well manuscripts. It's all thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, well... mostly thanks. It's probably true that the concept of moveable type was being bandied about by people before Gutenberg got involved but he was the one who is remembered for buckling down and getting his hands dirty. The concept, from today's perspective, is pretty simple - every letter, punctuation and number in a language are made into what are essentially little stamps. A type-setter puts the letters, punctuations, and numbers in the correct order (backwards and upside-down) to print (forwards and right-side up) onto a piece of paper using a press of some kind. In fact, the concept of referring to capitalized letters as "upper case" developed because non-capitalized type was kept lower on the shelf in front of the type-setter's work station (kinda like this diagram here.) Typography - the study of type - is truly amazing.

Setting type is time-consuming and requires attention to detail and precision even with professionals. And, of course, when you are finished printing you have to clean the type up nice and pretty then distribute it back to it's correct place in the cases. Distributing is probably the most tedious of tasks accompanying letterpress work but I find it to be therapeutic. Whenever I am lucky enough to work at The Black Rock Press I am consumed by the quietude and rhythm of type-setting. Since I graduated in 2009 the concept of hand-printing anything has become more than acceptable - it's offbeat chic. Because of the time and quality of work that goes into letterpress printing it is more impactful than digital printing. I seem to find the neatest print shops when I'm not looking for them.

Boxcar Press is in New York and strives to be a green as possible! An admirable goal I can relate to easily.
Briar Press is a community of letterpress artists and printmakers who talk about their beautiful machines techniques and more.

From wedding invitations to posters, and more the possibilities are endless when it comes to letterpress printing and it's always nice to see shops and communities succeeding.