The Tipoteca Italiana is a private museum devoted to letterpress printing in Italy. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they produced a picture book called A story of character. Ten Years of Tipoteca Italiana that is now available in English. Print has a review of the book showing lots of book spreads — with photographs of printing equipment, type, and printers — and also talks a bit about the museum. Information about obtaining a copy of the book is here.
Mindy Belloff of Intima Press in New York City has produced an re-creation of the 1777 Goddard Declaration of Independence with the techniques of its day: set one letter at a time, printed letterpress on period-style paper. (Mary Katherine Goddard — 1738 – 1816 — was an early American publisher and the first American postmistress. She was also the first to print the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signatories.) There’s a interview with Belloff about printing the recreation and setting the type on Felt & Wired.
On one of the letterpress lists I read, someone asked for references for women working in the printing trade in 1879 St. Louis, MO, and doing “a menial job where she’ll get very inky through the course of her daily job.” There were quite a few answers, and one was from Richard Polinski, who referenced his blog post about the printing trade circa 1958.
What interested me about the picture, and made me then read his post, were 2 things. First, when I got my press, my friend Eric told me it had probably been set up as those in the picture — by some sort of overhead pulley system that provided electricity. When I later tried to add a motor to my press, I found that I’d have to make quite a few modifications to accommodate one. Second, I was surprised to see so many women in the drawing, in the background. According to Polinski, they are feeding the presses. Read his entire post here.
The other day I followed a link to Philip Gallo’s blog and spent a wonderful hour reading the posts. Gallo is a letterpress printer and poet in Minneapolis. That’s his broadside to the left (see the post about it here — it’s about daffodils, printed on daffodil embellished paper, and with a subtle ff in the background). He doesn’t write often, and the posts vary widely, from writing poetry, to typesetting 40 years ago, to a poem called Imagine You Are A Craftsman to hand-setting mouse type. And a few of them are handy letterpress printing tricks:
 Recently I ran across this website, Pressing Letters, that features “a collection of inspirational letterpress.” What caught my eye was the letterpress poster to the right by Mikey Burton, a zine project with Josef Reyes and printed in collaboration with the Cranky Pressman. |
 My sister pointed me to this peaclock, a letterpress printed clock face by Dee and Lala. It’s always so much fun finding the unexpected things people do with letterpress printing. Hope you’re having a good holiday, can’t believe the year is almost over! |