Category: Letterpress

Moleskines

Moleskine with wood type collageOver the past year I’ve noticed that students in my letterpress classes invariably show up with the same small pocket-sized black notebooks. Some have been elaborately decorated on the covers. “Moleskine makes them,” one of my students told me. I noticed lots of people on Etsy selling them with artwork on the covers — usually Gocco printed. Moleskine encourages people to share the artwork in and on their products — the website has a section on an art show of work using Moleskines.
I bought one and they are really handy. Well made, they fit in my purse, have 64 pages (with the last 16 sheets perforated and detachable!) and the inside of the back cover has a bonus pocket for notes or clippings. I also tried printing a wood type collage on the cover (see photo above — I have them for sale on my website here.
But some of the best covers have been laser engraved (probably using the same sort of machine I used to cut out my recent pop-up book — the laser cutter can also engrave on glass and acrylic and thick paper). Below are two covers done by Modofly. They are bigger than the small pocket ones I’ve got. For more covers, see this flicker pool or this Etsy search.
moleskin-modofly.jpg moleskin-modofly2.jpg

Broken Wood Type and Lead Rules

Dennis Ichiyama’s “Saving Face 4″Dennis Ichiyama is a former Designer-in-Residence at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum and currently Professor of Art and Design at Purdue University. Of his experiments with pieces of broken wood type and lead rules, he says “I’m just picking letters and colors and playing with them.” To create his prints, he starts with 25 sheets of paper and then layers colors on top. “When I get tired, when I don’t know what else to do, I stop,” he says. “And by the time I’m done, I usually end up with about 15 that I think are good.” That’s one of Ichiyama’s prints to the left. You can see lots more here. (First seen on Colour Lovers Blog)

Bagged

Dot Tote BagHank Bag

I’ve tried letterpress printing on lots of things — from the usual paper to thick coasters to book cloth to moleskine journals, and all the way to metal and wood. But I haven’t tried fabric yet. Piano Nobile over on Etsy makes these fabric totes, letterpress printed using wood type. My press doesn’t print a large enough area to cover fabric for a big tote, so I’ll just have to buy one of their bags! (But I’m also sure I’ll soon dream up a project that involves fabric!) You can see more of their textile prints on their website.

Make Your Own Wood Type

Scott Polzen’s handcut wood type based on Carol Twombly’s Chaparral Bold
Scott Polzen’s handcut wood type based on Carol Twombly’s Chaparral Bold

On the wall of my office, I have several large pieces of faux wood type that I made by tracing letters in my favorite font-face onto some foam core, cutting out the letters, mounting them to frames I made and then painting the whole assemblage. Occassionally I think idly about trying to make some type of out of real wood.
So it was fun to find out about Scott Polzen, who has made wood type from scratch. So far he’s made 3-1/2 complete sets, each using a progressively more sophisticated method for carving the letters. He constructed the first set by carving 1/4″ high letters and then mounting them to blocks of wood. In the last set, he used a pantograph, an instrument that allows one to scale and copy diagrams, or in this case, letters, and was able to create a single type-high block for each letter.
You can see the various typefaces Scott has made on his website, as well as an explanation of how he made each set. He also has a video on YouTube showing him cut out one of the letters.

From the Hellbox

Gold Letterpress NecklaceIn a letterpress studio, the “hellbox” is the receptacle for broken or discarded metal type — it’s stored there until it can be melted down and recast into new type. Jeweler Erica Weiner had a work-study stint at New York Center for Book Arts and she saw the bucket of used type in their printing studio as a treasure trove for making necklaces. She gold-plates the discarded type and hangs it from a chain. Get yours here.