The other day on Letterology, I saw Norman McKnight’s 2013 calendar, which uses 19th century copper blocks for the illustrations (see several of them below). You can see McKnight’s calendar on his blog, as well as lots of photos and notes about type and typography.
Patricia Curtan began hand printing menus for the restaurant Chez Panisse during its early years, using letterpress and linoleum-block prints. She’s collected forty years of these menus in a book called Menus for Chez Panisse. For each menu, she shares a bit about the printing process, and for some of them shows the linoleum blocks she made. For instance, for the one on the right, she says the wings are hand colored. It’s a lovely paean to hand printing. Curtan wrote a blog post with more pictures and a bit of the history of the menus here.
After finding Bo Press Miniatures on Etsy the other day, I’ve been looking at other book artists who sell there. The map below is from Brian Kring and his Emporium of Tiny Literature, Cards and Other Things Paper. The letterpress printed map below details the neighborhood walk he takes with his 3 year old son. The outline is printed letterpress and then hand colored. Brian has other artist’s books, moveable cards and paper sculptures here. He’s also got a website with more of his work.
Here in Santa Fe there’s a working press & bindery affiliated with the New Mexico History Museum, at the Palace of the Governors. They print collections of poetry for the state & city Poet Laureates and design & print really lovely broadsides. Currently they are printing and binding 100 copies of a special edition of a book about Georgia O’Keeffe (who lived in New Mexico much of her life). There’s a nice article and video in the local newspaper this morning about printing the book. The photo to the left is Tom Leech, curator of the Palace Press, printing pages for the book on their Vandercook.
Recently, Barbara Hauser wrote on a letterpress list I read
Can anyone suggest a text- or book-weight cotton paper similar to Hahnemühle Bugra, which is a mould-made 130 gsm laid paper and comes in a creamy white color. I’m looking for something to be dampened and printed with multiple passes using a 10-point rather delicate typeface. I’ve ordered some of the Hahnemühle to experiment with, but I’d prefer cotton. The Somerset Text Laid seems to have been discontinued (why?), and the Zerkall Book Laid is not quite as heavy as I’d like and is not 100% cotton.
She also posted the question on Briar Press. She took the suggestions (there are quite a few on the Briar Press discussion) and summarized them in the following table (bigger version on her flickr page.) She mentions a really nice Paper Comparison Chart from Daniel Smith that lists all sorts of papers, not just printing paper. (You can see Barbara’s letterpress work on her flickr photostream.)
Since the beginning of November I’ve bookmarked nearly 100 things to re-read and consider for posting here on my blog. But I’m seriously behind and just now really going through them. For instance, the The Boxcar Press Holiday Gift Guide: 22 Gifts for a Letterpress Printer. Although it’s past Christmas, it’s still fun to look. I especially liked the Gutenberg Printing Press below, from European Papers. They say “our detailed cast metal miniature model of the Gutenberg Printing Press, complete with moving parts, is also a pencil sharpener!”
