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In time for Valentine’s Day, I have a few new letterpress printed things in my shop. From left to right:
Mini note cards, set of 6 with envelopes.
Heart note cards with red and pink envelopes, set of 6
Another set of 6 mini note cards with envelopes.
The mini note cards are business card-sized — 3-1/2″ x 2″ — and the heart note cards are A2 (or 5-1/2″ x 4-1/4″) and all are blank on the back. You can see all my note cards, tags and mini cards here.
This past fall, Bill Jones bought the original patterns for around 100 typefaces from the now defunct American Wood Type Manufacturing Company as well as a large pantograph for cutting wood type. He’s set up shop in his garage and has started producing “entire fonts, alphabets for collectors, sorts and fill-in characters to complete a font, and ornaments.” He’s now offering 5 fonts on his website, Virgin Wood Type. Jones writes about making one of the fonts, Rugged, here. A while back, I wrote a post about another guy making wood type with a pantograph — that post has links to pictures of cutting the type as well as a youtube video.
For the past several weeks I’ve enjoyed reading David Wolske’s blog Letterpress Daily where he documents his continually expanding type collection. It appears to be mostly wood type, and entries are like the one below — a photo of a wood block and a resulting print plus a bit about the font. See more here.
As part of its iPhoto program, Apple lets you “create custom letterpress cards personalized with your photos and text. For the first time, traditional printing techniques join modern digital photography.” Why mention it here? To point you to their nice video of letterpress printing on a Heidelberg using polymer plates.
I’ve added another Sherlock Holmes coaster set to my store. This one is printed in a rich brown and features a profile of the great detective and another quote from “A Scandal in Bohemia”
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
For sale in my shop here. The other coaster set, featuring an image of a gasogene and quote is here.
I’ve been printing a few new coaster designs, and this is the first one — a set of quotes from Jane Austen. 9 coasters, 3 quotes.
Printed in brown, the quote from Pride and Prejudice is “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
Printed in green, the quote from Emma is “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.”
Printed in purple, the quote from Northanger Abbey is “It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.”
See more here.