I’m doing a series of broadsides to experiment with my press, type treatments, and various printing methods. I have a gallery of all my finished prints and broadsides on my website.
After I wrote about my calendar experiments, Nancy wrote me a comment about her suminigashi broadsides — that’s one to the left, with a Basho haiku. You can see more of Nancy’s marbling and broadsides here on Flickr or read her blog (where she talks about lots more than marbling!) here.
Check out the gallery of 90 or so prints celebrating the first one hundred years of Vandercook proof presses. This was a limited edition exchange of letterpress prints, organized by Paul Moxon.
To celebrate America’s Independence Day, my friend Richard sent me a link to the Library of Congress’ online image repository, Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera. The intro to the site says
The Printed Ephemera collection at the Library of Congress is a rich repository of Americana. In total, the collection comprises 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history. An American Time Capsule, the online presentation of the Printed Ephemera collection, comprises 17,000 of the 28,000 physical items. . . While the broadside format represents the bulk of the collection, there are a significant number of leaflets and some pamphlets. Rich in variety, the collection includes proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables, and menus.
I found the best way to start looking at the collection is by genre. The breadth of subject matter is really wide — from poetry to advertisements to reward posters like the one to the left.
Doug Wilson makes letterpress posters from his collection of wood type. This one is an “Ampersand ID Chart” based on the familiar Snellen eye chart. And here’s another one:
{First seen here}
The other day, I saw a mention of an artist’s book called “Mappings” by Mary Ann Sampson of the OEOCO Press (One-Eye Opera Company) and, intrigued by the title, set off to see if I could find pictures of it. While I didn’t find that book, I found some lovely broadsides. The one to the left is called “Obstacles & Impediments” and the illustration is of a “word snag” eating letters and words (see a larger version where you can read the poem here).
I mentioned in a previous post that I’m moving to Santa Fe, NM this winter. My shop is all packed up now, and I probably won’t be able to print or make any books for several more months while we get my new studio ready and get all our copious belongings moved east. So of course I’ve been seeing all sort of things that make me want to get out into my studio, if only my stuff were all set up. One source of inspriation from last week is the print below — one of Phil Gallo’s visual poems, printed partially on the deckle.
