When I found out that a local printer had an operational letterpress shop, I had to check it out. It turns out he has around 500 trays of type and four letterpresses. I didn’t know the owner, but I thought I would try to get him to show me a few things about letterpress. He seemed a little confused as to why I wanted to learn how to letterpress, but after I explained I was a designer and had an interest in learning this great craft, he has been nothing but helpful. He seems happy to pass on his knowledge. Although he does very little letterpress work anymore, it is definitely at his core. It was fun to see his hands remembering where the type is located in the California Job Case.

I received a call from a coworker the other day and my life changed forever. Maybe that is a bit drastic, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. John was helping a friend set up a new work shop, and his friend mentioned that he had an old tabletop letterpress that he didn’t have room for. John knew my interest in letterpress and immediately thought of me. John then called me and asked if I wanted the letterpress free of charge. It is a 6” X 9” Excelsior Model X Kelsey Press. To top it off, the guy gave me over 16 trays of type. I need to get new rollers and some ink, but I’m pretty sure it is going to work. After four and half years of working in the design industry, I am getting a real grasp of what picas and points are.

I stumbled onto a great letterpress resource the other day. It contains a museum, parts suppliers, printers and much more. It seems that there has been a bit of a letterpress revival over the last few years. I will happily jump on the band wagon.

I could go on and on about locking up type and so on, but the point is that my type high journey, or should I say addiction has just begun.

Adrian, my wife Suzanne and I currently have an art show up at the local college’s art gallery. These are the postcards that I letterpressed for the show. Although the printing isn’t up to par with some of the “high-end” commercial letterpress printers like Rohner Letterpress, I am still proud of the printing. This process is time consuming and sometimes frustrating, but the reward is well worth it.

If you happen to be around Hastings, Nebraska anytime until November 19, try to stop by the gallery. Of course everyone is welcome to the reception on November 7 at 2pm - 3pm.

The act of creation has been resonating with me lately. Through my art and letterpress work I have been enjoying creating without a client or a specified goal. I have found it to be therapeutic and rewarding. I am beginning to understand the idea of designer as author. After reading “The Designer as Author” by Michael Rock in Eye, no. 20, I began thinking about design outside of clients or even money. As designers we put so much stock in “real” projects and budgets. These are a part of our everyday lives, but are they necessary elements of design? As designer we don’t have to wait to execute someone else’s business plan. We have the power to do so much with our available knowledge.

William B. Vaughan, 1922-2005

The man that taught me letterpress died of a stroke last week. I’ve known him less than a year, but I will surely miss him. It is sad to see all of the knowledge that he had go away with him, but I am glad I learned what I could from him. He seemed happy to pass it on. Printers like Bill have seen and adapted to possible career ending changes time after time. His father printed a local newspaper and and at one point so did Bill. He saw all the changes from hand-set letterpress all the way to today’s digital technology. He lived through the depression and hardly ever threw anything of value away. I think that is why he still had all of his letterpress equipment. He didn’t do all that much letterpress anymore, but I’m sure he loved seeing the type trays and those beautiful old presses on a daily basis. He even had a working linotype machine. When I was talking to him about being a printer and the long hours and weekends he spent in the shop he replied, “I’ve never had a reason to complain.” He worked in the print shop until his death at 82. I don’t think he would have had it any other way.

In order to have a little more information for my upcoming HOW Conference session reviews, I have been reading books by some of the presenters. Hatch Show Print: The History of an American Poster Shop is my second installment. My own experiences with letterpress printing is one of the many reasons that I am attending Mr. Sherraden’s session.

I have only been doing letterpress printing in my spare time for less than a year, and currently I have only done small and precise work. Hatch Show Print’s posters have spurred me into getting a 1920’s 12”x18” Chandler & Price letterpress and four trays of wood type. I am already looking for an excuse to print a letterpress poster.

If you are going to the HOW Conference this Saturday make sure to keep an eye out for the above bookmark courtesy of Be A Design Group and yours truly. They will be in the Goody Bag so you might have to dig to find it. I ended up printing 3,500 bookmarks on a hand operated Vandercook proofing press. I don’t plan on letterpressing that high of a print run again, but it was worth it. Each bookmark has a BA sticker placed on it by our honorary contributors (my wife and her mom). They spent hours and hours placing these little stickers. I owe them. If you happen to get a bookmark, there should only be around 40 exactly like yours, on account that we used over 100 different BA stickers.

A big thank you to Neenah Paper for donating the paper and sponsoring us. The bookmarks are printed on the New Eames Paper Collection (Eames Natural White, Furniture 120 Double Thick Cover, in case you were curious). The paper took the letterpress and debossing marvelously.

This is a hysterical page from a beautiful little chapbook / font specimen book called "The Scarlet Cockerel", published by the American Amateur Press Association and showing off the collection of a private type collector in Washington state. Thought the BE A audience would appreciate it as much as I did when I saw it among the other memorabilia my wife gathered from her college letterpress class.

On a related note, if anyone in the BE A reading audience happens to know the Scotty (I'm unfortunatlely forgetting his last name at the moment and don't have the book in front of me) who owns the collection this was printed with, I'm very interested in making contact. I'd love to possibly establish some ties and consider taking a student group or two out on a design field trip to see the collection.

In the meantime, however, enjoy this great little tale...

I will be in Nashville all next week helping out/learning from Jim and the great folks at Hatch Show Print (expect a full review when I get back). It would be great to meet some of you designers from the Nashville area. With the help and input from the Nashville AIGA, we have set up a little get together. If you would like to hang out, eat and discuss, this is where the fun will be had …

McGuinness Pub
Tuesday May 2, 6:00 pm

For more about Hatch here are a couple old BADG posts about this historic shop. 1, 2

or, I said the “F” word at Hatch Show Print!

As a preface, a portion of the history of Hatch Show Print is documented in a book, so trying to give you a history lesson would take several posts. I am going to focus on the present. For those that haven’t read the book or heard the history, Hatch Show Print is an old fashioned letterpress shop that has been in existence since 1879. The shop has had its ups and downs over its history, and their clientele has varied a great deal, but they are most known for their show posters for entertainment acts. Their history follows Minstrel Shows, Circuses, Country and Blue Grass stars and the list goes on. If you don’t have the book, it is a great addition to any design library and a very entertaining read for just about anyone (not just designers). Hatch has changed ownership over the years but it is now owned by the Country Music Hall of Fame. The shop is now a working museum and as the man (Jim Sherraden) that has taken Hatch to where is it today says … “preservation through production”. To keep Hatch alive they are a very active letterpress shop that prints posters (among other things) for a large variety of clients.

I recently spent a week down in Nashville to help out at Hatch and to learn from, and breath the rare air of a working letterpress shop. I will share a few of the things that I learned while playing the role of intern/volunteer. I will start at the very beginning.

or, The Day I Took Hatch Show Print Into the Digital Age!

While putting type away for an entire week or more is the best possible education for a long term intern, I would have been a little disappointed if that is all that I was able to do. While probably being a bit over-zealous (and maybe even a bit selfish), I kept pushing for a little more responsibility. Day two I was running the Vanercook Universal 1 for Brad (one of the talented designers) and by the end of the day pushing a bit harder to get my own job. I was given a reprint to set and Suzanne (my wife) was given a chance to cut a linocut for an upcoming poster. We were both happy. I hunted down the type and I’m sure I bugged a few people in the process and then a rare thing happened that probably shouldn’t have left the walls of Hatch. I singlehandedly took Hatch into the digital age. Yes, I am very ashamed of myself. In a rare, and I’m sure never to happen again moment, Jim agreed to have Suzanne use a client supplied photograph to do a linocut from. The rule is that if you want a photoplate made, you have to send the correctly sized, high quality photo. Well, there was a photo, but the goal was to have a linocut made from the photo. Before I knew it, Suzanne and I were in Kinkos and using Photoshop to resize and bump up the contrast of this not-so-great photo. The Kinko’s girl almost fell over when I told her that I was from Hatch and I needed computer time. Meanwhile, I’m thinking …”I didn’t travel a day and a half to work on a PC in Kinkos on my vacation.” It was a bit surreal. We got the photo to where Suzanne needed it, and got the heck out of there. While a computer was used in the process, hell didn’t seem to freeze over and Hatch appeared to be normal when we left it.

With the completion of the Be Aware segment, I haven’t had a place to post some of my letterpress snippets. I have a few little letterpress things to share, including another free alphabet, some downloads and letterpress for your derriere.

I also wanted to gather all of my Be Aware letterpress mini-posts into one unified place. Hopefully the letterpress curious will find this page a nice resource. So after the three new mini-posts, I have “republished” my 12 contributions to the Be Aware posts. I have also finally added the answer to my “Letterpress Word Scrample” from Be Aware 9. Scroll away.