Letterpress: A Great Gift
Printing "Boondoggler", originally uploaded by Jason Santa Maria
Jason Santa Maria took a Letterpress course and his photos from that class are amazing. What makes working with letterpress is the convergence of the nostalgic and the craft of setting the type, laying the ink out, and operating the treadle makes a mockery of any desktop publishing software suite. Just look at the presses, and remember how beautiful they are when you are laying out your next comp.
Note to any Grubsketeers out there: items such as font sets, letterpresses, and courses to do this sort of thing would make a certain kid very happy.
Just sayin'.
Comments
Jw says:
Seeing as I'm dating someone who crafts things almost exclusively for letterpress printing, I've learned a lot about the process in the last few months.
What's interesting is the difference betwee, say a $1500 hand operated press that the kids like these days and the "big boy" presses. The company she used to work for no longer even uses font sets, as the polymer plates they can create are easy, highly accurate, and more durable and cleanable than metal letters. Even if you own a small press, you can have a company make polymer plates for you at a pretty good price.
If you want letters, my advice is to see if you can find them from letterpress companies that no longer use them, and also check out places dealing with architectural artifacts.
Posted by: Jw at June 28, 2006 11:30 AM #
plemeljr says:
Cool info - isn't the polymer plates just another step from the monotype and linotype machine where an operator typed out lines of text (monotype), or whole plates of text (linotype) and the damn machine would cast the font sets on the spot? They even would remelt the sets after a run.
Yeah, ebay is full of, "buy my 10lbs of assorted fonts" which is tempting...
Posted by: plemeljr at June 29, 2006 11:18 PM #
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This is the permanent home of Letterpress: A Great Gift. I wrote this post at 23:27 on June 26, 2006. This post is part of grubbykid.com, a weblog. If you liked this entry, why don't you read some other posts such as Grubbykid - Live! or le Tour Shakeup? Or you could go to the site archives or return home. All are good choices.
