This week kicked off the inaugural Phoenix Design Week. The designers we talked with are so excited to have this event in the valley. We had fun letterpressing hundreds of envelopes and coasters for the event.
We wanted to use some of the banged up wood type we acquired to print the envelope. I'm not sure what I was thinking because using all the different faces that had slight variations in heights made the make-ready on 600+ envelopes really insane. We love wood type and typically use the faces that are in great condition. But it was fun to cobble together a bunch of different faces, shapes and sizes. Of course it would have been easier to make a polymer plate and get the layout and kerning perfect but we figure there is enough perfection out there--bring on the banged-up, wood type! The flower is a wood type ornament (in pristine condition) and then we handset the envelope flap with gorgeous metal type.
Here's a photo of one of our boxes of mixed wood type. Look at the "t" that is at the middle top of the photo. I think someone bit in to it! Ouch!
For the coasters, we found a really old cut of a bird and metal cut of leaves. If you come to the wayzgoose, you can print your own coaster. It will most likely be a different design.
Gary handset the metal type on the back of the coaster. The one nice thing about using old metal type is that lots of the fonts are not digitized--the only way you can use them is if you have the actual typeface. Plus the old foundry type is really hard metal that can withstand the test of time and most types of paper. Printing these two pieces alone were over 3500 passes on our press that we hand-fed. Gotta love our C and P press from the 1890's-- it is a workhorse.
A fun time was had by all at the WHOA book release party. Author Becky Byrkit and poet Cynthia Hogue did poetry readings and attendees got to letterpess print an excerpt from one of Becky's poems.
My friend Steve told me there were some cool vintage-looking posters in the window a forthcoming restaurant in Tempe. He was right, these are fun posters! New restaurant coming called Suckerpunch Sally's. The funniest one is the vintage contraption advertising free WIFI. It was hard to get good photos since windows are very dusty window and the sun was glaring right behind me!
I was actually a little nervous using this very large "W" as a background piece given how widely it was used during the past presidential administration...if you know what I mean! ;)
With revamping our letterpress studio, we are finally been getting all our wood type out of their boxes an into cases. My in laws have been amazing in helping me clean some very dusty wood type. Old wood type gets an almost charcoal like dust on it--probably from sitting in somebody's old barn or warehouse for 50 years!
Here's our most recent poster in process. We are used 3 different wood typefaces.
Gotta love the vandercook! I just got new paper guides--sweet! Nothing like new shiny guides to make your life happy!