Summer + Letterpress

Hi all! Please excuse my absence. Summer has treated me well, but I am back... hopefully to add some letterpress inspiration to your life. 

Summer is for unwinding, letting your hair down and walking bear-foot through the sand. It's for dinner's outside, and late-night campfires with friends and also a time to dream about what things will be like. In the summer months, I like to spend time to just be. It's those quiet moments where inspiration comes out and where I figure out how I'd like to grow this little shop of mine. I'd love for it to be a bigger part of my life one day. I mean, it's a huge part of my life already, considering the Vandercook is in our living room... but I'm just looking forward to a time where I can give it the attention it deserves, in a studio where the roof doesn't leak on the press and the neighbours don't make our glasses shake with their base. All this thinking has lead to the idea of moving away from the city. Where we can have a piece of land to grow our own food, and have a couple of chicken... and where I can get the letterpress studio out of our living room and into a proper studio space with big windows and good ventilation. I feel like when that happens my creativty will just sore, and I will be much more in-tune with my letterpress work. So that's been the goal for the past little while, and I'm hoping we will find a home soon. 

Another reason why we're looking to move is that we need a good in between location for our friends and family to visit. We would be the meeting ground. I really love the idea of sharing delicious meals around a large table with those I care about most. Especially if that meal includes vegetables right from our own garden. It's just so much more satisfying knowing exactly where they came from. 

This seems right inline with what Kinfolk magazine has been writing about. Kinfolk is a beautiful little publication focusing on small gatherings, and has been super inspiring for me. Over the summer I was involved with the Toronto Kinfolk Dinner, and letterpress printed a small run of recipe cards and thank you notes. I decided to handset the type – I really love how lead type seems to dance on a line and isn't so perfect. So, perfectly imperfect. I played with hand-lining the envelopes with some really beautiful craft paper printed with illustrations of pears. Hand-lining was much easier than I thought. A little spray glue and patience can go a long way. 

  

I was happy that I had the opportunity to be involved with the Toronto dinner series for Kinfolk. It was so much, and hopefully I'll get the chance to do it again sometime soon. 

Letterpress in Amsterdam

Hello! I'm back on home soil after an adventurous week in Paris & Amsterdam! Still feeling a little jet-lagged, but getting back into the swing of regular life once more. My mind keeps wondering back to all the beautiful sights and creative visual overload that I experienced while travelling. One major highlight (amoung many) was visiting Typique in Amsterdam – a beautiful letterpress shop run by pressman; René Treumann. Have you ever been to the Netherlands? I'm sure the friendliest people on the planet live there. René showed me around his entire shop, (even the parts that weren't part of his store). We chatted about his lovely prints, his immense collection of woodblocks and type, and his hand craved pieces. Letterpress seems to be more of an artform in Amsterdam than it is here in Toronto. I didn't see a computer or any traces of polymer plates anywhere in his shop, which is really heart-warming actually. It's still possible to do things completely the old fashioned way... by hand. It was so lovely meeting René and getting a glimpse into letterpress in Amsterdam. Before I left the store he told me that if I was interested in seeing more that there just happened to be a letterpress show/gathering happening the next day! What are the odds, right? I'll write more about that incredible experience next time. Ciao for now! 

Announcing Dylan

I am ridiculously in love with this little bundle of pure joy. I'm probably going to be that crazy aunt that will try to teach letterpress to an infant, and the alphabet with woodtype. But for now I will just print my little heart out for him... because he can't say to me yet that it's so not cool. 

I designed and printed this announcement for my sister-in-law & her husband, (Hey Dani & Jay!) – the coolest parents on the block for sure! I used 10pt classic Bodoni in lead type for all the tiny text, mixed in with a little bit of woodtype (for Dylan), and added a modern twist with some polymer for the blind-embossed heart. You can read more about that process here. It takes lots of time, patience, love and a little OCD to handset type, and I'm starting to believe more and more that there is something extra special in the imperfection of it all... how the type seems to dance on the line. 

In any case, I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Maybe Dylan will print with me one day.

A Creative Fix

And so I was trying to do something nice for a group of people that are totally awesome! They work so hard to help out the community with their bicycle problems at Bike Sauce. They've set up shop with all the tools you'll ever need... and they teach you with complete patience how get your bicycle in complete working order, no matter how simple or challenging. Anyway Justin's been volunteering there on and off over the last year or two, getting his hands greasy and all. I'm not really all that good at that sort of thing and am totally the wrong person to be teaching people how to fix bicycles... so i thought I'll volunteer in my own way... by printing a much needed flyer for them.

Well as it turns out, I got the times wrong! BLAH! So I needed to come up with a good solution where I didn't need to reprint them ALL. So... I stole a wrench (that I totally plan on returning) from Bike Sauce and printed with it. I stuck it down to some furniture and placed a few sheets of boxboard underneath to raise it up enough to print. There was also a bit of trial and error with getting the ink to be the proper consistency for the metal. But anyway, I'm liking this design better than the original design. The wrench totally suits what they do, and good way to cover up my boo-boo. lol.  

Letterpress Workshops!

After a long time of humming and hawing over whether or not to run a letterpress workshop, I finally bit the bullet! If you haven't yet noticed I am running 3 workshops in July and August and I couldn't be more excited to do these! I have kept thinking about how much fun I had with Tanya at Snap & Tumble some 2 years ago at her tabletop letterpress workshop, and thought that why not spread the letterpress love around a bit more. So if you're interested in trying out printing on this gigantic vandercook letterpress, head on over HERE for information about when they are happening and how to sign up! Space is limited and the workshops are already 50% booked, so if you're interested let me know soon!

Over the last year I've had quite a few guinea pigs as my workshop test subjects, and am now totally comfortable explaining, demostrating and chatting about the in's and out's of letterpress with who-ever wants to. I'm hoping that I have all the kinks worked out now, but since these are the first 3 workshops I'm doing, I thought I'd throw in a pretty slammin' good deal for the lucky few that are part of the workshop launch.

Email me if you have any questions; hello@silverplatepress.com

Typesetting Announcements

I gotta say, Typesetters back in the day really did not get enough credit! To assemble line after line of tiny text to be printed for, say, a newspaper! Just imagine what life was like before the linotype! Before computers! It was a very different time, and I bet you there was a lot more eye-straining and amazing hand-eye coordination and dexterity. Those guys were rock stars!

Typesetting this small A7-sized announcement took me about 3 hours! Seriously! Just to get every line to be nice and tight and perfectly aligned really takes time, patience and a bit of obsessive-compulsiveness! There is still something so satisfying about completing a good lock up! Nothing moves, all the 10pt Bodoni Classic leadtype is nested in a safe little place, and ready for the press. At that point all I want to do was marvel at it. lol. 

These baby announcements have been a long time coming, and I totally didn't mean to procrastinate on these, especially since they are celebrating the birth of my own nephew! Do you ever find that the projects that are most personal to you, take the longest to figure out? I did about 10 different "polymer" designs, full of trains and balloons and all that other cute "baby" stuff... and they just didn't feel right.  We are celebrating the love we have for this sweet new life and I didn't want to "baby it up". Keeping it nice and clean with a simple design element is the way to go for me on this one. I'm adding a small (possibly blind embossed) design element that isn't included here. You'll just have to wait and see what it is though. lol. I'm hoping to print these over the next little while and I'll be sure to take some photos of the finished product! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Proof Press Finesse ~ the workshop

And so it began... the Vandercook (Proof Press) Finesse workshop, with Paul Moxon... (lots of photos to follow)

I got there 20 minutes early – the first to get there! I couldn't contain my excitement and totally didn't mind sitting around 3 beautiful Vandercooks for a little while, as the rest of the class gathered. 

The workshop began and I was just trying to absorb it all! Paul Moxon really knows his stuff when it comes to Vandercooks. It's really about the small details, the nitty and the gritty that make the prints shine.  I passed him my business card and without looking at it, he grabbed his loupe and zoomed right into the details of the printing. I panicked a bit there... I had never, ever used a loupe to check my prints! Maybe my eye sight is still okay enough to see imperfections in printing. lol. That's the first thing I learned in the workshop – that I need to get a loupe. There is so much more you can see! For instance! The business cards that printed closer to the top of my press-bed had a little bit more impression and ink at the top of the cards. The pressure of the cylinder hits the top just a bit harder, so from now on I will either move my polymer down a little bit or run a small rule line that the cylinder can hit first (which apparently helps with this sort of thing)... But really, you can't reeeeeallly see that imperfection without a loupe. 

If there was just one thing I had to pick, that totally blew me away at this workshop, it would be this amazing tip for packing the cylinder; get one of those cheap-o rubber doorstops and stick it in between the top drawsheet of mylar and the rod in front of it. This keep the tympan and packing tight as you adjust and pull all the ends into place! AH-MAZING! Especially because my letterpress is so large and often times I need Justin to  help me change the packing and I totally didn't do it enough because it was always such a hassle. Totally changes everything!

The second most amazing piece of workshop tip; you can use earth magnets to lock in wood type in all sorts of weird shapes! Type on a curve! How awesome is that!?! 

While I was back in my old hood of the OCADU letterpress shop, I couldn't resist paying a visit with the Intertype (linotype) machine and casting a line of type. Thank goodness my good 'ol letterpress Prof from back in the day; George Walker! was there to remind me how to use it. 

To make things even better; George and Paul paid a visit to my studio at the end of the second day and took a nice close look at my trusty Vandercook 320G letterpress (over some beers, of course) ;) Paul seemed pretty surprised with the good shape it's in... considering it's from 1936... but she's still kicking and running really smoothly. 

It was a really great workshop and if you're serious about printing on a proof press like this is mass quantities, I highly recommend taking a workshop from Paul Moxon (if you can). You won't be disappointed. Promise.