Taming the Beast

It's been a crazy week - loads of new custom jobs to print, a half dozen designs to finish, a surprise party to plan, and all before next Wednesday, when, for the first time in probably a year, we're going on Vacation (yes, with a capital "v").

I'm feeling very self-satisfied at the shop's latest experiment - coasters. I fired up the Warthog for the first time in about a month, since all those troubles and clanking clonking noises. A good hour re-adjusting the platen helped and printing was otherwise trouble-free. I had this deep deep eggplant ink mixed, leftover from I-know-not-what, which got slapped on the ink disk and away we went.



I like the color (and the picture doesn't really do it justice) so I've decided to keep it, and have developed a palette of other rich deep muted colors for five more designs in the series (teal, rust, dark olive, ruby). The designs are adapted from some old Chinese paper cut designs I found at a tag sale. I love their delicacy and balance.

(Secretly, I'm just as excited about getting the beastly press properly running.)

There will definitely be more coasters in our future... available soon for mass consumption on our in-progress Etsy site.

High Tea

I'm very excited about the final result of this bridal tea invitation.



Thanks to my sister, visiting from Charleston, who typeset the "Thank You" on the thank you note - a last minute but oh-s0-lovely addition. It was her first typesetting experience. A small job, so not too harrowing, but she did decide that I could re-distribute the type for her.

History Lessons

I wanted to share a little piece of family history. My great-grandfather was part of the Eddy Press Corporation in Pittsburgh. Last week my cousin was kind enough to give me one of the books that they printed, and what follow are some images of this fabulous acquisition!







It's inscribed to my great-grandfather by the author.



Back in the day where pages had to be cut...



Look at the embellishments and illumination!

Finally!

After a comedy of errors, floods, broken presses, 6000 hand cranks of the Vandy, 3000 scores and folds, the World Notes series has been successfully printed in all five color schemes.

Photos Photos Everywhere

There's a desperate need to update the website with some actual product shots so I've been on a mission to photograph all of our work.

Here are the latest arrangement experiments, some better than others:







And of course I need some new "action" shots - so here's one of the press all locked up and ready to roll:

Loud and Clear

I just finished a new set of wedding invitations with an effect that I'm especially pleased with - it's a transparent and white ink mix, so very pale pale pale. Not quite a blind deboss, which is with no ink whatsoever.

My instinct says this is going to be very popular this year - the whole blind (or nearly so) deboss. It's a really nice effect with "modern" letterpressing (thick cotton paper and no-holds-barred impression).



Not my first clear ink project - a few months back I designed and printed some business cards for a woodworker neighbor. His business name is Inwood so I created a woodgrain design for him. This I printed in a transparent ink, which just intensified the brown of the paper below - a neat trick I learned from a silkscreener at SVA who used transparent base to get a great yet sublimely subtle endpaper design for one of his artists' books.



The finished card.



A detail of the woodgrain.

Here's to being in the clear.

Hot off the Press

Our first national feature is in print!!! I don't think it's quite on newsstands, but here's a sneak peak at Albertine Press in the April issue of Country Living Magazine, page 90.

bubble bubble toil and trouble

There is very little so satisfying as standing back and having hundreds of finished cards, cards you designed and finally printed, laid out just ready to be folded and sent off to stores.

It was almost the only redeeming thing to the horrors of last week, which was one of those weeks where just nothing seemed to go right. What follows is a list of the most major problems.

Iggy (aka the Warthog) was being a real beast. The platen took ages to adjust evenly, and then once it was, I couldn't shake a worrying clanking noise. The folks at Briarpress alternately think it's nothing and something awful. I've been instructed to listen with a screwdriver.

A locked up chase exploded while printing, spraying furniture into the press. You'd never imagine that a little piece of wood could bend a half inch thick piece of metal so dramatically. Luckily it's just the gripper bars, which I don't use anyway, so I can take my time getting it fixed/replaced.

Then, frazzled, I put the chase back in upside down. This lead to the destruction of two of my favorite guides and some irreparable dents in my favorite Boxcar Base. Doh! In my defense I would like to point out that it was a symmetrical polymer plate centered on the base which was neatly centered in the chase. This chase has now been painted on one side, clearly indicating BOTTOM.

Frustrated beyond belief, all printing switched to the Vandercook for the remainder of the week. She was far more compliant.

Still not finished - a set of wedding invitations I printed Friday and Saturday came out delightfully. Then I caught the date typo. The client had signed off on the design, but nevertheless it will need to be reprinted. On the bright side, I've got a nice addition of samples to my collection.

Those were only the PRINTING problems.

• our phone lines went down, and perhaps had been having problems for several weeks (verizon came and fixed it)
  
• the flood a few weeks back left a lingering mustiness in the carpets (carpet cleaners finally came, only evicting us for about three hours and leaving a whole new kind of wet carpet smell)
  
• I stepped out of my car into six inches of water in the parking lot (luckily I had one spare sock in the shop - I have no idea where it came from, or why there was only one, except that it was definitely mine, and it was dry)

Thank goodness for neat rows of finished cards.