Here comes the bride

This afternoon Albertine Press played host to its very first bridal shower (of sorts).



A group of bridesmaids all got together and rented out the shop for a private printing party where the bride (with help from her mom and lady friends) got to print her very own thank you notes, designed by one of the girls. It was a sweet afternoon and my hearty congratulations to Ami and her super creative bridesmaids for thinking of such a wonderful group activity.



Photos courtesy of Roxanne (the talented designer / bridesmaid).

Chaos theory

The fight against entropy is an uphill battle. Especially in a print shop.



In an attempt to be a responsible manufacturer, I try not to waste anything, which really means that nothing is thrown away (to the great delight of some unnamed god of clutter). There are piles of over-printed projects kept for sample requests, small but usable cutting scraps, boxes and packing materials from supplier shipments, little puddles of custom ink colors that are too good to throw away, a mess of scrap paper notes-to-self, plus the ordinary print shop ephemera of swatch books, reference books, art supplies, tools, boxes of finished cards in inventory, plus thousands and thousands of sheets of paper and envelopes.

It's a tricky thing keeping it all organized. And case in point, we don't.



This week I reached my breaking point. I stopped all work (because I could barely think with all the clutter) and started an all day venture into spring cleaning.



Looking at a four foot high pile of corrugated cardboard, I caved and brought half it it down to the recycling dumpster. Same with boxes that just weren't good enough for re-use. Three wax paper sheets dotted with months of various saved inks finally found their way into the garbage.

The most noticeable success so far was the complete re-organization of the swatch book, catalog and reference bookcase which had previously been stuffed seven ways to Sunday with duplicates, random business cards and other ephemera, and not at all prettily.



There are miles to go before we sleep, but I can see the bottom of the shelves once more, and that has made all the difference.

Bumper crop

One of my favorite custom projects ever, this couple is having their wedding reception on the bumper car pavilion at an old amusement park, complete with pie and carousel rides.

In order to capture the fun, off-beat style of the wedding, we came up with an art deco inspired invitation in a retro combination of bright red and light blue.



Guests attending need only check off, "Pie, rides AND a wedding? Call me Bumper Betty, I'm in!"



I know how easy it is to fall into the somewhat traditional, reception hall, white roses, black and white, chicken and fish, wedding groove. So it's refreshing and wonderful to work with couples who have incredibly creative ideas to make their celebration truly unique.

I've got the world on a string

Not so very long ago we shipped out our largest order to date - well over 500 cards! A major coup which required major rethinking about how to package this kind of order.



Twine to the rescue! After carefully counting, recounting, and barcoding each stack of cards, they were lovingly bundled with ordinary twine (usually used for typesetting).



Off went the bundles to their new homes on the shelves of the many Kate's Paperies throughout New York City.

Huzzah!

Hot off the press

My local friends might find something familiar on page 38 of the current issue of Improper Bostonian.



In a wedding feature that spans wedding types like Preppy, Traditional, Hipster (a motorbike? really?) and Green, they've got samples from a handful of local vendors. In the green section, you might recognize our ever popular Leaf Stems design.

I think mostly they picked things based on color, but nevertheless, it's fun to see us in print!

A little birdie told me

This multi-event ensemble was designed by the bride-to-be, also an architecture student at Columbia (where I studied architecture, once upon a time). I love the bright orange paired with the soft gray; it's just so unexpectedly wonderful!

Bravo, Deb!

Two if by sea

Last week was a whirlwind of custom printing (the first of many weeks of such frenzy). One of the jobs finished was this set of lighthouse wedding invitations.



It's the culmination of a project begun months ago, with sketches for one couple's save-the-date card. After many, many attempts, we finally achieved the perfect design for Meghan and Dan, who became engaged at Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine.

Ahoy!

The rule of... rule

About a week ago I hosted the Letterpress Guild of New England for a talk by Sam Ellenport of the Harcourt Bindery. He came to show a video he made about the last day of pen-ruling at the bindery. Though a homemade production, it was heartfelt in its effort to capture the end of an era, as it truly was.



So what is pen-ruling? Pen-ruling is the process by which straight lines were printed (rather, drawn) onto paper to make ledgers and such. The machine built to do this work is circa 1850 and looks like this:



"Pens" in varying widths were set up on the machine and then threaded with ink-soaked wool-yard (of a very ordinary sort) to draw the ink down into the channels. The tops of the yarn bits sat under another ink-soaked piece of felt, to which water-based ink was re-applied as necessary throughout the run.



Cams were set to lift some or all of the pens to stop lines at particular places.

Once the horizontal lines were dry (after being wound down and around the pen-ruler for about 70') the pages were run through the machine again to draw the vertical lines. Since each channel had its own thread, different colors could be run simultaneously (if only the Vandy were capable of such feats...).



The result: beautiful ledger paper for accounting, county registry of deeds, cemetery interment registers and other such things.

Of course nowadays, it's all digital.

Thanks to Sam for preserving a little bit of this history!