Letterpress!

As frustrated as I am right now with my MLIS program, it has given me some fabulous opportunities and taken me to fantastic places. The latest is The Nomadic Press, a letterpress business that's in St. Paul. It's a one-man outfit in an old storefront just across the river from downtown. The first floor is the printing business and the second is his wife's graphic design office. My professor for the class I'm in right now is friends with the owner, so he arranged for us to get a peek at how presses work.

The Nomadic Press has three presses-one from the 1800's, one from the 1920's and the "newest" one is from the 1950's. The oldest one is a hulking beast that actually seems alive. It can feed its own paper and will "breathe" when it grabs a new piece. We saw the one from the 1920's in action. You have to manually feed in the paper and it's very easy to see how dangerous presses are. Too slow and you can get your fingers snapped off!

We actually got to print something using the one from the 1950's. The owner had a collection of old print blocks that date back to the early 1900s and later and we each got to pick one. I, of course, gravitated towards one of his oldest blocks. It's a little fairy (she didn't scan very well) that's about an inch high. Since it was so old and worn, there was a lot of adjustment that had to be done with the bed of the press, which I got to do (with supervision, of course)!

The entire shop was littered with fonts and frames and ink and gouge carving tools and I couldn't help but think of letterboxing. There is a lot of overlap, from the setting of type so that it prints correctly to the creation of new printing blocks/stamps and selecting the right ink, etc, etc. Maybe this summer I'll ask the owner if he would be open to having a letterbox in his shop...

If you ever have the chance to get a tour of a letterpress business, I would highly recommend it. And if you're in the Twin Cities area (or even outside Minnesota), definitely check out the Nomadic Press if you need invitations, business cards, etc printed. He does fantastic work!