Line by Line

I guess I'll keep with a theme and share another Letter Press story, this time about Jerry Richardson in Fargo North Dakota...

Jerry Richardson is a man of letters – many, many letters. 

Talk to the 82-year-old and you’ll likely get a carefully considered, concise response delivered in a low, quiet, even tone. 

While not known for his prose, he is well respected for his visual presentations of words in print. 

In the basement of his Ninth Street home in Fargo, Richardson runs two letterpresses, producing some of the finest textual prints in the region, from individual literary lines to limited edition books and broadsides. 

To paraphrase a great orator, Teddy Roosevelt, “Speak softly and carry a big pica pole.”

One of the printing presses in Richardson’s basement weighs about 2,000 pounds. Each piece of paper that is printed on is placed by hand. Dave Wallis / The Forum
Read the entire article here: http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/374709/

Old becomes new again....

Everything old becomes new again.... not sure I have the cliche exactly correct even if the idea is appropriate.

http://www.vernonmorningstar.com/entertainment/168205986.html


In a small town in Canada, at the Okanagan College, a new project called 'The Bunker' is opening soon.

What makes The Bunker so special? It is a Letter Press shop that is going to teach students how to set type by hand and print with ink on paper. And when I say ink I mean the kind that gets under your fingernails and stains your fingertips like your Father and Grandfather used in their shops.

I am very excited to see a program like this opening even if it is in Canada, and therefore very far away from here, because this is how I got my start in printing. I have a huge appreciation for modern typesetting and layout programs because I know what it used to be like. And I truly appreciate the irony of early in my career being 'rushed' to manually typeset a newsletter in several days to now being 'rushed' to typeset the same newsletter in an hour or less. As the technology improves so do the expectations placed upon the technology.

Anyway... click the link above and admire some beautiful equipment and enjoy the glimpse back to the print shops of the 50's and 60's.

Gift Wrap

Remember being a kid on your birthday and seeing your present all wrapped up with a big bow on top?

Or all the presents under the Christmas Tree with the ribbons and bows?

Or, maybe more recently in your life, all of your wedding gifts or baby-shower gifts wrapped in the cute papers with the matching bows and matching cards?

The mystery of what is inside that box that rattles so tantalizingly? The wish that you could see through that wrapping paper to try and glean what the box underneath says?

What would you do without gift paper? What would you do without wrapping paper? How much fun would it be if everyone just handed you the box and said Happy Birthday and denied you the excitement of tearing through that gift wrap to see what gift awaited underneath?

Paper has presence.

Paper has meaning.

Paper matters.


Thank you to Hammer, Stitch, Burn for the great image.

Get it? Presence... Presents.... I should probably get out more.

Paper Ephemera

A gentleman by the name of Chuck Whiting runs a blog called Paper Matters where he discusses rare ephemera and out-of-print books. Its a nice blog, you should check it out when you have a minute or two...

The reason I am point out Mr Whiting's blog is specifically because of this image:

A ticket from a 1968 football game at Houston's Astrodome.

With the push to have more of your life 'in the cloud' or otherwise represented by bits and bytes I have to wonder.... what are you going to pin to your bulletin board to remember the things from your past? What are you going to tape into your scrapbook to remind you of the things you forgot?

Having your concert tickets represented as a bar code on your smart phone is neat and being able to check in to your flight the same way can be more than a little handy.

But is it better?

The end of money?

Found an interesting idea that Canada is working on called MintChip. No, not an ice cream flavor... an attempt at making the future of money digital.

There are lots of reasons to make money not actually be physical money, and probably as many or more not to. And one of the reasons that is probably only obvious to printers like myself....what happens to all the printers who print the money? What happens to all the specialized printing equipment that now isn't needed? There is considerably more at stake than just making money be on your smart-phone.

What are your thoughts on the matter?