Friday, July 31, 2009

letterpress class

these past six weeks, on tuesday and thursday evenings i've been going to the letterpress shop at city college. i love seeing fonts you think only exist on the computer, but they exist as metal type. tiny things that you can cradle in your hands. there's something special about it. we have to carefully set the type - so it doesn't fall apart or be spelled wrong or placed upside down.

letterpress class at ccsf

my messy tray of type, mini shipping tags i printed on to be my business cards...

i love it when printing onto paper - once the ink has dried you can feel the physical impression of each letter.

DSC00381

i realized you need patience, tolerance for ink and soot smudged hands, that each space between each letter matters and there's such beauty in letters and numbers and symbols you forget about because now they mostly exist on a computer.

DSC00138

DSC00340

edit: all photos are by Jack Edwards
Jack was a great guy to go to for help in the letterpress shop. he took many wonderful photos of the work the class produced so this is just a sampling of what i could fit in my usb thumb drive.

3 comments:

wzgirl said...

Fan-TAS-tic! Where is this class?

Lori Saul said...

I really enjoyed your photos and post on the letterpress class- such an interesting art form in itself. Your blog is lovely (I discovered it through "Gothic Arches") which I just started. Look forward to visiting again!

Judy H said...

In the late 60's, early 70's my father sold printing equipment to newspapers and rubber stamps makers. Every now and then he would bring home a typesetter and repair and clean it up. I could make extra money cleaning up the metal type. Another bonus he got was boxes of wooden type and type cases from business getting rid of them. He did over the years get rid of it. Wish I had some of it now.