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statement
Printing with lead type is a painstaking, highly specialized and ancient
craft. Indeed it is a 550 year tradition in western culture whose
antecedents
travel even further back to Asia. I attempt, while keeping the skills
and equipment of letterpress alive, to produce printed work of unequaled
craft and beauty. The skills of mind, hand and eye combine to create
unique custom printed ephemera ranging from fine wedding invitations
to baby announcements, music packaging & posters to linen-thread
stitch-bound chapbooks. Any job requiring eclectic or classic typographic
treatment and first-class presswork would be a candidate for design
& printing at interrobang.
My aim is to offer up the services of a small town "job printer" with
the informed style of an urban artist craftsman. A post modern stationer's
shop as it were. Small run, hand produced booklets, stationery, keepsakes
& ephemera with more caché than Crane's (i.e. not pushed across
a table in a 3-ring sample binder) and at a more reasonable price
point. To mix metaphors with the fine tradition of hand-tailoring,
all work is bespoke in the
finest meaning
of the term, with consultation and "fitting", production, and
delivery of printing that fits you alone.
Metal foundry type is the material I most love to manipulate in order
to design and produce my work. The realities of increasingly rare
types and the ultimate convenience of the computer mean that interrobang
harnesses the most powerful illustration and layout applications
to, at minimum, design with an ability to present tight pre-press
comps,
or, take the job to plate and onto press.
It should be noted that, although my desire would be always to have
creative control over design in the work I produce, there are numerous
instances when I have collaborated with designers and art directors
simply for the fine presswork I am able to deliver. I started
my career
"at the board" in some of the largest and smallest
agencies in Boston. As a result, I can speak the language, but don't
have to...
This is a small operation, and of necessity, my presses are the smallest
once available to produce professional grade printing. If you are interested
in larger format or longer run work, please feel free to browse the
links section where you will find other brothers and sisters in the
"black art" who might assist you in your quest for the best form of
printing ever available.
be cool, be thoughtful, be here now, be sure to smile at babies
- why letterpress?
It musta been back in the fall of '85, I picked up a copy of Camper
Van Beethoven's LP "Telephone Free Landslide Victory". It
was printed on grey packing chipboard and was like no other record
jacket I had seen or acquired in my days as nascent record collector
scum. (Well... except maybe the first Buzzcock's LP in the PRODUCT
bag.) Whatever the process was I responded to it. There was witty
copy on a sticker on the back suggesting that it be purchased post
haste lest one forever regret the rare opportunity to own such a
fine disc. Plus the band did a cover of a Black Flag tune... I bought
the disc and it remains in a hallowed place in my collection. There
were only 1000 copies pressed by some guy in LA, name Bruce Licher
at Independent Project Records
& Press.
That was my introduction to letterpress though I didn't know it. It
was a couple more years before I brushed up against the process again
after college. I was living in Boston working my first job out of art
school (BFA '86) doing paste up for 15K per annum in "the Boom
Years".
Yeah, good times... har. Uh, in any case, The Society of Printers'
annual
Dwiggins Lecture was to feature a talk by the nearly peerless Barry
Moser about the latest wood engravings he had cut for, and book he
had
published at Pennyroyal Press, L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz". At lunch
prior that day I strayed to the now defunct Harvard Bookstore Cafe
at
Newbury and Ex, having scraped together some book money. There, I purchased
University of California Press trade editions of "Oz" as well
as Pennyroyal's "Alice's Adventure in Wonderland", also sublimely
illustrated by Moser. I was, and still am, fascinated by wood engravings
and the skills required,
but
indeed equally by the layout and typography of primarily, the Alice.
Elaborate Initial characters, expressive typography and marginal
notes
in second and calligraphy in third colors were shiny objects to my
magpie eye. I went to the lecture in Rabb Hall and was totally turned
on by
Moser's work. The engravings for "Oz" were political satire,
circa the Reagan Era. Ron was the Great and Powerful Oz, Nancy, yup
the Wicked Witch. I stood in line back at HB Cafe, shook hands with,
and expressed my admiration for, Mr. Moser's work. He signed both
copies.
He had spoken at the Hartford Art School whilst I was matriculated
thereto, but, the stars not being aligned at the time, I missed his
lecture.
I did pick up one of the keepsakes printed by Harold McGrath that were
left behind. A tenebristic engraving of a well worn tome below which
lay a quote from uh,.. Erasmus... stating "when I have a little
money, I buy books, if there's anything left, food and drink" or
something to that effect. Seemed to make perfect sense (as my present
library would attest)... So that, my second brush with letterpress,
a more refined and crafted example than my first.
I don't really remember the chain of events, in what must have been 1988,
that lead me to phone John Kristensen at Firefly Press. What snippets
I recall dealt with John telling me about the Guild and not usually hooking non-Guild
member up with equipment and such. I'm not sure if I had discovered the class
at the Boston Center of Adult Edumacation. Amber, my girlfriend at the time
planned a trip up to Wells, Maine to go book hunting since she knew I would
never have enough books. Fun enough time, stayed in Ogunquit, ate clams this and
lobster that when I still ate those sorts of things. Made my first really printing
oriented book buys at... er... i don't remember. ANYway, the seminal "Printing
Types - ..." by Updike and the "The Manual of Linotype Typography".
That second title blew my mind. I don't think I had ever seen printing so
beautiful. No; I know I hadn't and believe me, there's much more sublime
work out there that I was wholly unaware of at the time. The UCP "Alice" was
cool but this had Depth of Impression. (A few
years later I was too intimidated by the Bromers' to turn the pages of a real
Pennyroyal Alice. At $4k I was afraid to even look at the box it was housed
in.)
The Letterpress Guild of New England. ...
more later
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