Sitting here, in the middle of winter, I am comforted by images of warm Summer retreats. Here is a wood engraving of a North Woods escape.
Executed in end grain maple, this image was cut from wood that the Hamilton Wood Type Museum had finished in preparation for the production of wood type.
Hamilton Wood Type products were a staple of custom letterpress printers for decades. Type cases, type cabinets, wood type. If you were printing then you were using Hamilton.
Hamilton also produced drafting tables for use in design studios, both architectural and graphic, as well as equipment for dentists and homemakers. My two children spent a good deal of time sleeping in a crib that was manufactured at Hamilton’s facilities in Two Rivers Wisconsin.
Little letterpress printers from the start, they now ride bikes in the Summer, hither and yon through the woods, as I sit with my engraving tools and incise lines into thin slices of trees. Life is good.