November and December are always busy here at The Nomadic Press as people rush to get out Holiday cards of good will and cheer and thanks and promotion. And there are invitations to print and often a smattering of gifts which are comprised in whole, or in part, of letterpress pieces.

So, as the Holidays descend upon us again, with a vengeance, I am wont, with an eye toward tempering the associate stresses of full and fast deadlines, to reminisce about the joys and foibles of years past.

Last year one memorable project (joyful, yes, but fraught with hidden consequence) sprang to the fore in the final days of the Holiday madness. It was a piece I worked on for a local brain trust of creative Olympians, Zeus Jones.

They were working on a gift box containing a number of drinks, and drink recipes, that called for the letterpress printing of a series of small-bottle labels along with a recipe card. The card was a larger piece with heavy coverage which, in spite of its being printed on a thick and hard stock, required a deep impression.

The drink recipe, dear reader, was a recipe for a drink called Zeus’s Noggin.

Let us pause in our narrative here, for a moment, to examine some rudimentary anatomy of the Chandler and Price platen press: One of the immediately recognizable endowments of almost any letterpress machine is the large flywheel who’s stored and spinning inertia keeps the machine moving smoothly through its cycle again and again and again. The shaft of the flywheel is, in turn, affixed with a small gear on the end opposite the wheel.

This gear (being the smaller of a meshed pair of gears) is known as a pinion.

For a printing press built in 1897, and now printing into its 114th year, it is not unexpected that time and metal fatigue should take their toll. And, indeed they had.

So, while the spirits themselves lay, as yet untouched by the pressman in their bed of excelsior, the titanic struggle between Greek god and cast iron played out on the floor of the press room, and in the midst of the pounding thunder of the deadline-harried letterpress engines of the Nomadic Press, a small crack opened up in the afore mentioned pinion. Just a small crack.

But, on the one hundred and third impression (of a contracted for run of one hundred pieces), the pinion gear of the poor old press split asunder.

Pounding away on Zeus’s noggin proved too much.

In the end, the job in full quantity, was delivered on time. And, as a glad close to the story, a new pinion was hobbed in New Jersey. It now spins happily on its shaft. The press, perhaps a bit wiser now, awaits its next clash with the gods.

And I believe that it will fare as well, If not better next time around.

One of the nice things about being a printer (as opposed to being a painter or a sculptor, for example) is that I have, almost always, been able to save a few copies of each piece that I have produced.

Over the 23+ years that I have been letterpress printing I have had the pleasure of completing more than 1,700 works for clients or for myself. Some of these were one or two color jobs while others were books with many pages or block prints in a dozen colors or more.

As you can imagine, the stacks of sheets have turned into stacks of boxes which in turn became rows of cabinets containing examples of Nomadic Press work dating back to the most crudely printed pieces of the early days of the shop.

This last Summer, as I was wading through the annual reshuffling of completed-job-samples, I was contacted by a member of the acquisitions board of the Minnesota Historical Society who expressed interest in their becoming the holder of the archives of The Nomadic Press.

After a bit of negotiation, the Minnesota Historical Society now holds a copy of (almost) every piece ever produced here at The Nomadic Press. At some point all these works will be cataloged and will give future generations a peek at a small segment of the early decades of the Minnesota letterpress revival.

I have to say I am pleased by, and proud of, this recognition of my years of work. And I want to thank all the people whom I have had the pleasure of working with during those years for bringing to me such beautiful graphic design.

And I look forward to sending the Minnesota Historical Society many more examples of interesting letterpress printing in the years to come. 

So, to those of you who have ever hired me do some printing, we are now history. (Though that isn’t to say that we can’t work together again.)

When I was in second grade, and was first learning to write, I violated all the rules of the solid line, dashed line, solid line format that we were asked to follow while practicing our letters. I opted instead for letterforms that, in retrospect, had much more in common with art deco display faces than they did with the samples we were given to emulate.

The long ascenders and small, geometric bowls of my early handwriting marked me with both rebellion and regression. Looking backwards (and out of the box) is a perspective which I have found comfort in over the years. Combined with my love of letterforms, this world view in retrograde has left me in the comfortable possition of being a letterpress printer.

I had my first exposure to letterpress printing in high school, learned a bit more after graduation on a solid oak lever press, and, after a stint at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I started my work in earnest working for Coffee House Press at Minnesota Center for Book Arts when they first opened (25 years ago).

In 1987 I started The Nomadic Press. Working out of a basement (and a garage) worked fine for a while, but when my friend (and wife) Emily and I wanted to start a family something needed to change. After looking for over a year we found a building on the West Side in St. Paul which suited our needs.

The brick building we found was built in 1914 and it sits on a large lot with a nice big yard. Trees offer shade and the upstairs apartment provided a comfortable home in which to start our family.

Oh, and the print shop fit nicely on the main floor.

We now have two kids and own a house about a mile away from The Nomadic Press. Emily’s business (Aldrich Design) now operates out of the upstairs of the print shop.

At this point you may ask why I am telling you all this. Well, the reason for this rambling history of letterpress printing and friendship is to share some exciting news.

This last week we made the final mortgage payment on the building that houses The Nomadic Press. We now own it free and clear. And we owe a great deal of thanks for all the help and support we have received over the years from our families and our friends. As well as all of you who have seen fit to hire us now and again. Thanks.

As my grandfather said, its ours, now we can kick it. Brick, mortar and all.

And I say, kick it letterpress.

Having spent a good part of my life treating the printed word as a precious thing has put me at a bit of a risk of thinking like a museum archivist. Although I take great pains to use stable materials in the printing and binding of the work produced here at The Nomadic Press, that does not mean that all printed materials need to be handled with an obsessive reverence.

A couple of winters ago I was reading a pretty good book. As I finished reading a page I would tear it out and throw it in the fire. This meant that I was always reading just the top sheet of a book and I never had to hold the tome open (one of my pet peeves is books that are printed with no space in the gutter, thus forcing the reader to exert constant effort just to keep the damn pages spread apart).

This winter I decided to finally finish Homer’s “The Iliad” and finish it I did. I shredded my copy of it and built a display case for the leavings. I know, one might say that this puts things back into the world of the museum.

Rather, I consider it more of a object for a cabinet of curiosities. In any case it was fun to make.

Next on my reading list, the burnt ashes of “War and Peace” in an urn. And I’ll try not to set the Nomadic Press print studio on fire.