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.

A couple of guys, Andrew Weir and Nicholas Pollacchi, from The Balvenie Distillery in Scotland, are touring the U.S in a hand made Morgan car. Along the way the boys are highlighting artisans who work with their hands as they continue the tradition of craft in America.

Unfortunately their route does not take them through Minnesota, but they have recognized two workshops in the state and, wait for it . . . , one of them is the letterpress jobbing shop, The Nomadic Press.

Although I keep my whisky drinking and hand-fed press operation separated, I do enjoy a bump now and again and am pleased to be recognized by this adventurous duo.

You can stop by their website (<http://www.thebalvenie.com/en-us/roadshow/>) and enjoy a shot of old-worldliness or, if you’re in the neighborhood of the Nomadic Press, stop in and say hi.

So January is a good time for some linoleum cutting and a time to warm my hands over the fire of the promise of Spring (fueled by the tinder box of the Pantone Mixing System color book).

To that end, here is a 5 color lino cut (with 2 more colors in computer/polymer type) which I finished recently.

Drop me an email if you want a copy and I’ll send one right off to you.

Stay warm.

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.)

I usually wear a hat of some sort and have done so for the last 20 years.

One of the first things I acquired to furnish the Nomadic Press building, when Emily and I bought the place, was a decent hat rack. Every morning when I come into the shop I hang up my hat and get to work.

It should come as no surprise then, that I enjoy watching an episode of Mad Men now and again. Emily and I watch it on DVD and so it was just recently that we were watching an episode wherein the Sterling daughter was planning her wedding.

Whoops, the props people blew it on that one.

When Roger Sterling was shown a sample of the invitation stationery we got to see a close-up of the card and, low and behold, it was obviously a piece of letterpress work.

I say obviously because the impression of the type into the paper was clearly visible.

Ok, first of all, the issue of deep impression, or “heavy hitting” has been previously spoken about on this blog page. Heavy impression is a modern artifact associated with the craft, and no self respecting printer from the late 50s would have been caught dead producing a work with such a visibly deep impression.

And, frankly, letterpress printing would have been the lowbrow option and not something that the daughter of a Madison Avenue big-wig would have even considered using for such an important event as her wedding.

Copperplate engraving would have been the cat’s meow.

But things change.

So, in spite of their anachronistic blunder, I was happy to see the producers of Mad Men offering a tip of the hat to the modern day fashion trend that holds letterpress in such high regard.

Heavily impressed letterpress wedding invitations anyone?

One of the evening sounds that I have taken comfort in over the years has been the sound of a pair of resident nighthawks as they dive and roll across the sky in their dinnertime play. For those who do not know the sound of a nighthawk’s dance in the air, it is a whoosh and a hum and a buzz and it says Summer evening in the same way that a cicada’s whine says hot day.

I was up on the roof of the print shop recently, just checking to make sure all was in good order, and I was startled by the sudden rise of an adult nighthawk. She jumped up and came down a short distance away dragging her wings in an obvious attempt to get me to come after her.

Instead, I looked around and found, sitting right at my feet, these two chicks looking as much like a gravel roof as two fluffy, feather-clad birds could possibly look. 

I look forward to listening to these two frolicking in next Summer’s post-print-run evening air, above me and the print shop and an end-of-the-day beer.

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.

While the movement focused on an examination of esthetics, with an eye open toward identifying a Black sensibility in arts and crafts that was distinctly separate from that of the current White culture, some of the great works of art of the 20th century were created.  During this period painting, music and literature underwent dramatic changes.

Publishing was not immune from the enthusiastic energy of change. Many of the most powerful works of African American writing were produced during this period and the printers of the time were not without their say. A number of works were produced using black paper and printed with white ink. 

This was, perhaps, an idea that was technically ahead of its time.

Although lithographic printing using paper plates was invented in 1914, the bulk of printed matter was still produced using the relief (or letterpress) process. With the letterpress process it is difficult to print effectively with either white ink on black paper or to print a flood of black ink with the type dropped out.

Perhaps this is an experiment that is worth investigating again. With the sophistication of offset printing and the advent of direct-to-print computer processes, as well as the invention of the digital book, a firmer technical foundation exists today to play with the relationship between black and white on the printed page.

Weather the paper or the ink is black or white, the strength one takes from the contrast between the two is undeniable. This business card designed by (and for) Kristin Krantz is fine example of the dynamic that is highlighted by the simple use of these two , I would say, primary colors.

The press performed well on its first outing and, even then, I could anticipate many decades of serviceable work coming henceforth from its jaws.  

Foundry type, linotype, monotype are all forms of type that have been cast from molten metal. They are little pieces of sculpture carefully cast according to the strictly monitored vision of an artist.

Eric Gill (who’s art probably sits, in a derivative form, on your computer right now) was a sculptor. He worked in multiple mediums. He worked in stone, in a large scale,  and cut beautiful life-like pieces from inanimate rock. He also used the same sorts of reductive processes when he engraved sensuous images of passionate lovers into boxwood and maple. And those images he printed alongside of his type.

His type, too, is sculpture. Cut to size from steel punches and then struck into brass matrixes, Gill’s letterforms were cast in the millions. Like the human figure, we know what a letter should look like and we can recognize a lovely figure when we see it. Gill’s type forms have stood the tests of time and, even more than Michelangelo’s David, are visited daily by multitudes.

Eric Gill once said that “letters are things not pictures of things” and, like his other sculptures, his letter forms are things. They are beautiful things. They are sexy things.

In their original form they are hot.

So perhaps hot type is not such a retronym after all.