January 2007 – Green Chair Press Blog

Coasters

A pile of coaster blanks My friends Cathy & Glen have a bi-annual bash for their bookish friends every winter as part of the Antiquarian Book Fair. For quite some time I’ve been thinking about printing coasters but couldn’t invent a reason. So for Christmas, I gave them an IOU for coasters for their party. Cathy is meant to tell me what they should look like & I’ll design and print them.

I bought coaster blanks from Katz Americas (used to be American Coaster) and they arrived today (I live in California, American Coaster is in NY. I had to buy 1000 coasters for about $18. The shipping was $18! Even with the shipping it’s a great deal). The blanks are 4×4 and about 1/8″ thick — so wonderfully pulpy and chewy! They’ll take a good bite from the letterpress. [You can see the resulting coasters here.]

Wood Type

In addition to a box of random metal type, I also got a box of random wood type as part of my Christmas presents. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with them… there’s an entire alphabet plus all the numbers from 0-9, but they mostly don’t match.

There’s a eyeful resource for wood type — the Hamilton Wood Type Printing Museum with lots of history and pictures.

Metal Type

Last summer I moved my press from the cramped corner of our garage to a newly rented studio. Finally I have room for more equipment — and metal type. While figuring out what faces to buy, I bought a box of random metal type from Ebay. It arrived today and while I have no idea what I’ll do with it (I think it’s meant to hang on the wall), it’s really beautiful.

Guggenheim

This is my letterpress printer, an 8×12 Chandler and Price old style platen press. It’s from the 1890s and operated by a foot treadle. When I had it in the garage a friend of Harold’s stopped by and as he was admiring the press said “Hmm, wasn’t the guy who invented printing called Guggenheim?”. Well, no, it was Guttenberg. But the name stuck and that’s what we call my press now.

Studio

Last summer I moved my press from its cramped corner in our garage to a newly rented studio.

The studio has 2 rooms. A small finished space with a door where I keep my paper and binding equipment. And a large unfinished space for my press. Below is the smaller room, with my paper drill, paper cutters and paper drawer.

Studio

And this is the other wall, with more paper storage and a place to work .

Studio

Designing and Printing Broadsides

2007 Calendar Broadside

I’m a letterpress printer and bookbinder and live in Northern California. Last year I letterpress printed my first broadside, a 5×7 calendar as my holiday card. My friend Cathy suggested that I try making larger broadsides. The purpose of this blog is to record my experiments.