Green Chair Press Blog

Found Type Posters

Danielson Letterpress Poster by mikey burton

My post earlier this week on an article about letterpress in Forbes and Kate’s comments got me to thinking about my own taste in letterpress posters. The main inspiration for my own wood type collage prints was a lecture I attended where Alastaire Johnston talked about the work of H N Werkman (I have a post about his calendars here). Werkman’s broadsides seem so spontaneous — he printed with anything he could find in his studio, including furniture. But it is definitively sloppy and probably over-inked printing.

Without getting too deep so early in the morning, I wanted to share this poster I found on flickr. It’s a 5-color letterpress print for a show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, OH created entirely from antique wood type and ornaments by Mikey Burton. You can see his full flickr stream here.

Book Collecting: The Thread of Meaning

Anton Marc’s the Thread of Meaning

Anton Marc’s “The Thread of Meaning.” An accordion fold book that is 3.75” x 5” when closed and extends to 12 feet when open. The colored photo reproductions of chairs are linked by hand-sewn black thread.

French Fold

My blog posts often serve as reminders of things I want to return to, and this is one of those… I’ve made lots of single sheet books, and even sell a kit of various designs that fit on 8-1/2×11 paper. But I was reminded the other day of the simplest single sheet book — the french fold. According to the description for a class given by Robert Walp later this month at Great River Arts Insitute in Vermont,

A French fold is a book printed on one side of a single sheet of paper. The printer must determine the proper orientation, or imposition, of each page so that when folded twice the sheet becomes a four page book with a cover, two inside pages, and a back.

Letterpress Revisited

Forbes.com recently had an article about the revival of letterpress printing. They mention Hatch Show Print, a print shop in Nashville that’s been making entertainment posters (“show posters”) since 1979 (that’s one of their prints to the left, you can see more here).
It’s a breezy short article. And amusing in that it ends with a discussion of the debate on whether using photopolymer plates to print is really letterpress. Several of the commenters to the article say it isn’t letterpress unless the printer uses hand-set metal type. The Beast Pieces blog has a good counter-argument here.
At SFCB, our beginning letterpress courses all teach hand type setting — but that’s because, in a studio already stocked full of metal type, it’s the easiest, cheapest way to start learning. But anyone who continues usually wants to design pieces that can be difficult, time consuming and costly to print hand-set, so my recommendation for a follow-on class is always the Printing from Photopolymer Plates class.

Tight Times

To be honest, my book and print sales this year have been dismal. It’s often hard to keep making things with older work going unsold. So it was heartening to read Tight Times Loosen Artists’ Creativity in the NY Times this morning. On their blog, they asked readers to comment on what effect the economy is having on their life and work. In the subsequent article, the author, Robin Pogrebin, writes: “Perhaps most striking about the comments was the considerable number who were defiantly upbeat despite grim circumstances. Many artists testified that the recession had strengthened their commitment to their work or allowed them to concentrate on their art — since the time spent on side jobs had diminished — or had even been a source of creative inspiration.”

Victoria May

Victoria May is a local artist who mostly does fiber art. Occasionally she makes bookworks too — she belongs to the PCBA and always has interesting things in our member shows (and I’m a push-over for any book with sewing in it). The last time we did a year-end exhibition of calendars, she made the one to the left (called Pocket Calendar, it’s made of Library book pockets, book pages, mull, thread, rust and dirt, and is very large). I also distinctly remember her Ocean Book — while it has no text, the colors and delicacy of it made me think immediately of lapping water.
Recently Victoria was the subject of a short documentary shown on Spark, a weekly television show about Bay Area artists and arts organizations produced by our local public television station, KQED. While it’s about her sewn artwork, it’s an interesting look into how she designs and constructs her work.