Green Chair Press Blog

Printy Quotes

Books finely printed I keep a notebook of quotes and poetry that I scour for titles for my broadsides. Juliet, over on the muddy island, sent me a link to a lovely site with quotes about printing: the cavendish gallery of print and typography. It pairs the quotes with printing-related images.
The gallery doesn’t include one of my favorite quotes, so on the right is my own addition, paired with my favorite printer.
And below is the text from the gallery entry with a phrase that inspired the title for one of my recent wood type collage broadsides, Safe Ground.

This is a printing office.
Cross-roads of Civilization,
Refuge of all the Arts against the Ravages of Time.
From this place Words may fly abroad
Not to perish as Waves of Sound
But fix’d in Time,
Not corrupted by the hurrying Hand
But verified in Proof.
Friend, you stand on Safe Ground:
This is a printing office.

Teacher Features: Bookmaking with Kids

Recently I helped Cathy Miranker set up a blog about bookmaking with kids. She launched it just as the new school year is starting but already it’s got lots of ideas for making books with kids. Projects are tagged by age and grade level, and there’s a “calendar of ideas” with bookmaking opportunity prompts. And it’s not just about physically making books — the books encourage kids to write stories, read, draw, even present dramatic readings! Take a look here.

Obsessive Nature of Time

This week I started printing my 2008 calendar design. I’ve already printed my Christmas cards and some winter coasters. My obsessive pre-planning has the effect of making me feel as though I’ve skipped much of summer and fall and catapulted myself into winter!
Of course I’m not the only one who’s obsessive! Last year, Nikki Thompson of Deconstructed Artichoke Press made a bookwork for the PCBA Calendar Show called “A Contemplation of the Obsessive Nature of Time.” It’s 12 flipbooks, one for each month, based on prose writings by Julio Cortazar: “Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch” and “Instructions on How to Wind a Watch.” She decided that the repetitive nature of a flipbook structure was the best for communicating obsessiveness and said, “originally I was thinking about using minutes or seconds in a year as the constraint for the number of flipbooks and the number of pages per flipbook, but practically speaking it was too obsessive, so I chose the twelve flipbooks, ranging from 28 to 31 pages.” I immediately bought a copy, not only because of the subject but it’s a wonderful way to think about the year rather than as structured set of days and weeks and months.
The images above are from the December flipbook. And below, my copy of her books spread out on my shelf. At the end of this month, Nikki is teaching a class in calendar making, “Handmade Calendars: From Concept to Completion,” at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Be sure to check it out!

Merit Badges

I was a girl scout through high school and I still have my sash with the badges I earned for things like camping, backpacking and baking. Imagine my delight last Saturday at the SFCB Roadworks craft fair when my friends Jennie and Carolee, of Pod Post, showed up with their new merit badges for letterpress! I immediately bought a set and today I’ll sew them on my printers’ apron.
That’s Carolee on the right, modelling her sash with another set of their badges — these for bookbinding. They also have a set for zine making.
The letterpress badges are labeled “Level One: Set Type’, ‘Level Two: Mind Your P’s (and Q’s)’ and ‘Level Three: Press Time’. Carolee said I could wear the Level Three badge, even though I print on an inferior C&P floor model and not the coveted (and pictured) Vandercook!

Agapanthus

I’ve been looking at Chinese latticework designs recently and thought some of the patterns would adapt well to a letterpress print. The designs are clean and simple, and greatly enhanced with color. I had already selected a colorway for this pattern when I noticed that the agapanthus in our front yard were almost finished blooming. I always love the spikey blue flowers on long skinny stalks, and decided to ditch my original plan and use the blues and greens from the fading plants.
This is the first in a series of prints based on patterns. It’s a bit different from my other broadsides as it doesn’t have any text. You can see the whole print here.

Marking Time

For the past several years, the Pacific Center for the Book Arts has sponsored a year-end show of calendars created by members. The theme the first year was “marking time.” That first year I started to design a calendar but got stuck trying to figure out what “marking time” meant for me. I dislike the rigidity of calendars, but I’m a notorious list maker — just as rigid as keeping a datebook I guess. So the second year I incorporated my list-making habit into my calendar entry with a diary for readers. It’s a slim little book that lets you record and rate the books you read. Maybe not traditional, but it does mark time.
By last year I had stopped worrying about the marking time business and was ready to do something that looked more like what most people think of as a calendar. I wanted to incorporate letterpress into my design, but I didn’t get started until November. So I designed and letterpress printed a flat 5″x7″ card with a quote on the top and the months on the lower half. This card motivated this blog — my adventures designing broadsides.
This year I’ve started earlier with the idea of a calendar that sat on a desk or table, in a propped open jewel case, with one page per month. And it would include some haiku that I’ve been writing. But first I had to get very distracted by some other interesting calendar designs, none of them in English. The Publikum Calendar, published by a Serbian design company, is glorious (there’s more about it here). And this sprial calendar appeals to my notion that time is continuous rather than discrete day-to-day chunks.