Cake Makes Paper

Cake, the band not the food, work with SF Center for the Book to create blockprint handmade lyric books for their new release - using paper made from their shirts.  Great feature on it here showing the entire process.

The limited edition of 1,000 handmade packets was produced in Berkeley, California in true DIY fashion by project coordinator Pam DuLuco and her team. Using natural and recycled components and throwback printing methods, they carved printmaker Rigel Stuhmiller’s bold illustrations into linoleum.

Lead and wood type were used to hand-press the words onto paper crafted from the Cake wardrobe discards and jute coffee sacks. Binding thread was hand-spun and coated in beeswax drawn from DuLuco’s personal beehive.

Don Kilpatrick

Here's a great video of Don Kilpatrick, of the College for Creative Studies, showing his printing process.

Grafica Fidalga

Grafica Fidalga, a printing press in São Paulo, Brazil, makes posters on a 1929 German letterpress using hand-carved wooden letters.  Check out the great video of their process

Great Video from Bespoke Letterpress

Alischa Herrmann and our new friends at Bespoke Letterpress in Brisbane, Australia put together this video about their shop, their process and their two presses: Charlie (their 117 year old Chandler & Price Oldstyle press) and Herbie (the 1973 Heidelberg Windmill Platen).

Bespoke Letterpress on Vimeo.

Let {her} Press

The creative women of Let{her} Press - a collective of five women-run letterpress companies from across the country - took the leap and displayed together at the May 2010 NSS show in New York. 

It is rare occasion where a grouping of companies can display designs together and still have each stand out on its own merits.  The members of the group are BirdDog Press (Colorado),  Lucky Bee Press (California), Paper Parasol (Chicago), Paper Stories (Grayslake, IL), and Robin Beth (NJ).

We have had the opportunity to work with several of these women over the years supplying a variety of papers including Lettra, Legion Bamboo, Arturo, Stardream, and Sorbet, to name a few.

Learn more about the work these talented women are doing.

Arion Press

We've been fortunate enough to have worked with Arion Press for as long as we've been in business.  They're one of the world's top printers of fine books and if you're interested in letterpress (and you probably wouldn't be reading this if you aren't) you should know who they are.

The list of artists who've collaborated with them over the years is a who's who of the industry and their editions are collected by individuals, museums and libraries the world over.  You can find more about that here.

You may not be as familiar with two of their other divisions:  Their typecasting division, M & H Type, is the oldest and largest hot metal type foundry in the U.S. for letterpress printers.  They also have a non-profit called The Grabhorn Institute"to preserve and perpetuate the use of one of the last integrated typefoundry, letterpress printing, and bookbinding facilities and to guide it into the future."

We're proud to say that they've used many of our papers including Somerset, Arches, Lettra and Arturo.

If you're in San Francisco, stop by for a tour or to visit their gallery.  If you're not local you can check out a series of videos about them and their work.