Letterpressing
Posted on | June 2, 2010 | No Comments
Typography has taken over my life; or at least my week. Starting with last week’s Wordage post about Hatch Show Print, I’ve been immersed daily in letters and type. I’ve been drawing typefaces, working on type-based graphic designs, taking photos of album typography, and writing a column for Is Greater Than called Reconsidering the Ampersand.
In a sea of interesting typographical tidbits, one that stands out is that the craft of letterpressing remains largely unchanged from what Gutenberg was doing in the 15th century. In a time of instant and portable everything, it’s pretty amazing that this machine just keeps rolling along, century after century. Seems to fall into the “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” school of thought.
Here’s a short documentary on the art of the letterpress, featuring John Kristensen, proprietor of Firefly Letterpress in Massachusetts. He feels that his is a dying art, because no one wants to learn it. Hopefully we can do something about that.
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Tags: Firefly Letterpress > Gutenberg > letterpress > letters > Typography
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