The Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) Print Camp: letterpress printing

Other posts in the IPRC print camp series:
IPRC print camp: Mimeograph printing
IPRC print camp: Block printing and altered books

I attended a print camp at The Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, OR a few weeks ago that covered the basics of letterpress printing, mimeograph, altered books, and relief (block) printing. I've already written about the block printing and altered books portion of the two-day session, and so now, on to letterpress.

In fact, the entire first day of the session was devoted only to letterpress. If you know anything about the topic, this will make sense. It's not a simple process. Instead of a providing a convoluted explanation, I'll just send you on over to this video on the topic, set at the IPRC (unrelated to my visit), if you want to see it in action.

Letterpress is a natural fit for scribeomechanical types: it's tactile, ink-based, provides access to fascinating antique machinery, there's no electricity required, and of course, it's centered on a reverence for the printed word. The resulting type has a sharpness about it that you won't get any other way. However, you'd better have a good memory for facts, as letterpress terminology is vast. Also, there is an upside and a downside to the completely manual nature of setting type character by character into a composing stick and then tightening it down into a frame with a series of little blocks and keys: there is no CTRL-Z. There were several versions of the following design that featured characters set the wrong way.



Next post: mimeograph!