Letterpress

Dear Mom,

I had the pleasure and experience of learning what it was like back in the day when newspapers and publishers printed by setting type on a letterpress. You have to put the type upside down and backwards in order for it to come out the right way on the paper. I was pretty quick at it and figured I may have been a typesetter in a previous life. Being a writer, it has to start from somewhere.

My good friends (and writers) Bob and Carole have this letterpress set up in the basement of their home. They’re involved in a letterpress organization and continue to keep the small press alive.

Carole finally decided to start a blog—Lasting Impressions—where she talks first hand about her experience growing up as the daughter of a letterpress man and continuing the legacy. Bob has a book out, Recasting a Craft: St. Louis Typefounders Respond to Industrialization by Robert A. Mullen, published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Who would ever think there could be so many fonts that you can actually touch rather than pick on your computer screen? I’m always encouraged to come and print something but I get overwhelmed with the choices. I need to just get over it and do it because it was so much fun. Hmmm, but what to print?