Category: Letterpress

I’ve been shopping at Powell’s City of Books for my entire life, and as such, maintain a complicated, sometimes fretful relationship with the enormous bookstore not unlike relationships I might carry on with a human, full of bluster and happy times and occasionally anger. In the way of a blunted, old friendship, sometimes I take for granted the gems that still can be found.

My goal was to find a good edition of Plato’s Republic, but I was in, oh, what you might call the Plato section; this being Powell’s, reputed to be the largest bookstore in the free world, you could probably build an inhabitable structure out of their selection of Platonic texts. Tucked into the rows somewhere, which, by dint of the astronomical number of volumes Powell’s holds and the rather unassuming dun brown color of the spine, was an adorable copy of Plato’s Symposium or Supper from the Nonesuch Press, from 1924.

I wanted a piece in my stationery arsenal to bridge the gap between business cards and note cards. I get asked a lot at social events what my site was called again? How do you spell “Lyza”? It is my hope that these new cards give an idea of what interests me and how to find me.

In the end, I have about 50 first-rate cards and about 100 acceptable ones. I considered numbering the run of 50, but that seemed a touch pompous. Want one?

Sometimes the grandest of efforts have somewhat deflated outcomes. Take, for example, my grandly conceived, labor intensive, engineering miracle of a holiday ornament project this year. I decided I wanted to make something interactive, something that had a kinetic three-dimensional quality, something that could involve letterpress. Thus, after twenty or thirty hours of slicing and [...]

My mother gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching a few years back that was, rather intriguingly, a rendition crafted by Ursula K. LeGuin. I was taken with it. Of late, I have been having deeper thoughts about the meaning of leadership and the empowerment of those lead and found that the 17th [...]

I needed to say I was sorry to someone important, so I was inspired to make these cards. Flexible, relevant cards that I imagine I’ll use a lot. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e and 48pt. Excelsior Script Bold. The challenge here was setting the ruled lines, which I found in a package of [...]

I made these cards for someone very special to me. I printed 50 but only made eight hand-drawn (colored pencil) finished cards. Set in 18pt. Caslon Old Style 337e. Unfortunately I have no accents; it should really read “embellit le desért”.

Last night was our first local autumnal rainstorm, and it got dark early thanks to the dastardly end of daylight savings time. At 6:30 or so in the evening, right after my friend Mike arrived to study verilog with Mr. Pencil, our electricity went kaput. I had just started getting ready to redistribute some type [...]

One I am trying to formulate a logotype for my private press (that is, a logo for the stuff I print). I’m relatively set on the name “Pencilhaven”, and I want to create something visual that involves letterforms, most likely “P” and “H.” I’m getting close. Believe it or not this represents about four hours [...]

I obtained some transparent white ink today. I had had this brilliant idea that I’d print thank-you cards in the blind (that is, with no ink whatsoever) but even when I was doing a blunt-force amount of impression it just wasn’t enough, so I printed them tonight using a mix of transparent white plus just [...]

I recently completed my first full-fledged project on my home letterpress setup. I made a greeting card with an excerpt from Virgil’s Aeneid. On the inside of the card is a translation of same excerpt, an homage to translator Robert Fagles, who died recently. The text is from book VI of the epic poem, where [...]