We’re just doing the occasional post as this blogger (with the Boxcar Baby in tow) is traveling to warm weather places to visit with family. We realized we hadn’t posted pics of the Boxcar Baby lately….he has been spotted riding a big wheel around the offices, and also eating oranges while standing on top of the Boxcar Dada’s desk. Childhood sure looks fun….

This letterpress business card was just a pleasure to print and photograph (we took about 30 pictures total - we couldn’t help ourselves!). The design was perfect for (3 color!) letterpress….we love the colors and the little accent of red. The back was flat printed in two colors. Vibrant and just a pleasure to hold. Printed for Jodi Boss of In Any Event.

Harold spent a few hours downstairs in the letterpress shop today taking some really great atmospheric photos of our presses and our printers. Nothing looks better to us than bright ink on a Heidelberg Windmill under dramatic lighting conditions! We’ll be posting more pictures from our shop’s photo shoot to Boxcar’s flickr account in the next week or so. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving! Today we’re being grateful for the creation of letterpress and cast iron, and also for you, all of our awesome letterpress-loving customers. We’ll be thinking of you all as we eat our tofurkeys! (By the way, our offices are closed Nov. 27, Thursday, and Nov. 28, Friday).

We love it when we get to letterpress cool things for Syracuse folks, so we were so excited to letterpress up these cards for the Everson Museum, our local art museum. They’re designed by the fabulous folks at Eric Mower & Associates, whose designers are just bright baubles of joy to work with. The cards are available for purchase via the Everson. Since, over the weekend, Boxcar Press & Syracuse finally got its first substantial snow fall (hooray!), it seemed the perfect time to post pictures of these letterpress holiday cards that make us feel all warm and cozy.

Boxcar Press subsidized a CSA organic farm subscription for Boxcar employees this year. It was an amazing experience (and really yummy too!), and we loved feeling connected to our community in this very real way. The growing season in CNY finally ended, and so our 20 weeks of organic vegetable delivery came to an end. Carrie, our officer manager who found a way to make our CSA dream work, has these parting thoughts.

“Besides yummy veggies and fruits, what did Boxcar Press take away from our first annual CSA participation? This is the question I asked myself more than once over the past 20 week growing season. Sure, the veggies are good, but was it worth the hard work organizing, maintaining, safeguarding and cooking 20 shares of veggies (well, we each cooked our own shares, but it was still lots more cooking than I’m used to!)? The short answer is a resounding yes!”

“Being involved with the CSA was a direct opportunity for Boxcar Press to become involved in our local environment. It allowed us to use our spending power to support local farms that practice farming techniques which take a stewardship of our land and create hope for a safe planet for our children and their children, too. For some of us, it introduced us to vegetables we had never experienced before and for others it reminded us of the wonders of nature and the bounty our very own upstate New York land can provide. Best of all, it allowed Boxcar Press to enrich the community by providing Syracuse with its first every downtown POD (Point of Delivery), which made veggie pickups convenient enough to attract 13 new CSA members this year! When it is all said and done, bringing goodness to many is what we’re all about. Now go eat your veggies! (P.S. If anyone out there wants to know how to organize something like this, I’d be happy to share)”

We were excited to see the Boxcar Base spotted in some cool places in the blog world lately:
*at Heart Fish, who used our base and plates in a letterpress class she’s taking (the photo on this post is from Heart Fish’s blog — a nice picture of our printing plates in action!)
*check out Marin Press, who used our base and plates to print invitations to “A Most Excellent Midwinter’s Feast,” hosted by the Ottawa Chapter of Canadian Organic Growers to promote their Growing Up Organic Project (how cool is that!);
*Lead Graffiti, who used our plates to letterpress certificates for the Art Directors Club of New York Grandmasters Award ceremony.
Thanks to you all for the Boxcar shout outs! Go letterpress!

We love edge painting (by hand) our letterpress printing! Especially in really bright, vibrant colors. Once you start looking at enough edge painting pieces, paper just looks naked without its edges all gussied up in color. The design and color dreaming of this job comes from Pickett’s Press. Kate @ Pickett’s Press was sweet enough to send one her fabulous ribboned boxes too, so we can see how great a presentation she’s created for the notecards and stationery that we letterpress printed for her.

Job Title: Letterpress printer

Describe what you do at Boxcar Press in 10 words: Operate wonderful, majestic, finicky, retro Heidelberg letterpress glory and other hats.

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Thanks to Carol, our operations manager, for hosting! It was the perfect fall day for family & friends….