A while back we printed these cool little letterpress cards designed by Rebecca Ashby of The Pink Orange. They’re small, business card size, with crisp black ink on white. They are the perfect the little pick-me-up to give or to receive. They come paired with tiny envelopes in rainbow colors and we find them quite charming.

The shop at Boxcar Press was surprised by the appearance of emerging photographer Jasper Kyle when he unexpectedly chased after his father (who needed to visit our Shipping & Receiving area). Once among the busy letterpress presses, he turned to his Fisher Price R7315 which he had previously been using to photograph the hallway ceiling. He first turned his attention to our Heidelberg KSBA, which was in the middle of a 3 color run of 6,000 cards. Bob frames the composition as he measures his press sheet for register.

Then he noticed Carrie pulling some prints on the Vandercook. This setting, as the Vandercook prepares to pull a print, resulted in a dynamic, powerful photograph through the lens of a three year old (below).


Before heading out the door, Jasper specifically requested to photograph a “dirty stinky press,” one “with oil on top.” He showed us what he was talking about: a Heidelberg Windmill. After noticing how dirty each one was, he settled on Bill’s press as the dirtiest—inspiration for another bold composition.


We were honored to be the focus of Jasper Kyle’s recent photo shoot and we hope that you enjoy the artistry of his work. Jasper is available for wedding photography, event photography, printing press photography, ceiling photography, blurry carpet photography, and calligraphy. Please contact Boxcar Press for more information.

Receiving awesome letterpress samples from our platemaking customers never stops being fun for us. These come from Officiana Briani in Raleigh, North Carolina where Brian Allen brings over 30 years of work in the field of typography to his love for letterpress. Brian tells us that his primary press is a Swiss-made Gietz, approximately 12×18 inches, unknown model, unknown date of manufacture, likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s – a sweet press, with adjustable roller height, considered one of the best hand-fed platen press ever made. He uses a Boxcar Base and KF152 photopolymer plates, except for those occasions where he turns to handset and wood type.

In addition to past work as a typesetter, calligrapher, digital typeface production worker and letterpress printer, Brian loves to teach the letterpress craft. “Teaching letterpress is a very important part of my mission, sharing my love of letterforms, etc. Most students are young women, but all are people seeking balance and to regain a sense of touch in their lives. Fewer than half of the students have thoughts of printing themselves, the rest just want to see what it’s all about and get their hands inky! I share my 30 years of knowledge of type and letterforms, let students look through my large library and soak in the camaraderie with other students who have felt alone in their passion for handcraft but have found a home at my studio. I love to emphasize finding the extraordinary (lovely letterforms) in the ordinary (a lowly trade). Words and their expression still matter in my world.”

Brian also has a really cool Albion handpress that he eventually plans to use to print posters, but currently uses for demonstrations when visitors come by the studio so they can print their own copy of a keepsake to remember their visit to Officiana Briani. Brian says, “It entrances and seduces people into the magic of communicating with letterpress! The press is an Improved Albion 18×24 from the 1850s, made in London. It’s a crude/elemental machine, but symbolizes much – the arguments over who we were to be as a country were printed on a wooden handpress, one lever pull at a time, just as our single vote makes a difference in the aggregate. The most refined thoughts of the Enlightenment were given physical form with a handpress, and I use mine to emphasize to young people that an individual’s thoughts and actions matter, can be given form. Truly the power of the press!”

Brian’s career has been a true evolution that has led him through three decades of work with typography and even led to his personal handwriting being developed into the Microsoft font Segoe Script, for which he is listed as co-inventor on the patent. He tells us that he found his path “accidentally, but inevitably by working first as a typesetter in Boston and New York in 1975-79, taking calligraphy classes and reading the history of printing and typography. In 1982 Sumner Stone hired me at Autologic, Inc. in Southern California, to work in the pre-desktop world of digital type. Autologic made 700 dpi typesetting machines for the newspaper industry. We used the German IKARUS software to digitize outlines of alphabets, which were converted to run-length encoded bitmaps.”

After a time, Brian found himself at Imagen Corp. making type in a proprietary digital format for before moving to IBM to make fonts in the Folio F3 format, then PostScript Type 1 followed by TrueType formats. During this time, he opened his first letterpress shop as a part time venture, before leaving IBM to make letterpress his full time career. Eventually he closed his shop and returned to font production before finally returning to letterpress in 2005 when he moved to Raleigh and set up shop with Officiana Briani.

According to Brian, “The 1980s/early ‘90s was a very exciting time to be involved with fonts as the desktop revolution happened…It is quite amazing to see how many “civilians” know what a font is now. I was a part of the “font wars” in the late 1980s – the format competition between Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft, with Type 1 and True Type. Now of course, we have the blend of Open Type. The font wars are over. What comes next?”

We fell in love with edge painting a year or two ago — it’s such a cool way to add a second or third color to a printed piece, and you can still pantone match the edge color (we mix edge-painting inks by hand, and then apply by hand too). We flat printed these invitations for Talbots announcing their Spring 2009 collection, and then we did the edge painting too — we love the BRIGHT PINK edge painting they chose. They added the embossed pattern on their end. Printed on our cotton paper.

Go letterpress love! Congrats to Syracuse Street Press for this great write-up in Design*Sponge. We loved seeing Sycamore’s beautiful home interior, and their beautiful Vandercook, and their beautiful printing, and (gasp!) their beautiful Boxcar Base! We’re in Design*Sponge (kind of) — hooray! See more of Sycamore Street Press’ letterpress magic at their web site: http://www.sycamorestreetpress.com/. (photo from design*sponge)

Thanks to Boxcar Press’s Cathy Smith for finding this gem of a book cover.

From One Hot Summer by Eve Gladstone. Copyright 1988, Harlequin Books.

I only wish Jenna was printing on her Golding Jobber on page 124 when we read: “She found a cry of resistance welling up in her throat, but as he [censored by Debbie], [censored by Debbie], something happened that changed it, turned the sound into a moan of sheer, unexpected joy.”

Compare Dave Tribby’s excellent list of letterpress resources today with the same list in 1995. It’s amazing how much the online letterpress community has blossomed. Even more amazing: that Dave has been updating this resource since 1994 (pre-Internet Explorer, pre-Netscape, from the era when you would use Mosaic to access the web). Way to go Dave!