Letterpress Maintenance Day

Erin Brophy and Amanda King sorting type.
Photo by Melanie Karlins.

This weekend, the Letterpress Studio held a maintenance day to work on cleaning up the presses and sprucing up the studio. It was a very productive day, with 12 volunteers pitching in to help. Check out more photos over on the Pyramid Letterpress blog!

2012 Letterpress Calendar for sale!

The 2012 Letterpress Calendar is for sale! See photos and purchase information on the Pyramid Letterpress blog!

2012 Letterpress Calendar - Almost ready!

The 2012 Pyramid Atlantic Calendar is almost ready.... We've got 9 of the 14 pages fully completed and 3 more half-way done. The completed calendars will be assumed and available for sale at the end of next week!

Check out preview photos over at the Pyramid Letterpress blog!

2012 Letterpress Calendar Sneak Peek!

The Letterpress Studio has been busy as Pyramid's letterpress printers have been working hard on the 2012 Letterpress Calendar!

Completed May page by Morgan Ward

We should have these calendars available for sale by the end of the month. Check out the Pyramid Letterpress blog for photos. Stay tuned for even more photos + purchase info!

Peace, Love and Rockets

Congratulations to our good friends, Kevin and Karisa, (A.K.A. Will Work for Good) for their letterpress printed album covers, featured in the exhibition Peace, Love, and Rockets, at the Center for Book Arts.
We love you guys. Awesome.
Watch the video of the work they made at Pyramid!

APHA's Chesapeake Chapter visit

Yesterday we were lucky to have the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Printing History Association join us for a papermaking workshop.
The American Printing History Association (APHA) is a membership organization that encourages the study of the history of printing and related arts and crafts, including calligraphy, typefounding, typography, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing.
It was especially fun to get to meet Jill Cypher, Ray Nichols, and Bill Roberts of Lead Graffiti in who are are real printing movers and shakers out in Newark, DE.
Hope to see some prints on the paper they made!

Visit to BookWorks

Gretchen and Steve hanging out in front of some awesome Hatch Show Prints.

This past weekend, several Pyramid-ers went down to Asheville, NC for the Ladies of Letterpress Conference.(Gretchen and I presented at the Community Printshop panel). Half the conference events took place at BookWorks, a print and book arts center.  I was blown away. Everything was so clean and organized and the space had a great open layout. See photos over at the Pyramid Letterpress blog!

Letterpress Birthday Card Fundraiser Sets for sale!

The Letterpress Birthday Card Fundraiser sets are now available for purchase online!

For photos of the sets and all the individual cards + instructions on how to purchase, go to our special Birthday Card Fundraiser page!

Letterpress fever!

The Letterpress Studio has been booked solid for about a month now. An army of Birthday Card fundraiser printers, brides-to-be, crafters prepping for fairs and newbies just getting their feet wet have kept our presses extremely busy!

See pics from all of the above over at the Pyramid Letterpress blog!

Birthday Card Fundraiser

At Pyramid's Birthday Celebration on April 9, we'll be unveiling sets of birthday cards for sale! The cards will be designed and printed by various members of the Pyramid letterpress community and the proceeds will go directly to help fund Pyramid's facilities and programs!

Here's a shot taken by Marty of the cards that have been printed so far:

For more photos, check out the previews posted over on the Pyramid Letterpress blog:

Birthday Card Fundraiser Preview #1

Birthday Card Fundraiser Preview #2

see what our intens have been up to!

For the past few weeks, our winter studio interns, Melissa Salazar and Anna Spelman, have been working on thank you notes to send out to all the wonderful people who support Pyramid Atlantic.

The project started in the paper studio, where Anna and Melissa, with the help of Maria, an intern from Swarthmore College, made paper from cotton rag. White cotton with a bit of black mixed in created a gray-blue paper the interns used for one of the thank you cards:

The girls also used white cotton rag to create a lovely thick white paper used in the rest of the cards. Different moulds and deckles created several different paper sizes, allowing for a good deal of variety in the shape and feel of the cards. After cutting the paper down to size, the interns started the letterpress process, setting type for 4 different cards.



After a long day of printing the interns had 4 styles of cards, which they went on to embellish with stitching and vellum accents.


We are very excited about how everything turned out. Keep an eye out in your mailbox...you just might be getting one of them!

Letterpress Clinic with the interns

Yesterday, I showed our new interns around the letterpress studio. We set some type and practiced printing on one of the Vandercooks.

Here's Melissa getting the hang of setting type:

And here's a cute Harry Potter themed valentine printed by Anna:

Can't wait to see what else they do during their internship!

And just a small plug: check out what else is happening in the letterpress studio over at our blog: www.pyramidletterpress.blogspot.com!

Sock it to me! Pyramid Atlantic Letterpress Blog!

Our Letterpress Associates, Julia, Melanie, and Leslie, have recently created a new blog devoted to all of the great letterpress action that goes on here.
Check it out!

PA Letterpress Calendar for sale!

UPDATE (11/17):  The calendars are sold out!! Thanks to everyone that participated and/or purchased one. Email me at letterpress@pyramid-atlantic.org if you'd like to be informed about similar projects in the future!

The 2011 PA Letterpress Calendars are finally available for purchase online at the Pyramid Atlantic website (sales page). The calendars are also available for purchase at ArtSpring, the Pyramid Atlantic Community Arts Store located at 821 Wayne Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910.

In case you didn't already know, the calendar was created by members of the PA letterpress community. Each page was designed and printed by a different artist on Pyramid's Vandercook presses. All proceeds from the calendar sales go directly to Pyramid.

Here are some fantastic photos of the calendar pages, taken by Alyson Hurt (she designed the January page):

And here's a fun little video taken by Bridget Stoyko while printing the second color of her March design:

And lastly, some photos of our calendar assembly session taken by Alyson, Erin Brophy (February) and me on our iphones:

Coming Soon: 2011 PA Letterpress Calendar!

For the second year in a row, we've been lucky enough to have dozen talented designers/printers willing to donate their time, sweat and tears to create the Pyramid Atlantic Letterpress Calendar. Each designer was given a month, paper size and the freedom to design their page however they wanted. It's been so exciting to see the finished pages as they begin to appear in the Letterpress Studio! Drop by and take a peek - and come to the Pyramid table at the Book Arts Fair to buy one!

Then and Now

Typesetter, 1947
When manual printing presses were the norm in newspaper offices and publishing houses, typesetters placed individual pieces of lead type into wooden frames to create the layout of each page. Typesetters still lay type on manual presses in high end printing shops that produce fine editions of books and broadsides.

photo from the Library of Congress

Typesetters, 2010
Steve Cole, volunteer and fine printer at Pyramid Atlantic.

Moira McCauley, Letterpress Associate at Pyramid Atlantic

Lock and Roll

Today I caught up with Julie Louie, one of our experts in the letterpress studio, while she was cranking away on some really cool invitations.
Watch her go!