October is my favorite month. Yellow leaves are falling outside now and even here in Brooklyn, where the colors are beautiful but somewhat less than spectacular, the change of the seasons is palpable. Sunlight comes into our apartment late in the morning now and as soon as the day’s begun, it seems we have spun back around to darkness.

Matt & I had our first date on October 10 fourteen years ago. We were married ten Octobers later. And two Octobers after that Charlotte was born. October is home; it is the familiar, well-worn path, even with the momentous changes it brings. Squarely situated between summer’s swelter and winter’s bite, in October balance almost seems possible.

People chide Midwesterners for all their talk of weather, but there’s something beautiful about acknowledging the position of the earth on its axis and your place on that globe as it tips toward and away from the sun. Noticing the weather – and talking about it – may be the thing that always identifies me as a Midwesterner.

Working away in our new studio space, mixing ink, and checking registration

As of a week ago, I have studio space – complete with a large Vandercook No 4T press – about 2 blocks away from our apartment. I’ve been getting up very early to print and so I’m out in the neighborhood before much of anyone is up. Tired high school students descend onto the sidewalks in the lamplit dark, shuffling to buses. On Saturday morning the air had cooled significantly. The sun was just peeking up into the streets and made the yellow leaves that lined Prospect Place absolutely golden. I breathed deeply, and looked up at the leaves and the bright blue sky. When I reached the studio I mixed up my ink, turned on the press, put on workin’ music, put my head down, and printed. It seems October’s brought its promise of balance once again.

On that note, the newest collection of books in my Post-Marked series is available today. It’s entitled “Familiar Territory” and it’s all about the places I feel at home.

I know this press is meant to be ours because when I went out to meet it for the first time, it had its own Charlotte-in-residence. I saw a brilliant little brown spider and egg sacs galore on her web. Hundreds of tiny spiders were crawling out in to the world in bright sunlight. It was meant to be.

Charlotte #2
This press belonged to the inimitable Kim Merker and made its way to us via Tim Fay, one of the most dedicated printers I have the pleasure of knowing, who publishes The Wapsipinicon Almanac. It’s by luck of timing that the press became ours and we certainly intend to keep it working in the tradition of its previous operator, doing the very best work we can…and lots of it.

A few custom projects – one a birthday celebration book filled with letters to the client’s mother; another an illustrator’s portfolios and slipcases, and invitations for dear friends.

Informal botanical study three to four times a week at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Printing invitations at The Arm

I’ve been printing and designing invitations like a madwoman in between juggling one and sometimes two toddlers. Coming soon: studio space! Around the corner! Seriously!

Beach!

We just returned from a lovely wedding, followed by a luxuriously long week in Martha’s Vineyard. I had a chance to draw a bit and work on some hand lettering ideas that usually fall by the wayside (you’ll see them soon, I promise!).

My sweet dad, moving yet another press for me in Iowa! This one’s a Challenge MP-15 and I can’t wait to see it!

We have another wedding, and friends in town this weekend, then we’re spinning off to Iowa to celebrate my mom’s 60th (60!) birthday and see some of my recently acquired letterpress equipment in the flesh, as well as take some deep breaths under star-filled skies. We’ve been at a distant point on our orbit, and are looking forward to circling back in close to those people with whom it all started.

P.S. Matt’s been documenting our summer much better than I over here!
P.P.S. I’m sending out some fun letterpress snail mail when we get back from Iowa – email me your address if you’d like to receive a little mail!

Making good use of limited space: My press & shelving setup, on a particularly clean day about a year ago

All of my bookbinding work is done on a 3′ x 5′ table in the corner of our living room with basic tools and minimal equipment. My toolbox of thread, needles, knives, awls, bone folders, pencils, and beeswax sits next to stacks of book covers in various stages of completion, boxes stuffed with printed cards that need to be scored and/or packaged, a large box of invitation samples, not to mention the glue, tape, jars of pens, stacks of books whose endpapers are drying, and finished books that need to be photographed.

And that doesn’t even include what’s under the table…or the toddler who stands on the toolbox next to my table and helps me rearrange those piles 47 times a day.

A pretty average day on my work table

Needless to say, I’m working within some pretty tight confines with a business that continues to grow quite steadily day by day. It’s close, happy quarters, but we’re bursting at the seams. Something’s gotta give.

This past week, we had an opportunity to rent the empty main floor storefront in the building we’ve lived in for about 5 years. In addition to being the most convenient studio location ever, the space has a backyard and about 900 square feet of finished indoor space. For a family of 3 living in a sub-400 square foot apartment, the only appropriate response is to drool.

So, we got to work. We measured, we ran numbers, I inquired about the availability of various equipment, and learned about dimensions, logistics, weight, and safety. There was lots of interest from fellow printers in setting up a small co-op letterpress studio, which seemed like just the right path for our burgeoning little business – a great way to get me the setup I needed to work more efficiently, and also ensure that I wouldn’t work in isolation.

After a great deal of research (and getting lots of help from all kinds of wonderful fellow printers), it became clear that the best way to set up a shared studio was with cylinder presses which are relatively easy to use and understand and are safe, though scarce these days. When that fact surfaced, it was time to make some even more precise measurements and see whether it was feasible.

To make a long story short: even the smallest cylinder press would not fit through the front door of the potential space. Sure, the front plate glass window could be removed if we needed to get things in, but we’re talking about a building we don’t own ourselves and on which we would not have a long term lease. It would be careless to spend so much money, time, and energy to move huge pieces of equipment.

It was disappointing to learn that this wasn’t the space for us but I have to tell you that it was also a relief. When the right opportunity comes along, I have to believe we’ll know it and be ready for it and we’ll make something amazing happen. In some ways, I wish that time were now, but I think we have a little more to learn and grow before that’s a reality.

Tools, tools, tools

For now, it’s back to the living room grind, back to my basic and busy setup, living the dream day to day with Charlotte at my side and pushing the bounds of what we can do with what we have. It doesn’t feel glamorous, but it’s an awfully happy little set up. If you can ignore the daily bout of utter chaos around 3:30 or 4 when there are toys, books, paper, and scraps strewn around the entire apartment, it’s really pretty calm and wonderful. We’ll be ready for real chaos in the not so distant future, and that’s when we’ll make the next leap.

All of this potential for instant change right now reminded me once again that we *do*, in fact, have a great thing going. We’ve grown what we have quite organically, and that’s just what we want. Sure, big breaks are great, but legacies are built with careful, steady, hard work and a commitment to the things we believe in.

Thanks for supporting that sort of organic growth and our personal approach to work. This dream of a sustainable, profitable, creative, small family business is taking shape because of all the people who support us and work together in small ways to lay a foundation. Soon enough, it’ll be a living, breathing, visible building of its own and we’ll be ready for it.

Please stick with us. There’s so much more to come!

The burst of warm weather earlier this week (50! In February!) was a desperately needed reminder that spring really will come again and that the feeling of warm air on your face is, indeed, the tonic and near cure-all it’s always been. Similarly satisfying as the feeling of warm air on your face after a long winter is the feeling of completing a substantial project that began as a tiny seed in your mind’s eye.

On that note, I’ve just finished a new collection of three invitation designs and am proud to finally show them off.

Entwined suite, Signature suite, Leaves suite / All photos by Christopher Walker, Gotham Pixel

Each design has a slightly different feel and each takes advantage of the tactile quality of letterpress printing, layering type, images, and color in delicate and elegant ways. There is loads of information about the designs, options, and ordering on our weddings page, and I am always delighted to talk about paper and printing at length, so please be in touch if you have questions.

And – of course – we’ve been up to lots of other things, too! I’ve been cranking out new books using vintage postage stamps and have lots more to come, and we’ve been reading The Metropolitan Museum of Art ABCs, Numbers, Shapes, and Colors till we’re blue in the face, and I just finished reading Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. If you need a little inspiration, it’s a great read, no matter what sort of work you do.

Spring is, indeed, on its way in the next month or two. In the meantime, I think I’ll keep my energy up by drawing, printing, building Charlotte’s vocabulary while we walk all over Brooklyn, poring over design & lettering inspiration, and soaking up just how good we’ve got it.

P.S. If you need a great wrapping-up-winter song, I highly recommend Josh Ritter’s “Snow Is Gone“. It’ll shake you right out of any funk you may be in.

It’s absolutely redundant to say that I love the physical structure of books. If I didn’t love the structure, I wouldn’t be doing this work. That said, I have aspirations of creating books that beautifully and successfully blend text, imagery, and binding. That interest led me to The Fine Press Book Association and I became a member the moment I saw the letterpress printed cover of the Fall 2010 issue of their journal, Parenthesis.

My copy arrived Thursday and I’ve had it in my hands every moment I can since. There are wonderful reviews of fine press editions, as well as articles about process, technique, and about printers and binders and their background and inspiration. There is a wonderful review of Deep Wood Press’s incredible edition of Heart of Darkness and of Carolee Campbell’s edition of Nathaniel Tarn’s collection of poems, The Persephones (Ninja Press), featuring lushly textured leaves of domestic etch shaded with sumi ink layered with salt. Just the photos are breathtaking; I can only imagine the actual poems.

The moral of this little Saturday post: It’s important to keep feelers out for great inspiration all the time.

I’ve had the Anagram Press website in my bookmarks for years and have drooled over Chandler O’Leary’s imaginative, detailed letterpress and book work at length.

Chandler has just added a beautiful new piece to her great “Dead Feminists” series that she creates with Springtide Press. This new “Drill, Baby, Drill” piece is gorgeous, and a portion of the proceeds from its sale will go to Oceana, an organization helping the gulf oil spill.

The text in these pieces is so thoughtfully chosen and the imagery is beautiful. I’d invite you to look through the portfolio of work on her site and enjoy her illustrations and the intelligence that comes through in each piece.

The Harriet Tubman piece? Tugboat Thea? They’re gorgeous, fun, and poignant and appeal to all of my history-lovin’, fascinated-with-feminism, crazy-for-a-good-marriage-of-text-and-imagery tendencies!

Enjoy looking through Chandler’s work. It’s incredibly important to look at other people’s work as you do your own and I find Chandler’s downright inspiring.

I’ll be back with some new things next week, including perfect bound journals and a peek at some new printing projects, as well!

We spent last weekend visiting family in Iowa, and flew back late Monday afternoon…and turned right around to go to the National Stationery Show at The Javits Center in Manhattan Tuesday morning.

We’re kicking around exhibiting at the show next year and wanted to walk the aisles to see what it’s all about. It was invigorating to see all the other great work being done out there by people an awful lot like us and we so enjoyed scoping things out.

We had a great time, met tons of people and saw great work, including:
• BirdDog Press Allison Bozeman uses her grandmother’s feed sacks as inspiration for her lovely patterns and achieves beautiful geometric yet delicate results!
• Rifle Paper Co. Anna and Nathan Bond sell an unmistakable look. Anna’s illustrations and lettering are nostalgic, stylish, playful, and hip. Think Babar + Maira Kalman + 1956.
• Fugu Fugu Press Ken & Shino’s cards feature their own simple yet bold, smart illustrations. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity, though, they’re often printing multiple colors on each card and getting great overlapping effects!
• Rag & Bone Jason Thompson & Ilira Steinman’s company produces beautifully made books and it was a treat to meet this couple in person. I continue to be inspired by the business they’ve built and the quality of their work.
• Sapling Press Lisa Krowinski’s cards are minimal and brilliantly funny and she was showing a fabulous assortment of clean, smart, text-only designs. Plus, Lisa’s a total joy – what’s not to love?!

There was gobs more great work – check these folks out when you have a chance: Pistachio Press, Albertine Press, Flywheel Press, May Day Studio (Kelly makes fantastic books with her own papers, too!), Fine Day Press, Linda & Harriett, Red Oak Press and lots more that I’m sure I’ll remember as soon as I click “publish” on this post!

I talked with my mom after walking through the show and she was curious to know what we got out of it. It turns out that, as with all the shows she’s done and been to, we walked away with something very similar: a great sense of the current climate of fine, handmade paper goods and where our own work fits in to that spectrum.

I’m proud to say I’m part of an informal community of all of these hard workers and to also say that our work fits right in while remaining totally distinctive from anything else out there.

From Joel Lipman’s “Origins of Poetry”

P.S. There’s also great coverage of the show and heaps of great photos over on Oh So Beautiful Paper!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to announce a project that my own mom and I are working on together. I’ve wanted to pair up with my mom on something for a while and the first of what I’m sure will be many projects is in the works!

My mom just completed a series of drawings of spring ephemerals which I am having made in to plates and will be printing as sets of note cards! You can read a little more about her inspiration on her own blog and I will show them off once the plates arrive and I have a chance to do a few test runs.

A few of the drawings – Meadow Rue, Violet, Bleeding Heart

Enjoy the weekend and remember to thank your mom, if you possibly can. My mom makes my life great every single day – and not just by closing every phone call exclaiming, “I love you, Maggie Campbell!”…although that doesn’t hurt!

Enjoy Julia Kasdorf’s beautiful “What I Learned from my Mother”.

Here’s an itsy bitsy sneak peek at the drawing-in-progress for one layer of next year’s calendar. I’m excited about how the ideas are making their way out of my head and on to the page!

And I want to leave you with a little Shaker philosophy to keep us on the right track as we go through our days: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”