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.”

New journals, just about ready to go out the door to Campbell Steele Gallery and Tokyo Pen Shop!

I’m drawing up a storm these days, tearing paper for album and journal pages from a big new shipment of paper, am about to order plates for new letterpress projects, and I can’t sew up books fast enough.

I’m also keeping track of lots of fellow printers and stationery mavens on Twitter who will be exhibiting at and attending the National Stationery Show this year. I’m making plans to exhibit next year, so will be attending this year’s show to scope out the setup and get a feel for the event!

Let’s just be clear: I was a major Twitter skeptic until relatively recently, but have come to really enjoy the community that’s out there, and have definitely seen concrete benefits for my biz…can’t complain about that!

Next week, I’m looking forward to sharing photos and details about a couple of collaborative projects in the works…one of which is particularly Mother’s Day appropriate. Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 9 – that’s just a week from this Sunday!

February, July, and September calendar images from the book of Belles Heures / All images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There’s an unbelievably fine level of detail and an unabashedly ornate and sumptuous approach to materials and design in these pages. The border decorations are intricate, careful, and lavish and the text is stunningly calligraphed. The inset miniature paintings (often in the neighborhood of 2″ x 3″ or smaller) are perfection and, while occasionally quotidian scenes, also depict stunningly violent and grotesque images of saints’ trials and martyrdom.

It’s only April, but I’m already on to calendar ideas for 2011. I’m drawing up a storm and I think I’ve got something fun in the works – and it’s definitely inspired by the illumination exhibit.

Image from Brooklyn Museum site / Walton Ford (American, b. 1960). The Far Shores of Scholarship, 2003. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper. Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery

And, last but not least, I’m getting excited to see this Walton Ford show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in the next couple of weeks! There are also some beautiful intaglio etchings on view on the gallery’s site. We saw a fantastic exhibit of his work 3 1/2 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum and ever since then I can’t get enough!

My dad is an incredible woodworker and, after many years without a functional shop, has gotten back up and running in the last few years. One of the major perks is that we now look like much classier, well-organized people; see: our kitchen shelves.

When my mom & dad came out for Charlotte’s birth, they hauled along the press wagon, a square stand of quarter sawn oak, with a Mission style open structure and marble base (for ballast).

My press, a Golding Official No. 4, made in 1915, is mounted to the wagon, which is on locking casters…which means the whole thing can move and pivot with relative ease.

The whole piece – press + wagon – fits neatly under one of the new shelves that Dad put up in our living room when he was here in January. Supplies and tools have a home now and it’s just a little too perfect.

Sewing in the sun this morning

Wendell Berry’s “How To Be a Poet” feels an awful lot like a description of how to do almost anything you love. Surprise, surprise that Mr. Berry gets it right once again.

Letterpress cards with handwritten text and a square of Japanese paper set in to a debossed square; accordion albums; Coptic stitch journals & photo albums

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working with these Japanese papers; they manage to be playful in their patterns, while also incredibly elegant and saturated with color. I realize the textures are hard to convey through a computer screen, but I’ve tried to include some very close detail shots with each piece so you can get a good sense of them. Honestly, I’m having too much fun with them and have a serious paper obsession going on.

It felt like it was time for some bright colors and new patterns, and I’m very proud of how well this new collection works together.

And, there’s a full wholesale line sheet including all of the new work available for retailers, as well!:

Enjoy!

This is a very fun interview with Fran Shea of Zeichen Press in Minnesota. My favorite part?: “Designing using this centuries-old method, alone – in the garage – in the winter… you sort of forget that you are making things that people will eventually see and buy.” Except for the garage part, I’m right there with you, Fran!

Fran and her partner in crime, Jen, work with a lot of handset type and images and their cards definitely tend toward the hilarious. Fran’s blog is a fun read, too, and will leave you wondering if this woman does anything *without* a sense of humor!

Snow on top of our window a/c this morning

Charlotte’s not the only thing growing like crazy around here! These are the basil seeds and hyacinth bulbs we planted last week, already poking out over the top of the soil.

And these are a few of the new letterpress cards and pieces I’ve put together this week using the new chiyogami papers. I’ll have lots to show off next week, once I get the rest of the new work with the new papers photographed.

Last, but not least, today would have been my Grandmother Maggie’s 87th birthday. She died 14 years ago and I still miss her every day. I like to think that she would be very proud of the work I’m doing and the little girl we’re raising. I have lots more to say about her, but that’s for another time.

Hart Crane’s “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” and “Candles” by Carl Dennis