blackbird letterpress

Rekindling my first love of letterpress type: lead type. Over 20 years ago flew with me to Illinois to bring a whole bunch of type back to Louisiana. The type grew to more type plus image cuts from New Iberia, LA. As I’m preparing for the big move to North Carolina this summer, we’ve started some big long overdue type projects.

1) I donated a lot to Nichols state university via to their budding letterpress space in the printmaking studio
2) distributing type that’s been set in galleys for a loonnngggg time
3) pulling all spacers out of type drawers and organizing them into bins (thx for the never ending letterpress inspiration for so many things)
4) moving 10 fonts of type into other drawers BECAUSE all the Caslon I have is in drawers in a homemade cabinet that don’t fit the cabinets I’m keeping - moving the type either by hand or with this vacuum I bought that has a hepa filter and museums use that told me about. Works great just really loud. We put window screen over the hose. And yeah I’m keeping some 6pt and some 8pt cuz yeah I’m keeping it…
** note: no cabinets are being refinished, old drawers are being reused and dusted out plus cleaning out 🐁 💩, drawers are all mixed and don’t match each other, but it works!!
5) finally I mean finally we’re proofing all image cuts and putting the proofs in a binder so I actually know what I have (it took 23 years to do this…..)

If you’re a letterpress peep that can use these Hamilton drawers with the tall front (I don’t know appropriate term for them) give a shout, you can have them. They may only be semi-clean….

Tedious work…. But is that an ironic statement since most of this is lead type? 🤪☺️ or maybe it depends on your patience level with lead type.

When we move and you’re in the area of western NC (or if you’re coming to - cuz we’ll be close) reach out, come visit, come print, whatever, they’ll be space and room.