wood type alphabet
I spent a cozy afternoon yesterday at the SF Center for the Book and printed a wood type alphabet to scan for design projects.
MERRY!
Got my holiday letterpressing done tonight!
emperor norton
letterpress project #4, Emperor Norton I, bay bridge visionary and a damn great san franciscan, with apocryphal canine companions bummer and lazarus.
>>a bit more about norton in an earlier post of mine<<
i printed norton on crane’s lettra paper. the texture is amazing!
Filed under illustration, letterpress, oddities, san francisco | Comments Off on emperor nortonSTARS
i love wood type! so much character. all the swirling galaxies and nebulae in each letter.
falling
letterpress project #3, a wood type poster in two colors. the text is from an uncommonly charming article in the sf chronicle i saved a few years ago on the perseids. meteor-watching tip #5: take someone with whom you like to sit in the dark.
i found a pair of little lead owls in one of the type drawers to punctuate my sentence:
one for sorrow
second letterpress workshop project — an old, creepy nursery rhyme on using crows for divination (with special guest star, the devil). i looked and looked for a bad little black bird to set with the rest of the type. there were hella owls, cute sparrows, some turkeys, a crane, and even a pair of seagulls wearing eyepatches and striped sweaters (?!!). i ended up having to paint one on each print instead.
behold, the magic of letterpress:
i’m bad. like jesse james.
i’m taking a letterpress workshop at the san francisco center for the book. the first project — a john lee hooker quote. it went really well! and it gave me happy art school memories. next week we are setting a broadside with 5-10 lines of poetry. if i continue with the BAD theme, i may do keats: “give me women, wine, and snuff / until i cry out, ‘hold, enough!'”
