Here are some photos from my recent letterpress printing marathon. 8 straight hours of typesetting and printing to make covers and title/colophon pages for my new handmade photobooks. The interior pages with the photographs will be inkjet printed.
It’s an amazing experience to print this way and it gives you an appreciation for the way books were produced in the past. My photographic process is digital so I don’t use a darkroom. This is a way for me to get my hands dirty.
I’m hoping to have the books ready in the next few weeks.
Lead type and a mockup of the cover I was working on. Each compartment in the tray contains a particular letter or number.
A drawer of type. This is one size of one typeface in a California Job Case which is a particular layout of the characters.
The Vandercook press with type locked up for printing the cover page.
Another view of the press with drawers of type in the background.
It’s nice to have company when you’re printing.
In the center is a decent sized chunk of type on a composing stick. The composing stick holds the type during typesetting so that each line of text is the same length.
Type locked up for printing the title/colophon page.
She wanted to help.
A stack of finished covers.
Facebook Page
twitter.com/noahbeil
Subscribe to my blog feed
2 Comments
That looks like a sweet old Vandercook I remember from my undergrad days. Ooh to smell that luscious ink again instead of the sterile inkjet prints I am doing now.
Hi Noah. Thanks for posting some info on how to make a book. I am thinking of making one too for myself too. I see some printing house still using Letterpress here in Manila.