Letterpress sure can be pretty, but sometimes there’s a need for things that are more than pretty right now. To be pretty + meaningful. It is SO inspiring to see good political letterpress being made right now. We fell in love with a previous broadside collaboration by Jessica Spring of Springtide Press & Chandler O’Leary of Anagram Press back around election time, so we were thrilled that these letterpress masterminds are developing a broadside series called (only half jokingly) the Dead Feminists Set. Their latest broadside, “Victory Garden,” features a lovely quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. It was letterpress printed from hand-lettered typography on 100% rag recycled paper using 94FL plates and the Boxcar Base. Chandler writes, “This broadside was kind of a monster for registration, so that grid on the base really came in handy.” More broadsides are in development too. Hooray! The previous drop-dead gorgeous broadside, “Come, Come My Conservative Friend,” sold out in just a few short weeks, and within 2 days of publication, Victory Garden has already sold 2/3 of the edition. What a letterpress success story. Victory Garden has edition of 76 and is priced at $30. Visit the Anagram Press web site to order NOW before the broadside sells out! Great work, Jessica & Chandler!

We spotted Boxcar Press recently in:

*The Creativity Room (very cute calling cards for a big-sister-to-be)
*a sweet shout-out from Sycamore Press (we’re thrilled to be in their list of businesses that earned their loyalty, along with Green Paper Company and a cafe with the best veggie burgers in the world — cool!).

Thanks, letterpress friends!

We were excited to see the Boxcar Base spotted in some cool places in the blog world lately:
*at Heart Fish, who used our base and plates in a letterpress class she’s taking (the photo on this post is from Heart Fish’s blog — a nice picture of our printing plates in action!)
*check out Marin Press, who used our base and plates to print invitations to “A Most Excellent Midwinter’s Feast,” hosted by the Ottawa Chapter of Canadian Organic Growers to promote their Growing Up Organic Project (how cool is that!);
*Lead Graffiti, who used our plates to letterpress certificates for the Art Directors Club of New York Grandmasters Award ceremony.
Thanks to you all for the Boxcar shout outs! Go letterpress!

Some nice pics of the Boxcar Base + plates in letterpress action at OMG Posters in a post about Brendan Monroe’s really cool new letterpress art print. You can see Brendan’s other letterpress prints here. (This spotting was sent in by Boxcar’s original employee Ben Whitla.) (Photo is from OMG Poster’s blog post)

Letterpress sure makes beautiful wedding invitations — but we love when letterpress uses its cast iron muscle for the political realm too. We fell in love with this broadside when browsing on Springtide Press’s web site, and we were super excited to learn that our Boxcar Base and Boxcar plates helped out in the printing. It features a quote from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, champion of women’s voting and civil rights. Here is what Jessica from Springtide Press had to say about the letterpress printing:
“Boxcar base and plates and platemaker and adhesive all done here! Chandler O’Leary is the talent portion of the project–she did all the handlettering then it was scanned and printed. We used 94FL plates on the largest base in my Vandercook Universal 1. The file was output as one plate and we used the “puzzle piece” technique to print in two colors. The paper is a fairly new recycled sheet made from 100% cotton rag.”

If you need more reasons to vote, check out Good Magazine’s 1,565 reasons to vote in their latest issue.

We were thrilled to see letterpress printing on the COVER of this month’s Real Simple, as well more letterpress inside the issue in a multi-spread page story about giving thanks. We got even more excited when we learned that our friends at Sesame Letterpress did the printing (with the help of Boxcar plates & the Boxcar Press). What great letterpress love! We asked Breck Hostetter to give us the scoop about printing for Real Simple, and this is what she told us:

“We used Boxcar’s K95 plates mounted on our Boxcar base (we’ve had this for so long that I don’t remember which one it is). We had a couple weeks to plan for the project and select the papers and ink color but the artwork came at the last minute. Real Simple provided us with the text and we used our own borders to design the cards. The magazine wanted a mix of cards with and without borders to consider when doing the photo shoot. So we printed each card with the border and text on a couple different papers and then we removed the plate from the base, cut the border off the plate and printed the plate with just the text on the papers. Thanks to the adhesive backed polymer plates, this was doable. We had to rely on Boxcar’s dependable 1 day turn around processing and UPS’s overnight shipping. We printed everything on our Golding Jobber. We have a Vandercook and Heidelberg but we do 95% of our jobs on the Golding and have just increased our fleet to include a couple Golding Pearls….”

Great work, Sesame Letterpress! The printing looks awesome - crisp, clear, deep, and gorgeous.

One of Boxcar’s platemaking customers, Plum Blossom Press, had this sweet article in South Shore Weekly featuring their new letterpress business. We always love when letterpress gets into the mainstream media. Go letterpress!

This postcard is honestly one of the prettiest things we’ve ever found in our mailbox….It's such a great example of why letterpress is the best printing method ever. Designed and letterpress printed by Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press . For these postcards, Chandler used the Boxcar Base and our 94FL plates. She writes, "I've been using Boxcar plates for 5 years now, and I love them—and the Base is a life-saver for crazy registration!" Thanks, Chandler! Please keep us on your mailing list!

Go letterpress love! Congrats to Syracuse Street Press for this great write-up in Design*Sponge. We loved seeing Sycamore’s beautiful home interior, and their beautiful Vandercook, and their beautiful printing, and (gasp!) their beautiful Boxcar Base! We’re in Design*Sponge (kind of) — hooray! See more of Sycamore Street Press’ letterpress magic at their web site: http://www.sycamorestreetpress.com/. (photo from design*sponge)