This past weekend we held our traditional Earth Day Clean-Up, rounding up the troops to spend a bit of time cleaning up the area around our building in downtown Syracuse and the local neighborhood. Armed with sunny skies, brooms and trash bags, the crew was off and cleaning! Nothing says spring like a little spring cleaning. Big thanks to our youngest helpers, Francesa and Max, for spending the day with us and making this year’s Earth Day Clean-Up so much fun.
We hope you enjoy this new movie of Boxcar Press’s printshop, beautifully filmed and edited last week by Daylight Blue Media. Music is by local composer Marc Mellits.
Elizabeth and Matthew were professional dancers in New York when good ol’ letterpress twirled into their lives. These days, after numerous hours in their Boulder, Colorado studio Sweet Letter Press, they do find time to dance together in their kitchen. We’ve got a lot of love for husband and wife teams. A lot of love surrounds this duo – to each other and to their work.
How did you two first get into letterpress?
Matthew and I got into the stationery business when we decided to make our own invitations for our wedding in October 2006. Since I was a designer and he was an illustrator, we ï¬gured we could do a good job ourselves. When it came time to decide how the invitations should be printed, we fell in love with letterpress printing while looking at samples at Village Invites in Midtown NYC. It was a little out of our budget, but we remained very attracted to this form of printing long after the wedding. When we moved to Colorado, we decided to learn about letterpress and found a couple of generous older printers who offered to share their knowledge. On one of their presses, we printed our ï¬rst professional wedding job for a very satisï¬ed client in February 2008, and then we acquired our own studio and press in the summer of 2008.
What was your very first press?
Our very first press was a table top Craftsman. It only took 1 or 2 uses before we decided it was by no means enough and we promptly got it on Briarpress. Our first “real” press, which is still our current workhorse, is a C&P Old Style, 10×15.
What medium do you usually print (lead/wood type, photopolymer, lino, etc.)?
Photopolymer with the Boxcar base system.
What’s your process from sketch to press?
Usually new ideas come to us over morning coffee. We discuss a concept and then Matthew gets to work drawing ideas. Once we have all the original pieces we need, I scan his pencil drawings, convert them to vector art and put together the completed design in Illustrator. We then send the files off to Boxcar where they are magically converted into plates.
What other print shops do you admire?
We admire the work of Bella Figura* for their beautifully classic designs and impeccable printing. On the more whimsical side, we love Old School Stationers and Maginating Letterpress and Design. And of course, Studio on Fire for always pushing the envelope with printing techniques and styles. Their blog is always a great source of inspiration.
Who or what inspires you the most?
We find a lot of inspiration in nature – Colorado is full of amazing wild flowers, trees, mountains etc. Also vintage poster art, textiles and photography. Fabulous design in any medium.
What are your favorite things/items from Boxcar Press?
Love that they recycle plates!
Any neat tricks you can share?
Using the Boxcar system, many a typo can be fixed with a scalpel and a loop.
What are you looking forward to?
We are working to premiere a new line this May which should be fun. Also, we’ve taken on our biggest project yet that has us pretty ecstatic – a baby due this summer! Can’t wait to design the birth announcements!
What was the experience like for you at NSS last year?
NSS is a lot of work. 2010 was no exception, but we met a lot of great people and picked up some new stores.
For more from Sweet Letter Press, visit their etsy shop and check out more photos on flickr. Congratulations on the little one, Elizabeth and Matthew! No doubt the baby announcements will be fantastic.
{Photos by Sullivan Studios.}
*Bella Figura is a part of Boxcar Press.
We recently contributed pro bono printing to a really great cause supporting the nearby Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Designed by our good friend Tara Hogan of Ink + Wit, we were honored to be a part of this great collaboration.
Tara shares, “I first met Jenny Brown, founder of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in 2008 at the Bust Holiday Craftacular in Manhattan. Anyone that knows Jenny will tell you she loves herself some craft fairs! Jenny stopped by my booth not knowing that I was devoted to yoga nor did I know she was a yogi herself and animal lover. But, we quickly clicked and found out we share the same interests. I had been thinking about working with a farm sanctuary for a while to help raise money for the animals. At that time, Jenny and the farm had a goal to build a separate medical facility to operate and treat the animals. They had been working in very small quarters for some time.
I came up with an idea to design a limited edition letterpress print for them. Printed by Pistachio Press, 50 prints were given to the farm for full profit and the rest sold by INK+WIT with 5% donated to the farm. WFAS also made the design into an organic cotton t-shirt with 100% profit donated.
WFAS has since built their medical facility made possible by the donations of many giving people. They continue to support the animals and hold various event with artists like Moby, Chrissie Hynd, and many more. They hold jamborees and wonderful opportunities to visit and help out on the farm. They have my heart and then some. Recently, I was asked by Jenny to take the existing print and shirt design and create a letterpress folded note card they could mail to their donors. Boxcar Press generously donated their time and energy to print the card and they turned out beautiful. Thank you Boxcar for helping a very great cause so close to my heart!”
Thank you, Tara, for allowing us to be a part of this great project. We admire everything Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary is doing and are happy to do our part to help out!
By now you’ve probably heard about the open studio event we’re throwing this Saturday, December 11. We hope you have and we hope you’re planning to attend! We’ll have tours of our newly expanded print shop, printing demos, refreshments, giveaways, goodies and fun activities for kids, and loads of letterpress fun. You don’t want to miss it. We’ll see you on Saturday between 10am and 4pm. The Boxcar Press Open Studio is on!
This fall Boxcar Press got a lot larger and moved into some new digs. Our expansion (17 letterpresses, 55 employees, 24,000 square feet) makes us one of the largest letterpress shops in the country. One thing that hasn’t changed – we still have an insane attention to detail, an overbearing enthusiasm for letterpress, and the same old mushy hearts. Come visit us this Saturday and let us show you around!
This fall Boxcar Press got a lot larger and moved into some new digs. Our expansion (17 letterpresses, 55 employees, 24,000 square feet) makes us one of the largest letterpress shops in the country. One thing that hasn’t changed – we still have an insane attention to detail, an overbearing enthusiasm for letterpress, and the same old mushy hearts. Take a look around our Syracuse, New York print shop and if you end up in our neck of the woods, come out and see us sometime.
Once upon a time, Shelley Barandes was working as an architect, but her love for paper couldn’t keep her away from being devoted to letterpress. Albertine Press started out as a simple custom design and print studio and has bloomed to include a vast collection of fine stationery. Located in Somerville, Massachusetts, their work can be seen in more than twenty states nationwide and Canada, and counting.
{Photo by Melissa Coe.}
How did you first get into letterpress?
I studied printmaking in college (while an architecture major) and came back to it after several years working at architecture firms. When I moved back to New York, I was turned on to the Center for Book Arts by a friend. That, as they say, was the beginning of the end.
What was your very first press?
I learned on a Vandercook SP15 and a Craftsman 8×12 platen press (neither owned by me). I bought two tabletops before finding my very own Vandercook #4 and a C&P 10×15, both of which we use nearly every day.
{Photo by Melissa Coe.}
What medium do you usually print (lead/wood type, photopolymer, lino, etc.)?
Primarily polymer plates, but we have a small collection of lead and wood type that we break out for special projects as well as the occasional workshops.
What’s your process from sketch to press?
Pretty much exactly that. I always have a Moleskine with me (I prefer the gridded style) for notes and sketches. I move on to nicer papers or tracing papers to clean up drawings before scanning them in. Final drawing touch-ups and most typography happens on the Mac, along with all color separations.
{Photo by Albertine Press.}
What other print shops do you admire?
The commercial work done by Studio on Fire is pretty mind-blowing. I wish I had the time and resources to experiment with all of the techniques they use. I also really love the peaceful simplicity of Rebecca’s designs for Moontree Letterpress in Brooklyn. Firefly Press here in Boston does exclusively hand-set and linotype projects and their work is impeccable.
{Photo by Melissa Coe.}
Who or what inspires you the most?
I find inspiration everywhere – patterns I see in the sidewalk, in architecture, in fashion; ideas sparked by my wedding clients as they describe their perfect event; fallen pinecones and flowers in neighborhood gardens; drawing on command for my 18 month old daughter.
What are your favorite things/items from Boxcar Press?
Besides the base/plate system? The apron, definitely. And also the super-cute baby-tees. I have a Boxcar Baby myself (now a Boxcar toddler) and had bought her a shirt before she was even a twinkle in her daddy’s eye.
{Photo by Melissa Coe.}
Any neat tricks you can share?
I can juggle, sort of. But you probably want printing tricks. We come up with all kinds of tricks to achieve certain effects, or use up seemingly unusable scraps of paper. It’s more about finding creative solutions to your every day problems. I don’t think we ever do the same things twice because each job we run has its own quirks.
What are you looking forward to?
As exhausting as they are, I look forward to our winter craft fairs and open houses. I love getting a chance to meet directly with our customers and see how they respond to our work, new and old.
What was the experience like for you at NSS this year?
NSS was great. It was our fifth year exhibiting and it seems that every year just keeps getting better. We finally hit upon a booth design that really speaks to us and for us and I can’t wait to use it again!!!
{Photo by Nole Garey.}
Do you have any suggestions for people hoping to exhibit next year or how to promote their new product lines?
Focus on what you absolutely love to create and start with a small, cohesive, well-designed collection. Better a few things that everyone will love than getting overwhelmed trying to manage 200 designs and not have a clear sense of yourself or your brand. You can always add more later.
How was NYIGF for your first time?
This summer was our first NYIGF and we couldn’t have been happier with our reception. It was nice to be exposed to a new, completely different audience. We can’t wait to go back next year!
{Photo by Albertine Press.}
For more from Albertine Press, stop by their Etsy store and visit their blog to keep up with the current doings. If you are in the Boston area, they also offer great classes. Thanks, Shelley!
A couple of weeks ago we were excited to once again have the opportunity to donate a bunch of paper to local art programs and schools around the city. We’ve been donating paper to local schools annually (if not more frequently) for the last few years and it’s something that never stops being rewarding. We love doing our little part to help kids foster their creativity!
The teachers come in droves and bring big boxes and hand carts to scoop up as much paper as they can. We roll out big palettes and carts full of paper and envelopes and load them up with as much as they can carry.
Thanks to our esteemed press operator, Carrie, for helping organize our paper donation this year!
It’s Tuesday, which in our neck of the woods means it’s CSA day. (At least during the summer and fall harvest season, that is.) Boxcar Press proudly (and enthusiastically!) subsidizes CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) memberships for employees through a local organic farm, Grindstone Farm. Once a week, a big van full of freshly picked organic veggies shows up at our door and we always get a kick out of digging through the boxes to see what we have that week. This year we’ve been eating a lot of rainbow chard, kale, bokchoy, a variety of lettuces, onions, garlic, lots of beautiful tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini galore.
Here is a quick peek at today’s share – parsley, patty pan squash, three varieties of tomatoes, baby carrots, two varieties of radishes, lemon basil, lots of tomatillos and the first of this season’s apples.
With tomatillos greeting us week after week, we’ve all been sharing ideas on how to best use them up. The verdict is that a great roasted tomatillo salsa can’t be beat. We love this recipe from epicurious – it’s simple, quick and tasty. Does it get much better?
Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
1 1/2 pounds fresh tomatillos
5 fresh serrano chiles (or sub the peppers of your choice; remove the seeds for less heat)
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons coarse salt
Preheat broiler or grill.
Remove husks from tomatillos and rinse under warm water to remove stickiness. Broil chiles, garlic, onion and tomatillos on rack of a broiler pan 1 to 2 inches from heat (or on the grill), turning once, until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, about 7 minutes. Peel garlic and pull off tops of chiles. Purée all ingredients in a blender.
Allow to cool to room temperature and serve with your favorite chips or Mexican fare. Enjoy!
