Letterpress art prints by George Davis on display in the Adirondacks

Earlier this summer, we teamed up with George Davis to create letterpress art prints for his latest exhibit, “The Doodle Show,” which is currently on display at the Depot Theatre in Westport, New York. We letterpress printed the trio of art prints on our Heidelberg SBB cylinder press to ensure even ink coverage of the designs, which all make great use of negative space and feature heavy floods of classic black ink. Today we’re sharing George’s inspiration behind the designs, which will be on display until October 15th.

Black and white letterpress art prints from Boxcar Press

Let’s start with Soar, a dizzying bird flying skyward. The seed for this image was a ceramic tile I spotted in Taos, New Mexico. Rusty red glaze painted onto a white tile, yellowing with age. Simple image, sparse brush strokes. It struck me that this carefree creature was trapped in the grid of tiles. Cubicled. But it yearned to escape, longed to fly high into the turquoise dome. Freedom. So I liberated it. I simplified the silhouette and added the concentric silhouette. Echoes. Slightly vertiginous.

Soar, a letterpress art print designed by George Davis and printed by Boxcar Press

Design Shoal began with a 2-3 foot tall, hand painted ceramic vase, one of a pair that stood in opposite corners of a room in Anguilla. As I recall, the pattern on the vase was blue-green, maybe aquamarine. The background was white. The walls were white. And the vases — exotic artifacts from afar — were balancing the upholstery. Or the immense chandelier. Or the panoramic view of the Mediterranean. Designed. Decorated. Carefully choreographed, perhaps a little too carefully. The vases, though intricately detailed, seemed less self-conscious, more alluring. I loved their texture, was distracted by the possibility of the same vase underwater, sunken treasure, tropical fish schooling and shoaling around it. The fish is actually a single image duplicated, tweaked, and rescaled, and it was sketched quickly after snorkeling.

Design Shoal, a letterpress art print designed by George Davis and printed by Boxcar Press

Soar and Design Shoal are included in 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed, a collection of meditations on middle age. They are visual poems, an experiment that I’m revisiting in a second edition due out by year’s end. 

Letterpress art prints designed by George Davis on display

Soar and Design Shoal interspersed with drawings by artists Kevin Raines and Judy Guglielmo.

St. Joseph’s Steeple is a standing-on-the-ground view looking almost directly up at the tall pointy part of a church located a five minute walk from my home. I’m attracted to unusual perspectives. I’m attracted to texture (tactile and visual). Combining both provides a fresh look at this handsome but restrained country church. Or at least that’s what I was hoping to achieve. The illustration is included in Essex, New York Architecture: A Doodler’s Field Guide, an unconventional handbook intended to inspire architectural curiosity and creativity.

Letterpress art prints designed by George Davis on display

St. Joseph’s Steeple (and Noble Clemons House, leftmost image) interspersed with drawings by architect Bryan Burke.

 St. Joseph's Steeple letterpress art print designed by George Davis and printed by Boxcar Press

All three of these images are what I refer to as digital doodles. A few years ago I vowed to transform my mobile devices from productivity tools into creativity tools. From albatross to adventure, ball and chain to hot air balloon. Less data overload; more whimsy. Less anxiety; more joy. Today we’re so inundated with digital demands, deadlines, commitments, communications that we sometimes overlook the magnificent world around us. We trudge around with our necks doubled and our fingers swiping and typing. When we glance up it’s too often just to document our sexy appetizer or our dog’s antics for our friends and family on social media. We too rarely distill anything enduring from the digital detritus, rarely harness our devices’ remarkable capacity for invention and caprice and wonder. So I decided to try. My digital doodles combine illustrations, photographs, and collage. They inevitably endure multiple iterations in Photoshop purgatory as I play and explore and experiment and remix and strip away and occasionally — if I get really fortunate — a few of these digital first image evolve to a stage when ink and paper and fingerprints are indicated. This is the evasive but glorious goal. Boxcar Press helped me achieve this goal with Soar, Design Shoal, and St. Joseph’s Steeple. And I am profoundly grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

 St. Joseph's Steeple letterpress art print designed by George Davis and printed by Boxcar Press

Many thanks to George for sharing his inspiration behind his impressive art prints! If you’re planning a visit to the Adirondacks, be sure to visit the Depot Theatre to check out the exhibit.

Gallery photographs provided by George Davis. 

The Right Type With Cotton and Pine

Letterpress is one part technique, one part soul, and it takes brilliant creative know-how to bind both together. At Cotton and Pine in Montgomery, Alabama, this is no exception. Recruiting from some of the finest talent that Alabama offers, Cotton and Pine has been a dynamo on the letterpress printing scene (from distinct die-cuts to eye-popping prints) and hasn’t stopped since its inception two wonderful years ago. We were able to catch a glimpse of this incredible printing abode in the Deep South to see just how brilliantly letterpress can shine.

        Printing on the Miehle, Heidelber Windmill, and Chandler & Price at Cotton and Pine.

MODERN MEETS VINTAGE Cotton & Pine is a combination print shop and design studio. The company was founded in Montgomery by Daniel Mims and Steven Lambert, and was designed to be a place where modern design and vintage printing could come together in collaboration.

LETTERPRESS BEGINNINGS The idea that eventually became Cotton & Pine Creative came to Daniel and Steven of Mims Management Group after years of searching out and collaborating with talented and dedicated craftsmen and creative minds from across the Southeast. They had spent some time finding and working with letterpress printers and that ultimately led to the idea of housing printers and designers under one roof.

Cool letterpress printed Father's Day cards from Cotton and Pine press are a visual treat!

RECLAIMING LETTERPRESS Our shop is split down the middle: half for designers and half for the print shop. The shop is outfitted with hart pine beams reclaimed from a hundred-year-old cotton mill located in Lanett, Alabama. We’ve surrounded our letterpress machines with a wall of windows so that anyone who comes in the shop can see the presses at work.

The gorgeous and spacious atrium of Cotton and Pine presshop is inviting and hearty.

DESIGNING FOR PRINT We have a staff of printers and designers who we’ve recruited from across the state of Alabama and we are very proud to be powered by home-grown Southern creativity and craftsmanship.

Southern craftsmanship and perfectly inked prints from Cotton and Pine press.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS We design a very wide range of materials, from personal stationery, to business collateral, to wedding invitations. And we approach each of these projects in a unique way, based on the client’s wants and needs. But designing for letterpress is always unique and exciting. We love playing in a wide spectrum of different aesthetics, whether it’s an elegant wedding invitation, a sophisticated business card, or a playful postcard.

The wonderful Miehle press of Cotton and Pine plus colorful printed piece by Cotton and Pine.

FULL TIME FUN We’ve been in business since 2013, but our printers have had decades of experience as full-time printers.

PRINTING FEATS We are always really proud of the projects that pose an interesting challenge. For example, we printed, letterpressed, and bound a special edition book for a poet from London. We are also always really excited for any project that allows us to combine letterpress with other printing processes, like foil stamping, embossing, or die-cutting. 

And it’s always a fun project when we get to fire up our 1908 Miehle, which can letterpress up to 26″ x 40”. We’ve had several jobs where we got to hand carve plates and print them on the Miehle—those are the ones that are always really striking and eye-catching and have so much character and individuality in each print.

Die cut letterpress building piece expertly printed from the fine folks at Cotton and Pine press.Grand Opening printed sign is bold and beautiful for Cotton and Pine.

BOXCAR’S ROLE Boxcar has been an absolutely incredible help to us! As we receive new projects and continue to take on new challenges in letterpress, we are so grateful for Boxcar helping us to improve on our work every day.

Bright and cheery "Heart of Dixie" printed piece from Cotton and Pine.  Printing on the Miehle press at Cotton and Pine.

PRESS HISTORY We were very lucky to inherit five letterpress machines from a hundred-year-old family-owned print shop in Birmingham, Alabama. Our real work horse is our Original Heidelberg Windmill, but we also have an Original Heidelberg cylinder press, a Chandler & Price, a Kluge 14×22, and a 1908 Miehle.

SHOP TIPS FROM US “Roller trucks and bearings need to be in tip-top shape to achieve good printing quality, especially on a Heidelberg Windmill. You can achieve fine print without having to mix such thick ink.” – Larry (be sure to check out Larry on press here!)Cotton and Pine's very own Larry Champion in near a beautiful Heidelberg Windmill.

“Don’t give away your secrets. And if you have trouble, make sure the problem isn’t between the floor and the switch.” – Johnny.Johnny Oates of Cotton and Pine is all smiles in from of his shop.

“Don’t use 20 year old Pantone books, and don’t eat chips in bed.” – Steven.Printing on the Miehle press at Cotton and Pine.

WHAT’S NEXT This summer we are attending several music and arts festivals across the South, where we’ll be selling letterpress goods from our retail shop, C&P Mercantile. We love getting a chance to meet other Southern artists and craftsmen and sharing the beauty of letterpress in something as simple as a note card or coaster that anyone can take home and enjoy.Gorgeous "Y'all Come Back" Alabama lettepress print from Cotton and Pine.

Huge heaps of thanks and a round of applause out to the wonderful folks at Cotton and Pine for giving us a peek inside their shop!

Who is that?!

This hungry little face is found on the delivery side of a Heidelberg KSBA cylinder press. While it has lurked there unknown, it has eaten many wandering scoring matrices – those are the blue strips inside – plus other mysterious dainties. If your scoring matrix or lunch is missing, ask this fella if he has seen it.

One of the Boxcar Press cylinder presses


Fashion week invitation

This is one of our favorite letterpress jobs, designed by Ben Whitla at Korn Design. It’s one of the coolest uses of a tinted blind deboss that we’ve ever seen (the darker tint we ran on our Heidelberg cylinder press — lots of coverage that beat down the paper, which allowed the white of the paper to form the words and the outline of a jungle). On a side note, we have to mention that the designer Ben was Boxcar’s first ever employee, and he kindly ran Boxcar Press for a few weeks back in 2002, after working with us for about 5 weeks, so Harold & Debbie could run off and get married and have a honeymoon).
Fashion WEek invitation - Hess Natur by Miguel Adrover