Inquisitive Printers – Cool Things That Caught Our Eye

We’re still very much the same questioning, searching, and inquisitive bunch of folks and this month’s installment is a good testament to this. We enjoy the wonderful, creative, and just plain cool things that catch our eye day in and day out. In this latest installment that made us oooh and ahhhh, we bring you a cool kickstarter giving new life to an Okuma litho proof press, a hue-tastic interactive color exhibit, beautiful traditional bookbinding and much more! 

From Maddie:

Lithosphere: The Story of Big Dreams and A Big Press

Shelley Thornstensen of the Printmakers Open Forum has successfully completed a kickstarter that involves moving & setting up a big, beautiful Okuma flatbed lithography offset proof press. Thornstensen envisions a new life for large scale equipment for her print shop in Oxford, Pennsylvania. This press, 13.5 feet long and over 10,000 pounds is a versatile piece of equipment that will print woodblocks, litho plates, or litho stones. She has unique techniques to use on this press and looks forward to sharing this knowledge with other printmakers (please check out her summer print camp!).

Printmakers Open Forum Okuma Press Kickstarter
(image courtesy of Shelley Thornstensen and her Kickstarter)

In completing her financing campaign to move and perform maintenance on the press, she has found a wonderful amount of support and a lot of encouragement from the printmaking, as well as an online community. Thornstensen returns the favor with many rewards for participating in the fundraiser. These include stickers, totes, fine arts prints, and t-shirts with a bear design designed by Andrew Mullaly (fun fact: Okuma means “bear” in Japanese!).

Check out her social media page ( Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler ) to see the latest developments on this cool project and see the new press for yourself. Leave her a comment just to say “hey” and to remind her how awesome she is!

From Rebecca:

Hue Oughta Know: The Color Factory Exhibit in NYC

Grab your Pantone swatch book, camera, and sense of playful wonder for The Color Factory exhibit in the SoHo area in NYC!

TheColorFactory-NYC-exhibit
(images courtesy of The Color Factory)

The enchanting all-ages interactive exhibit features brilliantly colored rooms to dazzle the senses — from a light blue ball pit room, a history & origin of colors room (so cool!), custom-colored macarons in their gift shop, and more.

TheColorFactory-NYC-exhibit
(images courtesy of The Color Factory)

Originally based & started in 2017 in San Francisco, the exhibit’s popularity soon blossomed into the NYC and a Houston installment exhibit.  Currently, the pop-up experience exhibit is going from now until April 2020.

Grab tickets NYC here (https://colorfactory.co/tickets)! The Color factory is located at 251 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013.

New Archeology Find in Upstate New York: The World’s Oldest Forest 

Upstate New York is full of hidden science-y good gems: The Museum of Science & Technology, Herkimer Diamond mines, and the awesome Corning Museum of Glass. Recently, scientists and researchers in Cairo, New York have added another one:  evidence of perhaps the world’s oldest forest. 

Upstate New York Worlds Oldest Forest-1
(image photography credit: Cell Press / Current Biology science journal / William Stein)

A tree root system that is 385 million years old was discovered in the Catskills region in the fossil soils near Cairo, New York (about a 3-hour-ish car drive from us here at Boxcar Press). The findings show potential forests and flora evolved during the Devonian age (the age of fish as well as early forms of sharks, spiders, and insects).

For reference, the Tyrannosaurus rex was living between 68-66 million years ago. Woah!

From Cathy 

I enjoy all videos that show letterpress printing, printmaking and book arts.  This one appeals to me because it’s serene and zen-like.  It is pleasing to the eye with the colorful paper and the tools and watching her work.  Her voice and hands just soothe.  I hope it pleases you.

bookbinding - bbc - Judith Ivry
Click the image above to watch the video!

Photo and video courtesy of BBC.com

We hope you explore some of our links and perhaps learn a little bit more about what interests us here at Boxcar Press.  Email us at info@boxcarpress.com the things that delight you also!

Inquisitive Printers – More Curious Items To Intrigue

Like most letterpress-loving people, we are drawn to the fascinating and the intriguing. This newest installment of the Inquisitive Printers focuses our attentions on cool history of playing cards (and Nintendo!) plus a portable printing museum, a Miami-based high school teacher and printer, and much more. Enjoy!

From Jake:  

Nintendo’s release of the latest Pokemon video game is not where I thought I’d find my printerly inquisition focused this month, admittedly; bear with me and I’ll lay out why it’s tickling my fancy so.

Pokemon began as a GameBoy title, but at the turn of the millennium it reached an outstanding level of cultural clout in its incarnation as a strategy and trading card game. Many of my generation heeded that none-too-subtle imperative “gotta catch ‘em all” filled school recesses and study hall periods with sharp-eyed trades and tournament play.

While it was never quite my scene, I did admire the quality finishing that went into the cards, with the full-color printing and foil embellishment on the various rare specimens. A much greater fascination to me is the fact that the entire Nintendo games empire had its beginning as a manufacturer of playing cards all the way back to 1889!

nintendo_logo_ace-spades_-art

(Photography courtesy of blog.beforemario.com)

This culture-defining behemoth of our video game era plugs directly backward into the larger and wilder story of playing cards, which themselves are deliciously wrapped up in the origins of the printing arts themselves.

Squint at them and you can see how dice, dominoes, and chess games are the simpler, sturdier parents of playing cards. For there to be cards, there has to be paper and printing, and so, of course, the first playing cards emerge in China. Unfortunately, since paper is so fragile and cards are objects much-handled, the earliest examples don’t survive into history. An early reference to their existence comes in 1294 A.D., documenting the arrest of two gamblers and the confiscation of both their game cards and the woodblocks that printed them. These cards weren’t merely for making wagers with, but themselves actually served as tokens exchangeable for money or drinks at the tavern: valuable collectible items, indeed!

Papermaking, printing, and playing cards traveled as a pack from China to Samarkand (Uzbekistan), then on to Baghdad to spread across the Mediterranean through the Muslim caliphates and the remnants of the Byzantine empire. Taking shape in Egypt and exported quickly across trade routes into Moorish Spain, the Arabic “mamluk” card game had already assumed a form familiar to the modern playing deck: 52 cards, arranged in four suits, ordered by ranks culminating in royal court figures. “Mamluk” means “property”, referring to a class of enslaved mercenary soldiers within the prevailing caste system. Puts one in mind of the more disturbing aspects of the Pokemon life cycle, with trainers “catching ‘em all” then making them fight each other for the trainers’ glory. (Just sayin’.)

mamluk-2-playing cards

(Photography courtesy of wopc.co.uk)

By the 14th century, these playing cards were spread across Europe and quickly became nativized. Mamluks easily translated into the aristocratic ranks of Europe’s feudal system, and those original four suits — polo sticks, swords, cups, and coins — mutated based on local culture. Spanish, German, Swiss, and Italian styled suits survive into the 20th century right alongside the French style we in the Anglo-American world are most familiar with: clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. (Tarot enthusiasts will note that those original mamluk suits are exactly those that became our beloved and much-mystified oracle deck, but that also-very-printerly story needs another time for telling.)

Salzburg_pattern- playing Cards

(Photography courtesy of wikipedia.org )

As the printers of Marseilles, Nürnburg, and Venice stamped out the cards in varying grades of quality, so too did the traders vend these printed goods to the world. Portuguese traders arrived in Japan in 1543, carrying Iberian playing cards in their holds.  The Portuguese word “carta” became the Japanese “karuta”, and caught on well among the wealthy samurai. The isolationist Tokugawa shogunate soon banned them as a foreign influence, however, and so playing cards in Japan took on their own particular evolution, as printers and gamers worked around the restrictions. 

Variant decks multiplied, fusing older indigenous Japanese gaming traditions and innovating new ones. Some of those older traditions involved matching paintings on shells, or poems on squares of wood, and translated easily to paper cards. These poetry cards and other literary variants became popular educational tools for children.

Nintendo_1889-prefecture-store

The card ban wasn’t formally lifted until late in the Meiji period, when Japan was “westernizing”. Clandestine cardplayer Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo in 1889 and began manufacturing the popular Hanafuda (“Flower Game”) deck, which has 12 suits of 4 cards each.

FLower-GameCards

(Photography courtesy of user digitalhypnosisi (via imgur.com)

I imagine that Nintendo, innovative from the start, was among those early 20th century card manufacturers to produce “obake karuta”, card decks depicting mythological monsters (“obake”) and their names and attributes.  Sound familiar?

obake karuta

(Photography courtesy of horrorjapan.tumbler.com)

After the Second World War, Nintendo also began making western-style playing cards and began to branch out into toys and other goods. The first mega-hit toy product was, uncannily enough, an extending arm based on the pantograph — another printing-related hit in the story. From there, toy-making brought the company into electronics in the early 1970s, and from there, card pips turn to pixels and then once again we come to Pokemon.

So from East, to West, to East again, and then to global cultural dominance, the humble playing card moves, shakes, and shapes the world. Are we ultimately so sure it’s us playing them, I wonder, or is our game perhaps also playing us?

From Rebecca:   

Based in Miami, Florida, printer/teacher Tom Virgin of Extra Virgin Press appears on the Art & Company podcast. He talks about introducing the tangible craft of printing to students in the classroom  and about the future of printing at large. Come take a listen! 

Inquistive-Printers-Tom-Virgin-Art-Company-podcast
(Photo courtesy and credit: Art & Company Podcast / Alette Simmons-Jimenez )

Next up is the Tiny Type Museum & Time Capsule project. This nifty concept is a printing (and history) lover’s dream. It is a small, portable collection that celebrates type & printing.

Tiny Type Museum - Glenn Fleishman - img1
(Photo credit: Glenn Fleishman / Tinytypemuseum.com)

The Museum contains unique printing artifacts & resources spanning decades. The fit-on-your-bookshelf Museum features cast pieces of hot-metal, wood, and metal foundry type, scale-model replica of a California Job case and many more items to discover. 

Tiny Type Museum - Glenn Fleishman - img1
(Photo credit: Glenn Fleishman / Tinytypemuseum.com)

The project is helmed by Seattle, Washington-based Glenn Fleishman and in collaboration with many artists, printers, museums, and foundries.

We hope you explore some of our links and perhaps share in our enjoyment about what intrigues us here at Boxcar Press.  Email us at info@boxcarpress.com with the things that inspire you as well!

Inquisitive Printers Want To Know: Even More

This week’s Inquisitive Printer focuses on a new chapter for a letterpress printer, the cool printing history of Basel, Switzerland and a creative idea for sketch-booking in the summer.

REBECCA: 

It’s wonderful to see our letterpress friends grow and be on the move. Earlier this month, a cool Chicago-based letterpress printer, A Favorite Design, did just that. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Amber Favorite & her husband have been able to move into their own brick-and-mortar store in the Albany park area. Way to go and congratulations!

A. Favorite Design letterpress print shop Chicago

(photography courtesy of blockclubchicago.com / afavoritedesign.com )

JAKE:

A significant other’s trip to Europe became an occasion for me to do a little poking into the history of Basel, Switzerland. I couldn’t — and really, still can’t — put my finger on any one reason why Basel feels significant to me, as prominent as it has been in the back of mind. Perhaps it’s some subconscious awareness that many of my cultural heroes are alumni of the old university, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Gustav Jung, and Herman Hesse.

In the Renaissance, it was home to father of pharmacology, the astrologer and alchemist Paracelsus; in the modern era, it was the site of chemist Albert Hoffman’s famous bicycle ride over the course of which he became aware of the effects of the lysergic acid diethylamide he’d just invented. What a cute set of Basel historical bookends marking either end of the modern era of hard science, between magical herblore on one side and psychedelic cybernetics on the other.

At the University of Basel’s Museum of Pharmacy is yet another intriguing and world-changing artifact: the printing press owed by Amerbach & Froben. 

(Source: wikipedia.org and the BEIC digital library)

Amerbach is noted as the first printer to make the switch to Roman typefaces! If that ain’t notable, I couldn’t tell you what is.

MADDIE:

It is summer time, Ya’ll. 

This is the time when I just want to be active and outside. Taking in as much sunlight and warm weather as possible before the next season arrives. I relish these moments, yet have the feeling that I am not focused on my studio work. This little bit of guilt follows me around, but WAIT!!! I have dissolved this worry by combining my two favorite things: drawing and playing outdoors. 

Wherever I go on adventures, I make sure to always have space in my bag for a small notebook and a set for drawing tools. Pens, fine tipped markers and a handmade notebook. 

The sketchbooks are simple to make and can be constructed in a pinch. Yay bookbinding skills!!! Any found and recycled materials such as copy paper, string or staples are used to bind together this booklet. And there you are, ready for summer action and capturing your favorite moments. 

Above are images I have included are from a 2015 sketchbook. These were made while spending the weekend in a remote cabin in central New York. Below are this year’s (2019) sketches of some recent adventures. 

I can captures new experiences and practice my artistic skills all in this small item. I have even asked my friends to contribute to some pages. These become great collection pieces over time. I can look back at these works and enjoy my artistic practice through the summer months.  

Have something that you find intriguing? Let us know in the comments below!

Inquisitive Printers: Another Round Of Things That Caught Our Eye

Our focus has been drawn lately to a Goudy typeface, re-invigorating studio visits, and being up-close with dinosaurs. We hope you delight in what has captured our attention in this installment of the Inquisitive Printers!

From Cathy:  

Recently I was running amok on a good search about typefaces. Naturally, Frederic Goudy had his share of references to explore.  One, in particular, caught my eye because it was a video that was linking our Syracuse University here with Goudy.  As Syracuse based printers, we have some hometown pride and to have a tie-in to this very prolific font designer was a neat surprise.  Enjoy this video called Goudy & Syracuse: The Tale of A Typeface found.

From Maddie:

Hello Print Friends! I would like to share with ya’ll my favorite aspect to my artistic practice. Do you have find yourself in your workspace not knowing what to do with your projects? You do? Okay. Great! I suggest you have a studio visit.

This has been extremely valuable to growing as an artist and developing my work since leaving my fine art studies back in 2016. Similarly, I like to receive feedback and miss having a community to work within now that I am done with school.

Have a friend stop by your space. Show them what you are currently working on. Share your artistic process with them. Invite them over while you are working on a print run—more hands make less work. Let your visitor ask questions and get to know what you do as a maker.

Don’t forget the SNACKS! I have some things to eat or drink and enjoy simply hanging out. For instance, I like to invite people over during lunchtime for a 45-minute visit and I also encourage my guest to hang out & draw with me. Sketching and sharing ideas is great!

Think about what you want to get out of a studio visit. Or alternatively, this doesn’t need to have an objective. See where the conversation leads. Discuss everything and nothing. This dialogue may influence your work in return.

Afterward, reflect on what was talked about. do you see your work with a new perspective? I typically feel energized after a studio visit. The feedback allows me to return to working on my projects with fresh ideas. I am delighted that I get to share what I love to do and really appreciate how receptive my visitors are to my work and creative space. I see this as vital to my artistic practice and will continue doing this. FOREVER. Hope you give it a whirl.

Maddie-studio-visit-artist-studio

My dear friends, Shelby and Brian are looking through a box of my small drawings (July 2018).

Here is a great link that offers very honest and helpful suggestions about studio visits and making the most out of them!

From Rebecca:   

Want to get up-close to dinosaur bones without leaving your computer chair? Photographer Christian Voigt does just that as he captured the delicate beauty of the London Natural History Museum’s dinosaur skeleton collection. Come take a look! 

(c) Christian Voigt Tyrannosaurus

(photography credit: Christian Voigt and WIRED.com)

We hope you explore some of our links and perhaps learn a little bit more about what intrigues us here at Boxcar Press.  Email us at info@boxcarpress.com the things that delight you also!

Inquisitive Printers: Even More Things That Caught Our Eye

We remain on the look-out for all things creative, fascinating and colorful. Check out a few of the intriguing items, events, and cool happenings that recently caught our eye.

From Cathy:  

I have always enjoyed the CBS Sunday Morning program as it has introduced me to many fascinating creative people and stories over the years.  On the March 10th broadcast, they focused on fine press books from the printing to the binding.  It is always exciting to see a letterpress print shop on network news.  Enjoy the segment if you haven’t already viewed it.

Larkspur Press Bookmaking Bookbinding Letterpress, Inquisitive Printers

(photo courtesy of cbsnews.com)

From Maddie: 

Whew! BOY HOWDY! Anyone in need of a podcast recommendation? Yes!? OKAY. Let me tell you about my favorite podcast OLOGIES, hosted by Alie Ward. This show is all about asking smart people dumb questions.

Alie sits down with a specialist in a different field of study in every episode. For example: Entomology (Insects), Selenology (the Moon), and Tuethology (Squids!!!). This podcast series does not disappoint. You will be giddy with excitement to learn all there is to know about each episode’s topic and an added bonus: delightful side notes of fact checking or defining fancy scientific words. Also worth mentioning, if you listen to the very end of each episode Alie will share a secret with the listeners. 

Inquisitive Printers : Alie Ward Ologies

(photo courtesy of allieward.com)

I listen to this show while printing. Yyou can tell when I am listening to this podcast as I am laughing out loud and smiling. OLOGIES is a delight and I hope you give it a listen…then proceed to tell all your friends about the wondrous information you just learned about Entomophagy Anthropology (eating bugs), Mixology (cocktails), or Somnology (sleep). Enjoy! 

From Rebecca:   

Everyday there are more than 12,000+ planes travelling around the world at any given time. Want to see just how populated the skies are? Check out this nifty website, flightrader24.com, that shows in real-time who could be flying above you!

Inquisitive Printers

(photo courtesy of flightrader.com)

Glass meet metal.  UK-based  Heriot-Watt University has some interesting news for welders, fabricators, and artisans. They’ve been able to weld together certain types of glass and metal using a specialized ultrafast infrared laser systems. The University’s scientists and partnering research labs are still working on perfecting the method. Hopefully, this could lead to some interesting developments in both the manufacturing and art realms.

We hope you explore some of our links and perhaps learn a little bit more about what interests us here at Boxcar Press.  Email us at info@boxcarpress.com the things that delight you also!

Inquisitive Printers Want to Know: Extra Things That Caught Our Eye

This month’s installment of the Inquisitive Printers Want to Know showcases an enjoyable animated video short “Typesetter Blues” and today’s Mars-bound InSight probe. Read on to learn more!

From Cathy: How can you not love a title like Typesetter Blues?  Enjoy this short animated video about the fickleness of love in a print shop (Fun Fact: the printer in the video is named “Harold”).

Typesetter-blues-letterpress-printing - inquisitive(photography courtesy of TOGETHER/Pahzit Cahlon)

From Rebecca:  Seven months ago, NASA sent up the Mars-bound InSight probe. Today, the probe is schedule to land on the surface of Mars. The cool little probe has the job of collecting data of Mars’ surface and drilling a hole 5 meters (16.4 feet) down.

Mars_insight_probe-NASA(photography credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The data will be able to help scientists understand the creation of Mars and its geological landscape evolution.

Inquisitive Printers Want to Know: More Extra Things That Caught Our Eye

Keeping our eagle eyes on the look-out for intriguing and cool things, this month’s installment of the Inquisitive Printers Want to Know highlights Lori Schneider (a woman with Multiple Sclerosis who has scaled  the “Seven Summits”), the wealth of information at letterpresscommons.com,  as well as a very beautiful look at global weather patterns. Read on to learn more!

From Cathy: Recently, I was fortunate enough to hear a talk by Lori Schneider, the first woman with Multiple Sclerosis to climb the “Seven Summits” of the world.  Here she is in a Ted Talk at TedXGrandRapids.

The Seven Summits are the highest peaks of the seven continents.

Listening to her describe her Mount Everest climb sparked a strong curiosity about this particular mountain and sent me searching for all sorts of information.  What I learned was equal parts awe-inspiring, eye-opening and a little beyond belief.  You can Google and find hundreds of articles but this How Stuff Works article is a good introduction to how daunting it is.

Next, I paid a recent visit to Letterpress Commons, specifically to view any of the new videos added since my last look (and to view some of the others again).  There is a wealth of info shared by others on “The Commons”, so it’s highly recommended that folks putter around at the site every few months to see what treasures have been added.  And if you have a tidbit or more to share, check out how to be a contributor.

From Rebecca Taking global weather pattern views to a whole new level is the Earth.Nullschool.net website. This handy website displays in real time the current wind, temperature, and CO2 levels. You can zoom in and twirl the globe to different locations worldwide to see how different weather patterns are moving.

It’s very fascinating (and beautiful!) to see how the Earth’s oceans and landforms effect one another.

Have something nifty or cool that you’d like to share with us? Let us know what it is in the comments below!

Inquisitive Printers Want to Know: More Things That Caught Our Eye

Always scanning the horizons (and our internet browsers) for intriguing and cool things to bookmark, this week’s installment of the Inquisitive Printers Want to Know showcases the Austin Center for the Book’s amazing workshop offerings, horse-riding librarians in the Great Depression era, and two handy websites that help identify that mysterious typefaces & fonts. Read on to learn more!

From Cathy: I have been enjoying a little stroll through the pages of the Austin Book Arts Center website.  The Center has only been around in its official state since 2015 but was a growing idea since the 1980’s through a group of enthusiastic book workers.  They offer an amazing wide variety of workshops every week and I am drawn to the ones for teachers and kids.

Combine women, books, and horses into one bundle and you get the Pack Horse Librarians.  Started in 1934, over 50,000 families in Appalachia were served with books delivered on horseback.  This program was started as part of the New Deal’s WPA and books and magazines were donated.  When they became too worn, they were repaired or turned into scrapbooks and circulated again. Here are two websites with fascinating stories and photographs. In this age of E-books, it is neat to read about a time when books were scarce treasures.

From Jake:  The printshop offers many wonders when wandering through on a daily basis. The photography captured here shows the light spectrum in all its rainbow glory in the wash-out unit in one of our platemakers. 

Jake-inquisitive-printers-platemaker

From Rebecca: Ever come across a design with such a gorgeous typeface or font….but you don’t know what the name of it is? For both computer and mobile,  WhatTheFont is a great starting point to demystifying that font that’s been on your mind for ages. WhatTheFont is a site where you can snap a photo (or upload one if you are working on your computer) and the online program will start identifying what it may be.If you are into a more answer-questions-type-of-mood, a secondary good website is Indentifont.

Have something awesome or cool that you’d like to share with us? Share with us what it is in the comments below!

Inquisitive Printers Want To Know – Even More Eye-catching Things

Keeping sharp eye on the lookout for more cool things & intriguing “must-bookmark-this!” items, this week’s installment of the Inquisitive Printers Want to Know features a Wisconsin-based printer and bookmaker, a new specialized coating that is the “blackest of the blacks”, and a celebration for a book series that inspires one of our printers. Read on to learn more!

Cathy:   I recently found a website with a blog that pleased me.  It is called Letterpress Book Publishing and it belongs to Mike Coughlin of Superior Letterpress of Cornucopia Wisconsin. He calls himself a Printer and Book Maker and his blog reflects on his love of his profession. His posts are comfortable and friendly.  He hasn’t posted since December 2017 so I am hoping some new visitors to his page will prompt him to give us something new to read.

He is at the tip of Wisconsin before it drops into Lake Superior so come “chat” with the rest of us, Mike, and let us know what is on your mind or on your press.

Rebecca Miller: While we do love a good, deep rich printing black (a printer’s bread and butter), we often wonder about Vantablack.

(Photography credit: Surrey Nanosystems)

Hailed as the “blackest of blacks”, this is borderline cartoonish-ly black coating is neither really a pigment nor paint per se. Instead, the specialized coating (made by Surrey Nanosystems) is made up of series of long, extremely tightly packed (and quite microscopically thin) carbon tubes. So dense is this “forest of carbon nanotubes” that any light shined onto it is immediately absorbed (99.96% to be exact). 

The very precise need for those densely packed carbon nano tubes to be laid in a certain way limits how the coating can be applied. Currently in the works is a not-as-dark version in a spray variety aimed at the STEM community (and it will set you back a pretty penny).

Bonus: The “Vanta” in Vantablack stands for “Vertically Aligned Nanotube Array”.

Leanna: Happy Birthday, Harry (July 31st)!  I have been a huge Harry Potter fan since it was introduced to me by my fourth grade teacher. It was subsequently banned from the school a couple months later, so I had to sneak it in my lunchbox to read during break. Over the years since last book and film were released, I took to mainly searching Pinterest for fan art and periodically listening to the audiobooks while I work in the shop (and people wonder why I’m tearing up at the press, it’s cause I’m listening to Snape die for the 100th time!).

(Photography courtesy of monsieurmonsteur.co.uk)

Did you know that 2018 is one of the years in which the book ‘The Cursed Child’ takes place? According to the timeline, Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is 1991. The Battle of Hogwarts is in 1998 making the “19 years later” of the epilogue of ‘The Cursed Child’ to be in 2017. Weird right? Now imagine the movies taking place in the early 90’s instead of the 2000’s!

In honor of Harry’s and J.K. Rowling’s birthday today, here are a few of my favorite Harry Potter things to inspire a bit of “magic” for their next print project! 

Artists to Check Out:

Wonderful Potter-related Articles and Exhibits:

Do you have a cool thing you’d like to share with us or see something that tickles your printing fancy? Email us at info@boxcarpress.com as we’d love to hear from you! We’re always on the look-out for fun + wonderful things!