Podcasts And Interesting Letterpress Finds For Listening And Viewing

What is playing in your earbuds right now?  What keeps you engaged and entertained while you work, walk the dog, or drive in the car?

If podcasts are “your thing”, we know there are over a half million active podcasts to keep you engaged and entertained and learning. Have you given printing-related podcasts a chance?  This article is all about content that speaks to your love and interest in letterpress, book arts and printing. It isn’t complete because there are new channels all the time but here is the start of a fascinating ride down the letterpress road.

Podcasts offer an international perspective on every topic. They showcase artists and personalities worldwide. This list is no exception. You’ll meet some hosts that you’ll connect with and it will be like hanging out with friends.  It is very likely some of the interviews are with people you have met.

Come check these out:

Apple Podcasts
These have great stories of printers, scholars, artists and craftspeople.

Soundcloud podcasts –

Spotify podcasts
Search for these podcasts for letterpress individual stories.
Letterpress is often a topic that is a focus of podcasts with a much broader focus.  Here are some episodes that are letterpress specific –

Miscellaneous –

IBOOKBINDING.com  ( based out of the UK)-
There is an international flair to this website where you can hear podcasts, live streams and interviews. Topics include bookbinding in Scotland, Mexico, Northeast Africa, Finland and Greece. There is interesting book binding discussion like Medieval book binding and a Bookfair in Holland

The live streams include unusual book shops all over the world, and slightly fun off the wall topics like Human Skin bindings.  There are visits to Russia and Paris and Belgium. It’s also nice to have a breakdown of the broadcast by key moments with minute markers to lead you to specific topics discussed. If you like a little video streaming too, they have videos by Facebook and YouTube

Books in the Wild (a podcast with a fun name)-
This podcast investigates the hidden stories behind books and printed matter. Instead of reviewing books solely on their written content, they try to offer varying perspectives on everything from conception to creation to reception. This is a podcast about book arts: letterpress printing, bookbinding, artists’ books, small press and independent publishing, and stories from book history.

The Truth in This Art – Allison Tipton: Shaping Baltimore’s Artistic Landscape Through Letterpress

The Romance of Letterpress with James Cryer – A grandfather’s handwritten journal chronicling printing in the early 1900’s.

Last Click: Bonus Videos –
If you are streaming with a tablet or computer and want a little video – here are a few bonus videos. Lots of ways to gain new letterpress info, instruction, and entertainment in these videos. So get your taste with these few here.

  • Stukenborg Press on Youtube
  • Skillshare.com (There is a fee for these). Topics include Operation and Maintenance of Heidelberg Platen, Getting Started with Letterpress and Instruction on Designing for Letterpress with Adobe Creative Suite Products.

Let us know what jewels you have found in your podcasting by sharing!

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!

The Inquisitive Printer: More Things That Caught Our Eye

Our focus lately has gone from New York to New Mexico and over the water.  We hope you enjoy what has captured our attention this week.

From Carrie: A windmill printer at Boxcar Press.
On the Letterpress Digest podcast: As a giant letterpress and book nerd, I was so thrilled to hear about a new product devoted to my beloved particular form of the Black Arts. The host, Jordan, interviews printers, suppliers, and others active in the field.  It has been a treat to hear my letterpress heroes talk about their adventures and get to know others I may have missed out on otherwise.  The interviews have been engaging and educational and had me laughing at things only other print nerds would find funny.  Even though only a dozen episodes have aired, I can’t wait to hear who will be next.  This is exactly what my printer’s heart was longing for – hearing letterpress things while making letterpress things.

From Cathy: On Facebook, there is a great resource of printing brains and experience over at The Heidelberg Letterpress Page so I have been encouraging all to join this group.

Next, I am a big fan of knowing how things are made, so this story in the New York Times combines some pretty nifty photography with a good story on one of America’s last pencil factories.  It raises my respect for this basic tool.

tom leech(photography courtesy of savingplaces.org)

So excited to see an article about the Print Shop and Bindery at New Mexico’s Palace of the Governors, with an interview with printer, Tom Leech.  Tom and I have corresponded over the years so am loving this peek into the working shop / museum.

From Rebecca:  Coming in May 2018, the inspiring folks over at the Corning Museum of Glass (just a day-trip drive from our location here in Syracuse) will be launching the GlassBarge ship.

barge(photography courtesy of Corning Museum of Glass)

This barge ship will sail through the New York Waterways (visiting & stopping from ports in Brooklyn to Buffalo) this spring while giving free glassblowing demonstrations to the public in each port city on its itinerary. A rare and wonderful event that we’ll be checking out when it comes to town!

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