Dissed at Christmas

The holidays have proven an ideal time to catch up on chores around the studio, including dissing (or redistributing) a great deal of type back into the type cabinets. As for most chores, I work on top of my press, which is not an ideal height for dissing, but I can sit on a stool [...]

CBBAG Swap

I said in the last post that the Merrickville Artist Guild invitation would not be my swan-song for this year, and I meant it. Three days before the fall studio tour and in the midst of production on a massive order, I inked up the press to print a lino cut and a poem that [...]

No Time

Time. I wish I had more of it. Earlier in the year, our business was quiet and we filled our time and rode out the recession developing new products. I put aside press projects since I didn’t even have the cash to buy paper. Now, when I most need to work on artistic pursuits, the [...]

My monthly update & justifying justification

While blundering around in the files looking for images to post, I came across a shot of the little Kelsey press before Craig Black restored it. Here it is:

Just a little on the rusty side, but not so bad as to become scrap. I’m delighted with the results taken off of it so far.
Time for [...]

Monthly update

My, how the time does fly! In the intervening month since my last blog, I have done a number of printing related tasks. I completed my submission to the Grimsby Wayzgoose anthology. The Grimsby Wayzgoose is the venerable book arts show held in Grimsby, Ontario every year in April. ‘Waysgoose’ is an old word to [...]

A Visit from Hugh

Today was a fine day on the press. It began with pulling apart my roller assembly and scrubbing away at the rollers with a deglazing compound. It will be the first of many sessions as I try to restore the integrity of the rollers, which have become smooth as glass over the past three years. [...]

Hugh Barclay’s One Day Wonder

A week or so after the Press Gang gathering here in Merrickville, Hugh Barclay, the indefatigable proprietor of Thee Hell Box Press in Kingston, emailed me with a proposition: gather a number of letterpress printers and writers in his workshop and produce a book in one day. He said it would be a One Day [...]

What’s Next?

Last Saturday I had a visit from a fellow letterpress printer and book collector. In honour of this occasion, I cleared off my press, removed the plywood tabletop that spans it and began to set about planning the next project, which is, ironically, much the same as the last one. Well, at least the type [...]

The 30th Annual Grimsby Wayzgoose

It’s been a while, and I think my blog voice is a bit rusty, but here goes. Over the next few blogs, I’m going to report on the final production of the latest letterpress project from Greyweathers Press, The Vampire and the Seventh Daughter (V&7thD), working backward from the launch.
First, the background. A week ago [...]

Launching The Vampire and the Seventh Daughter

On Saturday, April 26, Greyweathers Press launched its latest letterpress work, an original short story by Larry Thompson titled The Vampire and the Seventh Daughter. This gothic trifle is hand printed with cold type, using our house font, Italian Oldstyle, for the text and the blackface type, Goudy Text, for the cover, title page and [...]