I went back to school this last quarter (graduated college in 1984). Enrolled in GID 92: Letterpress Printing at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA. The best thing to do if you think you want to explore letterpress printing is to find a class or a group. The class was great! I met good people with a mutual interest in letterpress printing. The teacher, Mike Day, was very passionate about the art of printing. Below is my final project. A spin-off of a design I had done digitally. The challenge was the large halftone taken from a photocopy out of my Grandfather’s scrapbook. I was very pleases how well the polymer plate printed. Broadside print is 15 x 22 limited edition of 15.

I have been itching to really do more than run a few test prints with scraps of this or that. The testing is over. I had a day off from work and was ready to slap some Red and Green ink on our first letterpress Christmas card. Merry Christmas. Or should I say Glaedelig Jul, as they say in Denmark. As a kid our holidays were pretty basic, but Anita has a lot of traditional Danish customs. I love hearing about some of the holiday rituals that they no longer practice. I can’t imaging having a Christmas Tree in the middle of a room and everyone gathering around to sing. I’m glad that Anita makes special point to keep some traditions alive. I love that she cooks traditional Danish cookies like Kleyner and Vanillie kranse.

I decided to focus the design on a simple danish folk art pleated paper Christmas heart called “Julehjerte.” According to Wikipedia, “The oldest known guide to make pleated Christmas hearts is found in the Official Nordic handicraft Journal from 1871, and the oldest pleated Christmas heart (from 1873) is preserved at the National Museum. But it took up till 40 years before the pleated Christmas hearts became common.”

Our 1928 10x15 Chandler and Price Letterpress

For my first project I should of simplified things. Meaning only printed the outside of the card, and maybe even only one color. Oh well, another letterpress lesson learned. Also lessons learned about trying to save money by grouping art on the polymer plate that I had made by Boxcar Press. Easier to just have everything in place, rather than try to strip in a line of text here and there. Press run was small, or you could say it was “Limited.”. I cut paper for 60 cards, after dialing in the press I ended up for with 40 cards and envelopes.  So, I’m sure we missed a few friends this year but hope that over the next year our printing skills will improve.