This was a nice full upper and lowercase font that we thought might be good for printing names on certificates. There is enough of it that you could set a number of names before needing to redistribute.

Our first full wood typeface and it was nice to make it Gill Sans. Gill Sans has been one of our favorite typefaces for a while now.  We even did a gravestone rubbing of Eric Gill’s grave site in Spean, England.

An eBay buy in a nice complete font of Cheltenham Condensed Outline. Now if we can develop the mechanism of producing our own wood type it would be nice to create the insides so we could print these in two colors.

This is a handpainted sign we photographed on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. There is just something wonderfully human about it you just cannot get at FastSigns.

Two new photos of the effect of time on type taken on a visit to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to visit our friends Becky & Bernie Herman.

Ray Nichols and Jill Cypher of Wallflowers Press have accepted an offer from the city of Newark to design a book celebrating its 250th anniversary (1758-2008). The book is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2007. Click here for a brief history of Newark.

Wallflowers Press is a supporter of LetPress, an online discussion group listserv, that exchanges ideas, techniques and other information about letterpress. Enough of us agreed to do one page of a 5″ x 7″ calendar to produce four complete calendars plus covers. There are three North American calendars and one British/European calendar. Jill contributed one of the North American covers and Ray contributed one of the North American Januarys.

Title: LetPress 2007 North American calendar / Cover
Client: LetPress listserv
Edition: 60
Inks: 3
. . . 1 ink handrolled on the background
. . . 2 inks using press rollers
Production: photopolymer
Software: InDesign
Size: 5″ (w) x 7″ (h)
Press: Vandercook Universal 3
Paper: cover stock
Fonts:
. . . large: Gothic Extended / wood type and reduced
. . . small: Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed
Designer: Jill Cypher
Printers: Jill Cypher & Ray Nichols

\par
\par
Title: LetPress 2007 North American calendar / January\par
Client: LetPress listserv\par
Edition: 60\par
Ink: none\par
. . . 2 runs of debossing (two depths)\par
Software: InDesign\par
Size: 5″x 7″\par
Press: Vandercook Universal 3\par
Paper: Stonehenge\par
Fonts: Joanna\par
Designer: Ray Nichols\par
Printers: Ray Nichols & Jill Cypher\par
\par
Story: I wanted to do something that would look different than I was expecting for the other months. We are getting ready to move our equipment into a new studio space and right now it is all under a tarp under our carport. With the temperature hovering around 45 most of the days I wanted to print I was nervous about putting ink on the press. So it often snows in January and a nice white calendar page seemed to make sense.

Wallflowers Press has added a Vandercook SP-15 to its inventory.

We wanted a smaller Vandercook that used a hand crank so we could offer letterpress classes or press rental.

. . . Serial number: 26817 (built in 1967)
. . . Maximum sheet size: 14\’c2\’be x 20
. . . Maximum form: 14 x 18
. . . Bed size: 15 x 31\’c2\’bd
. . . Floor space: 32 x 69
. . . Weight: 705 pounds

Currently our workhorse is a Vandercook Universal III (an 18 x 24 image on a 18\’c2\’be x 28 sheet) with automatic paper delivery for limited edition fine press books.