We recently designed and printed via letterpress a line of notecards for The Metropolitan Opera. It is great fun working for a client of this stature. This project to develop a core line of one color cards turned out to be a lot more complicated than we originally thought. Getting the goldest gold ink possible on Crane’s Lettra and getting absolutely solid coverage were interesting solutions to solve. That is a lot easier to say after you’ve solved them, I promise. We provided individual cards in clear sleeves and in boxes of eight with matching envelopes.

We wanted boxes to match the cards. We met a great box supplier called Catawba Paper Box Co. at the National Stationery Show this past May. They wrapped the boxes with 32# Crane Lettra to match the cards. The box has a clear plastic box over the cards / envelopes that fits inside the bottom. Then a top fits over all of that. And just in case this project wasn’t enough work, we also letterpress printed a belly band to go around each of the four boxes.

The four cards shown here (out of a total of eleven designs) are what we called the assets—the arches that is the face of the Metropolitan Opera’s building at Lincoln Center, a pattern from the stage curtains, gold rings from the brass gates that lead into the theater, and the incredible chandeliers that hang most everywhere. If you get to The Metropolitan Opera take a look at their store and check out the notecards.

There was a box of almost the same designs (two were reversed) which were printed in white ink and debossed. Another box had a simplified set of arches only about an inch wide in the lower right corner. One card had the arches printed in gold and the other had it printed in white and debossed. The last card was a silver / black version of the chandeliers which is being sold as a holiday card with Season’s greetings printed on the inside.

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