We like to run workshops that will be fun and lasting. We also like working with kids as we think any of these workshops will help them learn patience, develop handskills, value the relationship between effort and results, and strengthen their creativity.

Costs of workshops includes all materials (paper, bookboard, board cloth, paste, etc.) along with a light lunch (usually Nick & Joe’s Pizza, which we especially like) for the workshops scheduled for six or more hours.

Letterpress workshops:

Saturday, January 10, 10 - 4
Metal type composing and tabletop letterpress printing / $120 - COMPLETED
Sunday, January 25, 10 - 4
Metal type composing and tabletop letterpress printing / $120
Focus of this workshop will be making a small edition of Valentine cards.
Saturday, February 7, 10 - 4
Vandercook SP-15 / $120
Sunday, February 22, 10 - 4
Metal type composing and tabletop letterpress printing / $120
Saturday, March 7, 10 - 4
Chandler & Price platen press / $120
Sunday, March 22, 10 - 4
Vandercook SP-15 / $120

Bookmaking workshops:

Sunday, January 11, 10 - 5
One day, one book / $140 - COMPLETED
Saturday, January 17, 9 - Noon
No sew, no glue books / $60
Saturday, January 24, 2 - 5
Pastepaper primer / $60
Sunday, February 8, 10 - 5
One day, one book / $140
Saturday, February 14, 9 - 1
A pair to remember / $70
Saturday, February 14, 2 - 5
The hard case of the two books / $80
Sunday, March 8, 10 - 4
Classic clamshell box / $140
Saturday, March 14, 9 - 1
No sew, no glue books / $70
Saturday, March 21, 10 - 5
One day, one book / $140

Participants can be as young as 9 for any of the bookmaking workshops or 12 for the letterpress workshops. For younger participants bookmaking workshops provide wonderful handskills that are being lost in a world of joy sticks. We would love to do a workshop limited to young participants if there is enough interest. We would also be willing to run a series of workshops for after school either in consecutive days or the same day for several weeks. Let us know if you have such an interest.

A family or perhaps a design studio can buy out a workshop session with at least 4 attendees and we can provide a more focused discussion, if that is useful (wood type, mixing presses, wedding invitations, etc.).

With 5+ from the same family / business scheduling at the same time, we will discounts (5th and 6th at 50% off). It is worth mentioning that we can do workshops most any day and any time of the day if at least a group of three schedules at the same time. Make us an offer.

Depending on interest we may remove workshops with less than two subscribers. There are other letterpress and bookmaking workshops we can offer. Feel free look through the list on our website to encourage one and an approximate time frame.

If you are in the area of Newark, Delaware, let us know by email a couple of days early and we’ll see if we can schedule a tour of the Lead Graffiti studio.

Hopefully, 2009 is a year of change for a lot of reasons. We’d like to take the opportunity to bring this idea into our letterpress studio.

Lead Graffiti is printing cards by digging into our recycling pile. With a little help from our friends we have been collecting chipboard box packaging (cereal, soft drinks, etc.) which we then cut up into roughly 7″ x 5″ pieces. We overprint with silver as shown in the images below.

Some of the cards are cut out of larger boxes which allows us to cut the cards without having any of the box’s folds and some include a fold or two. Some of the cardboard is less than perfectly flat. For instance, the bottoms of 12-packs of soft drinks often show the round bottoms / tops, which are actually our favorite ones.

As the board is fairly thick, it may require the regular 42¢ postage.

The backside has a short bit of text about rethinking and a credit line to Lead Graffiti.

$2.00 each while supplies last (about 200 as we write this, and production is continuing).

          7-up

          TLC cereal bars

          Vanilla Wafers

          Wheat Thins

If you live close by, we need your boxes and it would be nice if you would rip apart the glued edge and have the box completely flat.

Even past this New Year season we have some plans for similar cards and would love for you and your friends to save these boxes for us.

We love going out to the studio and ‘letterpressing from the hip.’ Just look around for an image, maybe a typeface you’ve wanted to use but never got around to, and then just let things happen. Here are are two recent ones that might offer our readers an idea for the holidays.

The two on the left show versions of the handrolling we do directly on the paper to start. Typically, Jill and I will work together, each of us with a couple of colors. She was using a green and yellow and I was working with silver. Each sheet is set up to print two cards and Jill will roll and pass the card to me. Typically we will do about 100 sheets (200 cards).

In these cards we are using brackets (we have about 20 nice pairs) with Adagio Initials. We have about five very nice calligraphic faces that make nice initials or could work with short names. These are for Jill’s mother.

The two cards on the right use a wonderful image of a wheelbarrow that I bought for Jill a year or so ago off of eBay for about $12 as I remember. It is an electrotype from a wood engraving. Again she is using a set of brackets to set off the image. The line under the wheelbarrow says “How does your garden grow?” and is handset in Lutecia Italic, a font we have from Mike Kaylor’s collection.

The cards are A2 and come in sets of 8 for $15 or we can put them in a nice box for an additional $3.00. Shipping is $2.00. We can put any initials on the card. The cards will have the same general feel to them, but we can use different colors, different handrolling techniques, etc. as we flow through the process.