Steamed

This card never fails to bring a giggle to the recipient- especially if they suspect their cute behind was the inspiration.

Originally conceived as a Valentine greeting from Keith to Ron, “Steamed” is a limited edition of 80 and will never be printed again since the antique printing block was only in our possession for a few short hours. Cam paired it with Kaufmann and Engraver's Bold typefaces to place it in a 1920s idiom when steam (aahh) was still used as a source of power.

Give this card as a subtle hint to the one you admire or to remind your domestic other that way back you were just stealing a hopeful glance…maybe wishing you were at the bath house!

This card is available for purchase at Etsy.

Stationery Show Friends

I wanted to put up more on some of the great designers, printers, and shop owners we met at the Stationery Show. One of the highlights were the very warm and friendly people at Night Owl Paper Goods, whose cosy booth featured a set of exquisitely thin wooden notecards. The colors were all warm and had a great 70s feel.

One of the new stores that will be featuring our Lettre Sauvage wedding book is Convier Design, a boutique shop located in Redmond, Washington - our first northwest location! They were very friendly and knowledgeable, and we were so pleased that they were willing to share so much of their expertise with us. We trust we're in very good hands with them. 

We were also visited by Maginating, a new letterpress company close to home in Los Angeles. They had great bold patterns and colors, and we were especially impressed by their lovely blue burlap booth. 

The owner of Pretty Bitter had a wonderful story about receiving his booth space as a Christmas gift and coming up with a stationery company in time for the show. The result was an energetic and witty line of greeting cards. We especially like the awkwardly verbose "Sentimental Journeys" which playfully demonstrate how attempting to say it all never really gets the job done.

Finally we were thrilled to be visited by Urban Mercantile, a home accessories store that we'll definitely be visiting (and shopping at) the next time we're in San Francisco. We were excited to have a positive response from the owner, but moreover it was great to get constructive feedback based on shoppers' tastes and other letterpress offerings out there. Look out for our stationery and new matchbook sets at the store!

Stationery Show Part 2

We had a really successful time at the National Stationery Show, placing our wedding books and stationery in a number of stores around the country and meeting a lot of really great and interesting people. The giant matchbook noteset, which has perforated cards that tear out, was a big hit, and the little matchbooks that we gave away always made people smile. 

The stationery show was massive. Besides just stationery, there were pens with flowers on top, wrapping paper, ribbons, photo albums, Japanese decorative paper, and trinkets of all kinds. There were the big companies with massive booths, like Crane's and American Greetings, and then a lot of smaller companies like us. One of our neighbors, and some of the nicest people at the show, was Bald Guy Greetings, and their bright and quirky illustrations won them a Louie award. We hope they publish a children's book sometime soon.

Being surrounded by so much great work at the show, we were inspired to design an upcoming broadside and a few new wedding invitations during our spare time. All in all, we had a wonderful time and will definitely be back next year.

Lettre Sauvage at the National Stationery Show

Our first National Stationery Show experience has been great so far --we've brought with us new stationery lines, wedding invitation sample books, a handful of our literary editions, and a highly regarded matchbook noteset (more on that soon). Though it's a big trade show with thousands of people milling about, people who love paper tend to very friendly and open. We've learned quite a lot from kind buyers, wedding and event planners, store owners, creative directors, and other printers/designers like us. 

If you're in New York and plan on attending the show, we invite you to visit us at our booth #3346! 

More details and pictures soon.

GIANTS

Giants of the 1950s is our first completed book collaboratively printed for local poet and photographer, Carol DeCanio. The edition of 40 was printed by Fiona and designed by Carol and Fiona with the artistic input of Cameron who created a striking half-tone from Carol's photo of a 1930s car.
The accordion is 38 inches long and slides into a dust jacket. It is a sweet poem recounting memories of San Francisco transformed while the Giants were in the world series. It's available for $30 signed by the author. Email sales@lettresauvage.com for details.
Collaboration worked well for the three of us, leading to an unexpected design. We met several times and tried to "mock-up" the project on the laptop and looked at tiny paper sample squares, so it was really a thrill the first time Carol saw the final product. We knew we wanted to work with her when she came by and ordered stationery that said "I am an upright crumble." We were right.

primal circus

monday night 7-10 pm
the 31st of march

at Accolades Gallery
451 e. main st
ventura, ca

(at the back of
the el jardin
courtyard)

get ready to play

Lettre Sauvage Does Posters for Art City

Cameron Leggett and Fiona Spring kindly donated their expertise, labor, and printing services to Art City. Not only did they do the tickets for this Saturday's, March 8th, 2008 event, they also did the posters.
Original size is approximately 11 x 18. Posters printed on supremely thick and grainy recycled paper can be bought for only $10! All proceeds go to Art City, to help rebuild this Ventura westside artist collective of stone carvers, metal workers, film makers, painters, and authors.

Extra-Illustration

My history of the book class is off to a wonderful start and in recent weeks we've been looking at the practice of extra-illustration, or putting images in the margins of or in between sheets of existing books. We read essays about James Granger's A Biographical History of England, published in 1769, the first text to which extra-illustrated portraits were added. This practice came to be known as grangerizing a text, and last week we actually got to view a grangerized version of the Biographical History, among others. Alan Jutzi, the Chief Curator of Rare Books at the Huntington Library, visited our seminar and brought with him several of Richard Bull's meticulously grangerized books. For each paragraph or two excised from the original text, Bull added rare engravings and mezzotints, handwritten notes, and other fascinating ephemera and portrait into what could be considered an early form of scrapbooking.

Bull's handiwork, and that of his family --he was clearly aided by many of the women in the household--is extraordinary. For one text, he cut out a window on each page so that when the sheet from the original text was inserted, you could see both front and back of the double-sided sheet. Portraits and other clippings were added in and around those elements. Because books were not sold as bound objects until well into the 19th century, people like Bull could take a text like Granger's Biographical History or the bible and insert many sheets, embellishing the text, extending its meaning, and show off one's personal collection of prints or curatorial perspective.

Last week our class was visited by two scholars: William Sherman from York University presented "Toward a Pre-History of Collage" and Matthew Eddy of Durham University explained the early 19th century notetaking practices of Dugald Stewart in "Words in the Mind and on The Page: Dugald Stward, Memory and Taking Notes." Though both were excellent, Bill Sherman's presentation was particularly intriguing for the way that it traced a long-standing practice of cut-and-paste well before the modern conception of collage as practiced by Picasso and Braque. He demonstrated that as far back as the Renaissance, people were cutting out ornaments, borders, illuminated letters, and other scraps of text and placing them into other books, a practice that was as creative as it was destructive, and one which calls into 

the question the very way that we look at books. Far from being pristine, inviolable objects, as we might understand them today, books in an earlier period were sites of change. You can almost see the process of thought taking place on the page, and it's a fascinating area of study to try to understand how and why such books were made and how they were used, whether

 for pleasure, boredom, or erudition. Sherman, who works in marginalia, will be publishing this work as a book soon and I'll post a link once it's up. 

In the meantime, here's a link to his most current text, Used Books: Making Readers in Renaissance England, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

And here's more from the Huntington about extra-illustrated texts.

Come One, Come All!

One of the joys of keeping a letterpress studio is that people visit us. Mostly writers, artists, crafters and other lovers of print. We hope we've created a space where people can experience heightened creativity and communication- as the immortal creators of Zardoz put it: "You must go to second level with us!"

The postcard making workshop will be a great occasion to take it up a notch... and try out newly acquired antique circus (tragic clowns and contortionists included) printing blocks.

One place where we've been lucky enough to experience communion with the elements and dance under the stars is Art City the sculpture center and art gallery in Ventura, CA. This week we're thrilled to be printing tickets for a benefit to save Art City. Go if you can. Be counted among the righteous.

And we'll be welcoming visual and performance artist, Gauvin (scroll down), to print invitations for his upcoming marriage to Vincent Van Gogh, which will be held at the charming Accolades Gallery in Ventura, CA.

Have a safe and joyous Chinese New Year! Celebrate by practicing the ancient art of calligraphy with us. Blessed be the Rats!

Making It Together

Our 2008 workshop series will start with a love-in! Our Valentine making workshop- January 18, 6:00-10:00- will be a time to get a little funky with experimental techniques on the Vandercook to create very rich, hand-made compositions. In other words, we'll get a little sensual, a little messy...

Each of the six participants will take home 25 Valentines. For shy people like me, that's a three year supply!

View the whole workshop series with all details on our site. There's still room to add a workshop or party, so don't be shy about sharing ideas.