Letterpress - Pack C
The 48th Quarterly Limited Edition for Autumn 2020 is the “United States of Letterpress,” featuring the work of nine independent letterpress shops from across America. This series demonstrates a wide array of craftsmanship, ingenuity, and love for the age-old and tactile process of letterpress printing.
Continuing a tradition embossed into the history of American letterpress printing, the layouts, themes and messages are highly personal statements about heritage, geography, tradition, and social issues, and they also demonstrate the diversity and strength of the letterpress community.
Skylab Letterpress of Kansas City, Missouri printed the designs for each book’s flyleaf, including a reproduction of a border from the Bay Psalms Book (1640), thought to be the very first book printed in the American colonies.
Lake County Press, of Waukegan, Illinois, pre-printed the Field Notes elements on the exteriors and interiors of the cover stock, which was then trimmed down from standard 26" x 40" press sheets to 8.5" x 13", with the art arranged 2-up on a sheet. Field Notes then shipped one color to each of the letterpress printers.
The printers utilized any and all methods at their disposal, with the only dictate being that they print a 2-color design using specified red & blue inks.
This project was produced through the craft and creativity of twelve printers around the United States, with the help, gumption, and know-how of countless others, passed down by job-printers, collectors, and hobbyists over the last several centuries.
Specifications:
- Cover: Printed on 1 of 6 French Pop-Tone 100#C stocks with a thick, brute force, 1-color application of “Linotype Slug Gray” soy-based Superior ink. It was then sent to 1 of 6 Letterpress printers around the U.S.A. and smashed with a 2-color application of “Process Blue” and “Rubine Red” letterpress inks.
- Innards: Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T “Bright White,” with a fine, 1-color application of “Double Knee Duck Canvas Light Brown” soy-based Toyo ink.
- Cover and innards printed on a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 40" 6-color printing press, as well as various vintage presses (see flyleaf for more details).
- Bound with a Heidelberg Stitchmaster ST 270 5-pocket saddle stitcher with cover feeder/scorer & Rima RS 10S in-line stacker.
- Corners precisely rounded to a 3/8" (9.5mm) radius with a Challenge DCM double round-corner machine.
- Memo book dimensions are 3-1/2" × 5-1/2" (89mm × 140mm).
- Graph grid: 3/16" × 3/16" (4.7mm × 4.7mm).
- FIELD NOTES uses only the Futura typeface family (Paul Renner, 1927) in its materials.
- All FIELD NOTES memo books are printed and manufactured in the U.S.A.
