Hatch Show Print

Hey, all! Or should I say, y'all . . .

I'm nearing the end of my cross-country trek to Bloomington. Right now we're in Nashville, TN, watching "The Colbert Report" in our motel room.

But flash back to a few hours ago, when we were getting a gracious tour of the beautiful Hatch Show Print Shop, which has been making letterpressed concert posters and advertisements since 1879.

There was a little blurb about the shop in our Let's Go travel guide and then the Country Music Hall of Fame had a couple of displays of their work, both of historical handbills for artists like Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn, and, elsewhere in the museum, of their more current posters, for bands like Interpol and Modest Mouse. You can see a few samples HERE. Needless to say, we knew we had to go see it for ourselves.

We spent a little bit of time looking around in the front of the shop, and as I was standing at the register (I bought a reproduction Patsy Cline poster . . . Ruby, I know you'd be proud!), I finally got up the courage to ask if I could take a picture. From there, we got to talking about letterpress and they gave us a tour of the back. As you can see from the pictures below, it's a really beautiful shop, with shelves and shelves full of woodcut blocks, and what isn't used for storage space is papered with old posters the shop has produced.

They have two Vandercook presses, one about the size of SLC's and one a bit larger, as well as two gigantic presses, one of which is semi-automated and is used for large runs of over 1,000 posters. They're still actively making posters for bands that come through town, though they've branched out a bit from the "hillbilly" bands and coffee brands they used to promote.


Everyone was really warm and friendly, and it was awesome to see actual print-makers doing their thing in a working print shop. It seemed like they're people with a real affection for the work they're doing, which is really great. I'll leave you with one more beautiful picture . . . Don't you just want to curl up and live there?

"To & From"

A friend of mine got married recently, and instead of buying her a proper present, I made a book. It's supposed to be an address book, but I think it's just a notebook, or something. In any case, the idea was that it would be something they could use in starting their joint life together, a little more personal than a blender or a set of Pottery Barn glasses.

The cover is very thin cardboard, two pieces laminated together for each side and covered with red paper. It's coptic bound with some funny little crochet thread that has a little bit of gold plastic wound in it, which kind of sucked trying to pull it through the holes, but I think I have some sort of pathological need to include something gold in each project, so it had to stay. I folded the pocket and slapped it on there, nothing too fancy. I like the angle it's cut at, although it's not quite right, the edge of the pocket doesn't quite cover the white paper on the inside of the cover. That said, however, I love that there's a pocket. I love pockets--pockets for everyone and everything, I say!

I guess the reason it's not a real address book is that I didn't put lines, or address tabs with the alphabet on it. I really cheated them on that front, but I was running out of time and patience and sanity . . . Although, to be honest, whenever I have an address book, I don't really use it to its full capacity. I feel like there are always letters that never get used, and it seems kind of silly, somehow, to have just one name sitting alone on a page. This may, however, be because I only know about twelve people, total, in the whole world, two of whom refuse to give me their home addresses.

This, like the little pink book I posted about previously, is a sort of slap-dash production. The Yes! paste and the red paper came from Michael's, but excepting that, almost everything in the book was begged, borrowed, or reappropriated. My dad gave me the cardboard, the paper is drawing paper from a big sketch book and trimmed with a tiny little razor blade I found in my kitchen, using the back of the sketchbook as a mat, because my little mat was nowhere near big enough. The holes were poked with a large needle instead of an awl, and the curved needle I used was one my dad had around for sewing boat sails. The stamps are borrowed from my mom. (My favorite is the little pointing hand, don't ask me why.) So, in a sense, it really became an exercise in making do, in maximizing what few resources I did have. It's not perfect, but I think it looks pretty good for something I just sort of pulled together out of the ether. And it has a pocket, so there's always that.

A portable bouquet book

I put this book together the night of spring formal, just for something to do. It's not very fancy, but I thought I'd share it here since it's been a while since I posted anything.

The cover is pink construction paper, with flowers cut from a catalog. It's covered in clear packing tap to "laminate" it and bound with regular sewing thread in a single-signature of plain computer paper, cut to size. It's not quite 5" square (about 5 1/4" wide, 4 3/4" high), and 40 pages (10 sheets).

I had to use 3 strips of packing tape for the outside cover, folding them over the top and bottom and the side edges, and then two more pieces for the inside cover. It's a bit of a mess, since I did it on the floor, and it picked up all kinds of dust and grit on the tape. Obviously I didn't plan that one out very well. But I really like the shine it gives the cover. I'll have to look into other methods of laminating covers--short of buying a great, big laminating machine.

I'm not sure what I'll do with it. Maybe use it as an address book. I'm not sure. It's far from perfect, but it was fun to make. With the exception of my mat (a tiny little thing, only about 12"x12") and a knife, everything I used was just stuff I had lying around, and it was nice was to reassure myself that I can still make books without a proper studio.

On another note, my friend Kristin sent me a link to Rope-a-Dope Books, a small publishing co-op in Boston. There's not a whole lot to look at on the blog, but I thought it was worth passing on.

And speaking of links, I've been slowly compiling a list of book arts-related websites and blogs and things, so if you have any resources you like, let me know, either in the comments here or by email.