07/16/2018
Hi, folks: long time no post! A lot has happened over the past year. Probably the biggest thing regarding the Paper Wren is the discontinuation of my being a business. And why did I shut down the business end? Largely to free myself up to do more creative things in a direction I wanted to go, namely letterpress publishing.
So, does this mean the Paper Wren flew away? By no means! I am now a private press, printing under the press name "The Paper Wren". All studio and press equipment is still present and active! I'm..... just not doing the Letterpress "white noise". There's a gazillion letterpress operations out there doing Stationery, Wedding stuff, Business cards.... I found myself getting drowned out in the midst of Letterpress operations that have a whole lot more money behind them, and being traditional, resisiting the non-traditional trends that are beginning to manifest in the modern letterpress industry, I decided to jump off the wagon, folks.
Not a whole lot of letterpress operations are focusing upon publishing, the native environment for these presses of ours. They were made to print.... letters! Wow, what a novelty. Printing words with a letterpress as a mainstay. I call it a return to Gutenberg.
Here is my first attempt as a private press to print a Chapbook. What follows is a reposting from my own personal page:
"Taking a pause while the press is inking up for the next page run, thought I’d share the title page, next to the cover that was printed last session. The paper is a natural white Neenah classic laid, used extensively for period reproduction books. I opted for it largely owing to cost reasons (I am entirely funding this out of my own resources) ....and I do like the contrast and 18th century texture. My next project may step up the game with semi-sized Lettra Text weight but ohh golly, Paper is expensive, especially if the printer is nudging toward fine limited edition publication printing. But that’s way down the road. This is only a first step."
