Local Letterpress
A Visit to Hound Dog Press in Louisville, Kentucky.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting a local letterpress shop: Hound Dog Press. We are working with them to create certificates for several professors so I dropped by to view their metal type and paper samples. While there, they were kind enough to give me a quick tour of the shop.
I snapped a few photos with my iPhone and even took a quick video of one of the presses in action (at the end). Move your cursor over the images to see the captions.
Hound Dog Press is owned and operated by Nick Baute and Robert Ronk. If you're local to the Louisville area I would highly recommend visiting. They are very friendly and knowledgeable and – based on their portfolio – do good work. They also sell pre-made cards, coasters and other neat things you'd expect at a letterpress shop. They are located at the Mellwood Arts Center, which as a side note is also a very cool place.
Also of note, I'm using Typekit to deliver
all the typefaces for this post (notice the small graphic in the lower right). I'm using Le Havre for the titles and Liberation Serif for the
main copy.
Typekit was dead simple to implement and the back-end has a friendly interface that's easy to use. Though I'm sure that comes at no surprise. The pricing plan is affordable as well, especially if you act now and get the yearly pricing discount.
For me? The discount on the Personal account was too good to pass on, so I've signed up for a year. I'm looking forward to using it more and determining whether or not it will be a permanent solution.
Type Tray A tray of various type ornaments.
Paper Cut and ready to go!
More Ornaments It appears as though these are part of a border set. They had neat samples of work they had done with borders.
The Elder Press This is their oldest letterpress made by Golding & Co. in Boston. Its nameplate is shown to the right.
Golding Pearl Letterpress The patents listed on the right are from the late 1800s.
Set Type This is a job that has been set and is ready for the press. I learned that the wood used to fill the space is called furniture. Also, it's packed so tightly that you can pick up the frame, shake, poke and prod it and it won't even budge.
Collection Drawers of type.
- Ink is spread on the round disc at the top.
- The set type is placed on the plate that is sort of in the middle.
- The paper is placed on the plate that is moving back and forth.
- The rollers pass over the inked disc, onto the type and then the paper is pressed against the type.