Hey!! In Saskatoon this weekend? You should go down to the Void Gallery and check out the show by the people that make up Articulate Ink in Regina. The show runs until September 1, so there is only a couple more days to enjoy the fabulous silk screened prints by Michelle, Karli, Amber and Caitlin.
Saturday, 31 August 2013
Friday, 30 August 2013
Welcome to the Backyard, Gordon!
In July we shutdown our studio for a little hiatus. We traveled back to our home town, Toronto, enjoy in the festivities of a sister's wedding and to generally hangout and reminisce with some of our close friends. While in Toronto though, we came across a letterpress auction, selling a variety of letterpress goods, including vintage presses. We came across this lovely GP Gordon, and thought "what they hey, let's throw out a bid and see what happens". Well, needless to say, we won!
The press was actually located in Ohio, and we corresponded with the owner who said he would crate, package and ship the press to us once we were back in Saskatoon for what seemed like a too good to be true price. When we arrive back to the "city of bridges", we tidied up the studio and made some space for our new baby, just in time to have the press arrive at our door. We were elated to see the delivery truck, grinning ear to ear just to take a peek at our new purchase. When the driver opened the rear door though, our smiling face quickly turned to looks of concern. The press was shipped strapped on top of two broken, rickety-old palettes. Garbage bags were wrapped around the top of the press, adhered with what could only be described as wishes and hopes. No string. No wires. Not even tape!! We were dumbfounded that it made it this far!! Luckily we had a skilled delivery driver. He slowly maneuvered those rickety palettes with keen precision, and although the flywheel fell off during the unloading - likely the result of not being firmly attached or supported by the structurally sound garbage bag barrier - the press made it successfully into the studio with a few hardy grunts and pushes.
This beauty will need a little restoration before it can be used, but it sure is going to be a show piece when it's done. We are trying to do a little research into this GP Gordon Press in preparation for its restoration, and will be posting about it in up coming weeks, as the little tidbits we found out about this press are quite interesting. In the meantime, here's a couple pictures of our newest old press. Welcome to the Backyard Gordon!
The press was actually located in Ohio, and we corresponded with the owner who said he would crate, package and ship the press to us once we were back in Saskatoon for what seemed like a too good to be true price. When we arrive back to the "city of bridges", we tidied up the studio and made some space for our new baby, just in time to have the press arrive at our door. We were elated to see the delivery truck, grinning ear to ear just to take a peek at our new purchase. When the driver opened the rear door though, our smiling face quickly turned to looks of concern. The press was shipped strapped on top of two broken, rickety-old palettes. Garbage bags were wrapped around the top of the press, adhered with what could only be described as wishes and hopes. No string. No wires. Not even tape!! We were dumbfounded that it made it this far!! Luckily we had a skilled delivery driver. He slowly maneuvered those rickety palettes with keen precision, and although the flywheel fell off during the unloading - likely the result of not being firmly attached or supported by the structurally sound garbage bag barrier - the press made it successfully into the studio with a few hardy grunts and pushes.
This beauty will need a little restoration before it can be used, but it sure is going to be a show piece when it's done. We are trying to do a little research into this GP Gordon Press in preparation for its restoration, and will be posting about it in up coming weeks, as the little tidbits we found out about this press are quite interesting. In the meantime, here's a couple pictures of our newest old press. Welcome to the Backyard Gordon!
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Saskatoon Loves Pilates!
Over the last couple months we have been working with
designer Fred Reibin at Zephyr Creative to print a one of a kind letterpress
business card for a truly one of a kind business: Love Pilates. Fred had a
distinct vision for the business cards and presented us with a wonderfully
simple but complex design to be letterpressed. Printing these business cards was
exciting opportunity to use French Paper Co's Kraft paper and to combine both letterpress and screen printing processes. We
believe that the combination of French's paper with letterpress and screen printing really showcased Fred’s brilliant
design.
We genuinely loved being part of this project and enjoyed
the whole creative process involved in bringing these handmade business cards
to life‼
Saturday, 29 June 2013
A New Addition
Over the last week we recently acquired a 1948 Challenge
industrial sized paper cutter. It’s a beautiful cast iron dragon, capable of
consuming 26 inches of cotton weave in a fraction of a second. This lovely item
was donated to us from a gentlemanly scholar named Grant from Stun Collective. He had mentioned he acquired this machine a number of years ago,
but while moving spaces no longer had the facility to accommodate this cast
iron treasure. Having met at the Flock and Gather Sale in
April, he contacted us knowing that we might be able to use this industrial
sized paper chewing beast – all we had to do was move it. Similar to our
previous encounters in moving large industrial machines, this one also presented itself with a few challenges. The
biggest was finding a company within Saskatoon willing to move it. Luckily, after
only a day of searching we came across the superb movers at Ray’s Moving andStorage. They moved this heavy antique piece of heritage
with the same skill and precision expected of a surgeon during open heart
surgery. In under an hour they had the paper cutter moved from a place currently
undergoing demolition, to the heated floors of our cozy backyard studio.
Big thanks go out to Grant for hooking us up with this
beauty and for being so accommodating and patient with the entire moving
process! Also, a shout out goes to Whitney, who connected us with Grant and jumpstarted
all the magic!
Saturday, 8 June 2013
A Little Rain
Despite the uncooperative weather fun times were had at the Waterfront Craft Arts Festival. There were great artisans and some outstanding demos - blacksmithing, lino block printing using a stream roller and even some slick swing dancing!!
Big thanks to the SCC for hosting this event and to all the dedicated Saskatoonians who came out to supported all the local artisans.
Thursday, 6 June 2013
Waterfront Craft Art Festival
Come check us out this Saturday at the Waterfront Craft Art Festival hosted by the Saskatchewan Craft Council. Just look for the Shauna Buck Illustrations and Fun Things Tent.
All the fun times begin at 10am and run until 5pm Saturday June 8th.
All the fun times begin at 10am and run until 5pm Saturday June 8th.
Sunday, 26 May 2013
Chandler and Price 10 x 15 Platen Press
The workhorse in our studio is our massive Chandler and Price 10 x 15 Platen Press. This was the second press we ever purchased and you can see from the pictures that it is quite a large upgrade from "Siggy". Our C&P is known as the 'New Style' - and is easily recognized by its increased size and straight spoke flywheel compared to the 'Old Style' C&Ps (Check out a sweet photo of the C&P Old Style press flywheel here from the people at Duet Letterpress). The 'New Style' C&P is the most common type of hand fed semi automatic platen press, but has not been made for nearly 50 years and in fact ours rolled off the line in 1927.
We had been on the hunt for a C&P for a long while, but soon learnt that they are difficult to acquire. Often these beautiful machines sell via word of mouth or through forums that see them sold within days of their posting. We were fortunate to have come across a graphic designer from Courtenay, British Columbia selling his press and we quickly snagged the opportunity to purchase this bad boy. How excited were we?!? Now all we needed to do was ship our newly acquired humdinger. For those of you unfamiliar with the 'New Style' C&P, it weights 2500lbs (~1100kg) crated with a 55x48x60 inch footprint. To top it off our press was situated in a remote studio located in an open field. This presented us with a whole new set of logistic hurdles. The first shipping attempt played out like Corb Lund’s song Truck Got Stuck, with a total of three trucks getting stuck in an attempt to reach the site (with no success) where the press was located. In trying to arrange a second attempt, we discovered that because the press was located in a fairly remote part of Courtenay, BC all major shipping companies outsourced the initial retrieval of the press to the same local carrier, which after the first dismal attempt refused to pick up the press from its current location. Instead, arrangements had to be made to forklift the press from the studio, placed in a truck and then transported to a loading dock where the press could then be pick up by the local carriers. After much headache and extreme patience our press was successfully loaded and shipped to us in Saskatoon in March 2012, where it lived in our backyard garage and served as the grounds for our humble beginnings. The C&P has since been moved, along with "Siggy", in December 2012 to our current studio space.
Our C&P currently remains the backbone to all our letterpress products. If you listen close, you can probably hear its satisfying metallic clanking in the heart of Caswell Hill in Saskatoon.
We had been on the hunt for a C&P for a long while, but soon learnt that they are difficult to acquire. Often these beautiful machines sell via word of mouth or through forums that see them sold within days of their posting. We were fortunate to have come across a graphic designer from Courtenay, British Columbia selling his press and we quickly snagged the opportunity to purchase this bad boy. How excited were we?!? Now all we needed to do was ship our newly acquired humdinger. For those of you unfamiliar with the 'New Style' C&P, it weights 2500lbs (~1100kg) crated with a 55x48x60 inch footprint. To top it off our press was situated in a remote studio located in an open field. This presented us with a whole new set of logistic hurdles. The first shipping attempt played out like Corb Lund’s song Truck Got Stuck, with a total of three trucks getting stuck in an attempt to reach the site (with no success) where the press was located. In trying to arrange a second attempt, we discovered that because the press was located in a fairly remote part of Courtenay, BC all major shipping companies outsourced the initial retrieval of the press to the same local carrier, which after the first dismal attempt refused to pick up the press from its current location. Instead, arrangements had to be made to forklift the press from the studio, placed in a truck and then transported to a loading dock where the press could then be pick up by the local carriers. After much headache and extreme patience our press was successfully loaded and shipped to us in Saskatoon in March 2012, where it lived in our backyard garage and served as the grounds for our humble beginnings. The C&P has since been moved, along with "Siggy", in December 2012 to our current studio space.
Our C&P currently remains the backbone to all our letterpress products. If you listen close, you can probably hear its satisfying metallic clanking in the heart of Caswell Hill in Saskatoon.
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Show exclusive cards
Unreal City in Saskatoon is having a new exhibition called Wild in the City featuring the work of 25 sweet local artist. We are super pumped to participate in this awesome event. In our excitement we have created new show exclusive cards featuring Shauna's illustration that is on display at the exhibition.
Come grab 'em up for the hip fox in your life today and until July 20th only at Unreal City!!!
Monday, 20 May 2013
Our Presses - Sigwalt Chicago #11
At our sales we often get questions about the type of presses (and where they came from) that we currently use to create our wonderful letterpressed products. Since it's such a common question we thought we'd share a little detail about the Sigwalt Chicago #11, the Chandler and Price 10x15 and the Kesley 3x5 that we currently own in the next few blog posts.
The first press we ever purchased was a tiny 3x5 Sigwalt Chicago #11 table top press (actual printing area is 2-1/2 x 4 inch). We purchased this from an individual from Atlanta, Georgia. Below are some pictures of "Siggy" as we first unwrapped it. As you can see it was in rough shape - needing new rollers, some oiling and some rust removal - but it was operational. What we didn't know at the time was that not all the pieces of the press were original, and at some point replacement parts had been added that did not fit quite properly. When squaring the platen to the bed in preparation for our first impressions, one of the replacement parts snapped the column that holds the platen to the impression lever, rendering "Siggy" nonoperational!! You could imagine our dismay. We didn't even have an opportunity to create an initial impression and see what this little guy could do!! We have been on a search for a replacement part ever since, but because the #11 is a less common table top press, parts are hard to come by. So, currently "Siggy" serves as an ornamental press in our studio, soaking up the rays near the studio windows, as his bigger brothers, the C and P and Kelsey, do most of the dirty work in the shop.
Even though our little Sigwalt is down for the count, this little guy is a much loved reminder of our humble letterpress beginnings!!
The first press we ever purchased was a tiny 3x5 Sigwalt Chicago #11 table top press (actual printing area is 2-1/2 x 4 inch). We purchased this from an individual from Atlanta, Georgia. Below are some pictures of "Siggy" as we first unwrapped it. As you can see it was in rough shape - needing new rollers, some oiling and some rust removal - but it was operational. What we didn't know at the time was that not all the pieces of the press were original, and at some point replacement parts had been added that did not fit quite properly. When squaring the platen to the bed in preparation for our first impressions, one of the replacement parts snapped the column that holds the platen to the impression lever, rendering "Siggy" nonoperational!! You could imagine our dismay. We didn't even have an opportunity to create an initial impression and see what this little guy could do!! We have been on a search for a replacement part ever since, but because the #11 is a less common table top press, parts are hard to come by. So, currently "Siggy" serves as an ornamental press in our studio, soaking up the rays near the studio windows, as his bigger brothers, the C and P and Kelsey, do most of the dirty work in the shop.
Even though our little Sigwalt is down for the count, this little guy is a much loved reminder of our humble letterpress beginnings!!
Sunday, 12 May 2013
We are continuing to update our website. Things are coming along with some fun developments taking place in the background. We hope to add some of these new features/images/details in the upcoming weeks. So exciting!!!
We also recently received our first large shipment of French Paper Co stock. Muscletone Sno Cone, Hot Fudge, Whip Cream, Black, Kraft and Dur-o-tone Butcher Orange. Too excited to start pressing with these beautiful papers!! Keep an eye out as we will be posting things as they are produced! In the meantime, here's a picture of our head receiver checking that the boxes match the ordered stock.
We also recently received our first large shipment of French Paper Co stock. Muscletone Sno Cone, Hot Fudge, Whip Cream, Black, Kraft and Dur-o-tone Butcher Orange. Too excited to start pressing with these beautiful papers!! Keep an eye out as we will be posting things as they are produced! In the meantime, here's a picture of our head receiver checking that the boxes match the ordered stock.
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