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!

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‼ 

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!

Here’s a few pics of the 1948 Challenge Paper Cutter (accented with some tiny plants), as well as Ray’s team of experts muscling it around.

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. 

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.