Letterpress Project 1

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am taking a letterpress class this semester. I love it. It's a lot of work, and very time consuming, but it's great none the less. So, today I want to share my first project. Being the first, there were quite a few guidelines/restrictions we had to follow. First, the paper size and type was determined for us. It was a very thin sheet, not leaving room for much impression, and the size had to be 4x5. We could only use black ink, and only text. The text had to be set by had and original. We were to choose an object that has some significance to us, and then write 50 words, describing it. See if you can figure out what my object was.

The text reads:

Six surfaces form the solid shape; faces the same size, 12 edges the same length. The colors call, asking to be grouped. I twist and I turn, hearing the familiar friction of plastic on plastic as each small square moves to become one with the other 8 of its color, creating solid faces. Once such a mystery, now so simple to solve.

Now, for those of you who don't know what it means to handset type, let me paint the picture. Each little letter is a piece of type. The type is stored in a case, which is basically a divided drawer.You guessed it. You have to line up the little pieces, add spacing between words, and leading between lines. Takes some time, but gives you some appreciation for what people used to do back in the day. When there's a letter that's worn down, you have to replace it. If you run out of e's, you have to run it on the press twice, once for the first half, and once for the second. The particular typeface I chose, Twentieth Century, has a lot of smashed type, so I spent a lot of time replacing the little letters with tweezers. And I mean little. The first part is 6 point, and the bottom two lines are 8 point. If you want to see how small that is, type something in 6 point, print it out, and imagine cutting out each individual letter and that letter sitting on a piece of lead that's .918" tall. Tiny.