What is Letterpress?

In one word: Awesome!

In a few more words: In 1440 letterpress printing was invented by Johannes Gutenberg (of the “Gutenberg Press” and “Gutenberg Bible”) with the then-modern technology of movable type, wherein a reversed, raised surface (text or image) was inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image, one color at a time, one sheet at a time. Movable type was first invented in China using ceramic type in 1040 AD, and the Koreans developed movable metal type in 1100 AD, but it wasn’t until Gutenberg’s invention of a wooden printing press, based on a previously-existing wine press model, that printing with metal type came to the forefront of book-reproduction technology. With the advent of industrial mechanization, inking began to be carried out by rollers, instead of by hand, even further speeding the process, which paved the way for a broader dissemination of art and knowledge into the 20th century.

Understanding the Process

Hand-inked, hand-fed, hand-cleaned…

Each piece produced on our antique presses is assembled and hand-fed in and out of the press. This process requires constant attention to detail to ensure proper ink coverage, alignment (registration) and impression. Any product that has more than one color (or score, or die-cut, or emboss…) will get run through our press(es) multiple times. Once the first color is applied to each sheet of paper, one at a time, the letterpress must be fully disassembled and washed. Ink plates are also cleaned and replaced with plates for the next run, the next color is individually registered to the first, and the process begins again for pass number two. Then, every piece is run in and out of the letterpress a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth…) time until your print is complete! Once the printing is complete, any piece that requires trimming, scoring, folding, edge painting or any other fancy finishing work moves on to that press, before being carefully packaged and shipped out to you! It’s a labor of love, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Our Machinery Line-up

"Ruby"

The 1912 8x12 Chandler & Price

This gorgeous lady is our original "big press" and the piece of equipment that took Twin Ravens Press from being a hobby in my post-college-apartment-bedroom to a full-fledged business. She came to us from Portland, Oregon and has been purring ever since. She‘s always gotten the most use, and, up until recently, nearly 100% of our products were printed by her. While she’s still the queen of the pressroom, Ruby now mostly runs smaller jobs involving just-ink, leaving the bigger, more-complicated stuff to her bigger pal, Jules Vern.

"Jules Verne"

The 1938 10x15 Chandler & Price with Auto-Feeder and Foil Attachment

Jules is our biggest press, and the press responsible for all of the fancy foil stamping, large areas of die-cutting, and bigger prints (like our limited edition maps) that you see in the shop! The printer who sold me this press told me that presses like Jules were the standard equipment put on board WWII navy battleships to print orders, and due to the aftermath of the war, almost as many of them are sitting in sunken ships at the bottom of the sea as there are these days on land. I‘d love to one day create a fancy letterpress art print of the press with a nautilus or whimsical squid or something, but until that happens, it only seemed fitting to name this one after the French novelist and poet, who composed such captivating tales as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days. Jules may not be moving very fast, (he’s 1500 lbs!), but we sure like to imagine that his prints are going exciting places!

"Kelsey" AKA "The Brat"

A 6x10 Kelsey Excelsior Platen Hand Press

Cute little Kelsey is the princess that got this whole thing started. Kelsey was given to Kristin by her mentor and fellow letterpress printer, Bob Giles, as a gift her first year out of college. She took Kelsey home (to an apartment), cleaned her up, de-rustified her, greased her up and started printing holiday cards that she sold on Etsy prior to thinking that this whole thing could ever be more than a fun hobby. Everything Kristin made was painstakingly printed by hand (read: very slowly) on Kelsey for the first 9 months of her printing career (yes, those first wedding invitation suites were printed on her too!), until she was able to purchase Ruby. Nowadays Kelsey prefers sitting on her own special shelf in the print shop, raking in the attention, rather than doing much of the actual labor. However, she still enjoys the occasional outing to printers fairs, classes and letterpress demos, while letting her bigger siblings get the real job done. She was the one that got this whole thing started, and as such, will always be our baby.

"The Griffin"

A Floor-model Etching Press

Griffin is our newest press and can’t wait to get in on the action! Capable of printing a sheet up to 16"x28", Griffin will allow us to explore some alternate styles of printing such as lithography, wood-block relief printing, linoleum block printing, and etching, that might compliment the letterpress process beautifully. Kristin studied some printmaking in college at the University of Oregon (along with Photography and Graphic Design) and would love to get back in to incorporating these more "high-art" printing processes into her letterpress work, and Griffin is one of the presses that is going to make it possible!

Other Equipment in our Arsenal:

26″ 1962 Challenge Guillotine Paper Cutter

Challenge Proof Press

Challenge Corner Rounder

Baumfolder Paper Drill

18″x24″ Universal CO2 Laser Cutter

And a whole arsenal of graphic design equipment and pre-press supplies including scanners, cameras, and computers to get your design ready for pressing!

One of my favorite wedding suites ever: modern sty