ages ago, juan angel chavez and myself took a little road trip to indiana to visit tribune showprint. tribune showprint is a letterpress print shop that opened in 1878. It is the oldest continuously running letterpress print shop in the USA (actually opened one year before famous hatch show print in nashville).
so much good type…....
summer is the busy time with all the carnivals and street fairs
there is a whole room full of the old etchings they use to print photos, so basically in this building there is probably a dated press photo engraving of every band or performer that ever played a midwest county fair
juan and fe digging through years of "clip art", lots of cowboys, fireworks, clowns and balloons
stacks of pre-printed posters waiting for final layer of type
hand setting the wood blocks into the "yeah buddy (round ball)" print we made
taking some notes and planning out some prints
setting up the art show print
the tribune office wall
it was a pretty amazing yet sad trip. on one hand it was amazing to see all this old wood block type and all the old presses but at the same time it was sad to think that there are very few of these old spots still around. hopefully they take care of themselves and can keep the doors open long into the future. it would be sad to see all these old places and the great old printing techniques disappear.
juan and i made 8 different 14x22 prints at tribune showprint that trip (either by setting the art/type while we were there, or having the crew complete our ideas after we left), we are selling a few of them through turntable lab this month.
these 2 based off of my experiences at the maxwell street market while living in pilsen
we tried to find every large circle in the place and put them on one print, at the time we didnt even realize that one of them was actually a globe.
this one was just too good not to do. somethings just speak for themselves….
Posted by Struggle Inc on September 22, 2008 at 09:15 AM
