levigator press
April 17, 2013
I’ve decided to keep all of my business and studio news and content over here in a new space: Levigator Press. It’s still a work in progress, and of course studio news will still spill over into here, but I thought there might be some people who would like to follow what’s happening in the LP studio without having to know about what I’m cooking or what’s new in the ongoing rivalry between my cats. There is a page there detailing all of the upcoming bookbinding and printmaking workshops I’ll be teaching, so if you want to get your Levigator Press learning on, go over and check it out!
Posted by jodi on April 17, 2013 at 9.19am
our new baby
November 10, 2011
An Adana 8×5 tabletop platen press. It’s in good working condition and has been well cared for, with a refurbished roller that looks new. With it we got a case and a half of large wood type (two different point sizes), a kilogram or so of various lead type ornaments and initial caps, four boxes of new lead type (mostly weird script typefaces but there’s one nice 8pt caps type I can see us getting a lot of use out of), half a dozen composing sticks, at least fifteen speed quoins, three quoin keys (I AM ESPECIALLY EXCITED ABOUT THE THREE QUOIN KEYS, YOU GUYS), plenty of gauge pins, the wooden block that you use to gently tamp down the type before locking up a form (I can’t remember what this is called), a slug cutter, a Lassco corner rounder (so now I can have two, with different blade sizes, instead of having to switch the blades out all the time!). And when we had it all loaded into the car, the fellow we bought it from handed me a Bostitch saddle stapler and said, here, you can have this too. That gift with purchase alone will revolutionize my life, y’all. SO EXCITED.
Posted by jodi on November 10, 2011 at 8.21am
handmade paper match notes
October 5, 2011
New in my etsy shop, these tiny notebooks come in sets of 5 so you can keep one in every pocket. The covers are various handmade papers containing cotton linters, abaca, kapok, kudzu, denim rags, okra stalks and other good stuff. With these little books on hand your social encounters can be just like old times, before cellphones and smoking bans, when you’d scribble notes to yourself and new friends’ phone numbers inside the cover of a matchbook.
I’m working on getting more things in the store that are more subtle, in neutral colours and with simple finishes rather than my usual garish, sensory-overload style. Watch for a new line of miniature (but larger than these) notebooks with these same handmade paper soon, probably after the weekend.
Posted by jodi on October 5, 2011 at 11.21am
shop update!
March 17, 2011
The sun has finally come out, which means there’s good light in which to photograph the very large pile of new journals that were finished up a few weeks ago. I’ve uploaded some of them into my etsy shop, with more to be doled out over the next few days. And even better: spring is finally here! Which means it’s time to throw off the sweaters and grab a camera, sneakers and sunglasses, pocket a pencil and a sweet little notebook and get outside to have some fun! And, you know, take notes.
Posted by jodi on March 17, 2011 at 1.38pm
shop update!
May 21, 2010
Some new journals for ye olde etsy shoppe:
Posted by jodi on May 21, 2010 at 2.07pm
back to basics
March 6, 2010
Yesterday I taught a small beginning bookbinding workshop. Participants made models of three simple book forms: a single signature pamphlet binding, a Japanese 4-hole binding and perfect binding. Here are some of the finished samples:
Because we have no bindery equipment here, I brought up this somewhat primitive trimming apparatus that my dad made for me back in the 1990s when I was doing a lot of bookbinding but didn’t have any money or any tools. Propped up on one end (the end you can see here, with blocks under it to keep it steady) a pair of backing boards can be slid inside and the book clamped for rounding the spine. At the other end it’s got a nice high smooth wooden wall that’s used for a guide to keep the blade nice and straight for trimming the clamped book; it uses an old blade from a plane with leather wrapped around it, and back when I was trimming twenty textblocks a day with this thing I’d wrap my hand in leather and fabric as well and still get blisters in two lines across all four fingers. It’s a grueling job, but it does the trick.
Using this old trimmer again has me really looking forward to getting the new (to me) Chandler & Price paper trimmer up and running once I’m back home (remember how I was going to get the base sanded and painted over the February break? Didn’t happen). Did I mention that I’m planning to spend my whole summer down in the basement just cutting up books all day? Any books I can get my hands on. Because I can, that’s why.
Posted by jodi on March 6, 2010 at 9.08pm
