here’s a bit of type porn to start the day, letterpress and linocutting have always been highly photogenic subject matters for me and the three-day course i just did at letterpress amsterdam was no exception… pictured below is mister thomas gravemaker who taught me the art of methodical working
the very last house in the back of this picture (with two ladies stood on a high balcony) belongs to my father, the house in a tiny burgundy village named paris l’hopital was built in 1666 and this photograph was taken exactly 100 years ago at the outbreak of the first world war in 1914
when i visited my father recently, a close neighbour had seen the picture and realised that he had the very same wheelbarrow standing in his cellar… we checked and it is indeed the very same object… dad is now busy making a recreation of the same image 100 years later, with a borrowed chicken, local children & lots of patience… surprisingly little has changed in that time span
the absence of men in the picture can probably be explained by the outbreak of war… i will post the new image when it is complete
i recently visited an artist in amsterdam, who had replaced the covers of her entire cd collection with homemade ones using felt tip pens… nice
german designer lars schwarz has an impressive archive page containing a great many images of metal type on flickr, a great way to waste a day or two…
tip via mister thomas gravemaker
…in music industry sales, in one handy gif