Ready for another antique revival? Here’s Thunderbird in 18pt. This big fat road hog dates back to the mid 19th century, although the precise origin is not known. We have already cast his slender cousin T-bird Extra Condensed in two sizes. Also new this month is Border No. U-23 in 12pt, one more good ‘un from the Indian matrices.
On the restock front, we now have fresh supplies on the shelf of Boston Gothic, Bewick Roman 36pt, Collection No. 48 (Decorative Dashes), Prisma, and Clematis. In a sincere but possibly futile attempt to get ahead of the power curve, a couple of these were actually recast before they sold out. (Yeah, I know, we have 40 other things that ARE sold out–we’re workin’ on it, we’re workin’ on it!) The Junk Bin saw 22 new items posted for the month.
Our young new hire Jared is fitting in well and learning the fine points of getting newly-cast type from the galleys into packaged fonts. This includes brushing off the flash (we call that “flicking boogers”), determining line breaks and transferring type between galleys to perfect that; lifting type line by line into the font boxes, inserting filler blocks, and tagging, labeling, sleeving and shrink-wrapping. And of course learning to work for a detail-obsessed boss all the while.
A high point for June was the reception and open house that Skyline threw in honor of visiting New Zealand letterpress artist Terrie Reddish, who was traveling through Arizona to see family. There was a good turnout of local letterpress folk and a fine time was had by all. We do like visitors here!
In the golden age of metal type, the big foundries had entire departments devoted to composing and printing their catalogs. These were top-quality hardbound books displaying not only specimens of all their type faces, but tasteful examples of them as they might be used. The Skyline printing office (equipped with eight platens and three cylinders) produces all our own package labels and specimen cards, as well as promotional handouts and the occasional typographic broadside or pamphlet—but our specimen book, as such, exists only on the web site. One of our best customers has been urging us to at least provide an online document that could be printed out and held in one’s hands. Setting this up proved to be relatively easy; now on the Skyline site, if you scroll down to the bottom of any product listings page, you’ll find a blue button that will generate an illustrated PDF in real time of all the products in that category. This can be viewed online, or downloaded to view or print out at your pleasure. Check it out and see if it’s something that would be useful to you.