You’re invited to participate in an exciting new event at Lunalux this weekend: Stationery Saturdays. This Saturday, June 7, we’re offering customized stationery printed while you wait! For this inaugural event, we’re printing 4×9 buckslip notecards with up to three characters, and a decorative stripe of your choice. While we print your cards on our Vandercook proof press, you get a one-on-one demonstration of letterpress printing. Personalized stationery is a fun treat for yourself, but also makes a great gift – consider a set for the dad in your life (Father’s Day is June 15) or someone who’s graduating from high school or college this spring.

Stationery Saturday runs this Saturday during regular store hours, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Cards will be printed in black ink on natural white card stock, and paired with your choice of matching or contrasting envelopes (click on the image above for a larger view of this week’s design). The price: just $29.00 for a set of 10, and additional cards can be printed for $2.00 each. Prices don’t include sales tax.

We’ve done a couple of test runs with friends and family, and received great feedback from all who participated. It’s a lot of fun, and a great deal to boot! If all goes well, we will host Stationery Saturdays at least once a month, each time with a new design. Watch our blog or updates!

The business of letterpress printing is the topic of an in-depth story in the April 2008 issue of NAPL Business Review, a bi-monthly magazine distributed to members of the National Association for Printing Leadership. The five-page story includes extensive comments from “Jenni Undis, President of Lunalux, Inc., in Minneapolis, Minn.” As opposed to the soft-focus ooh-and-ahhh stories about letterpress that you’ll find in popular lifestyle magazines, this feature examines the resurgence of letterpress from a business standpoint – barriers of entry into the field, technical challenges of the process, how print shops can incorporate letterpress into their portfolio of services, etc. A very interesting read!

Did you see it? Twin Cities TV station WCCO broadcast a story about Lunalux last night during their ten-o’clock-news show. Lunalux was featured in the Finding Minnesota segment of the show, which spotlights unique Minnesota businesses. If you go the the WCCO website, you can watch a video of the story – See Jenni run the presses! Hear Jenni talk about her business! Be mesmerized by the pretty pictures, and give in to your urge to visit our charming little printing studio!

Last week’s trip to the Great Minnesota Get-together included a visit to the Minnesota Newspaper Museum in Heritage Square. This out-of-the-way building houses an assortment of traditional letterpress equipment, including a Chandler & Price platen press, Linotype machine, C&P guillotine cutter, Miehle printing press, and folder.

Because I’m a letterpress printer, the MNP is an obligatory stop each time I visit the Fair. With the heavy metal machinery, the sounds, and the smells, it’s appealing like 1970s living room furniture and technicolor Betty Crocker cook books. Irresistibly familiar & a bit of a time warp. I understand the action in that room better than most tourists wandering through. Yet, in the microcosmic world of letterpress printing, MNP and Lunalux couldn’t be more different. We are distant relatives, a cigar-smoking great uncle and a whippersnapper youth, connected by blood but with impossibly different personalities.

The MNP is about newspapers as much as it is about letterpress printing (it is, after all, operated by the Minnesota Newspaper Association). So we use the same physics, the same machines, aprons, fingertips, but to very different ends. They cultivate an interest in and appreciation for history, while we make make new art with old tools. I appreciate the work they do, it’s romantic and dirty and honest. Lunalux is a ghost risen from this graveyard of cast iron. We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

I was also taken by this wall hanging, assorted wood-type letters fit together like puzzle pieces to form a silhouette of Minnesota. In response to this, I felt mixed emotion; while it was lovely to look at and I would be happy to hang such a piece on my wall at work or at home, it’s sad to see all of that beautiful type taken out of the pool of useful printing materials and turned into a non-functional decorative piece.

In hopes of securing a volunteer position at the MNP at the 2008 State Fair, I handed out my business card to a couple of the guys working there. Maybe next year you’ll see me behind that out platen press, printing book marks and teaching fair-goers about the history of letterpress printing. You can volunteer there too, by registering on line.

Letterpress printing is especially lovely on soft, thick paper. Watercolor sheets from Reeves and Somerset have long been coveted by our customers for their luscious texture, but these stocks have drawbacks too, including fat price tags, deckle edges (this makes the papers difficult for us to handle from a production standpoint), and challenging supply channels. Crane’s recently developed a new paper specifically for letterpress printing. Lettra is a beautiful 100% cotton stock, feels very luxurious, and is available in two shades of white through our primary local paper supplier in small quantities. It’s not cheap, but it’s less expensive than the alternatives. We’ve used it for a few projects recently, and it’s a pleasure to work with!

Alessandra & Peter are the first customers who selected this paper for their custom-designed invitations (pictured above; click image for larger view). For their destination wedding in New Orleans, the betrothed wanted invitations featuring a second line parade. I created the illustration and collaborated with Peter on the layout and typesetting. We paired pearl white Lettra with brown kraft envelopes and rich autumnal colors. I also addressed, stamped and mailed their invitations, so it was fun to see the project from the drawing board to the post office.

Lorinda & Eric opted for florescent white Lettra for their theatrical invitations. Their interest in the stage, combined with plans for a reception at the old-theater-turned-club/event space The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, had them thinking about theatrical elements for their wedding stationery. A bold color scheme on the bright white paper, paired with matching red envelopes, make a dramatic statement.