the good folks at volta press.

Laureen Mahler and John Peck are the soon-to-be-married(!) duo behind Volta Press. They have a Vandercook set up in their great studio space in Oakland, where they also work on their literary journal: Beeswax Magazine.

Laureen and I worked on our graduate degrees in writing at California College of the Arts, so it has been fun to keep up with her literary projects, as well as her letterpress venture. They invited me to their studio yesterday and walked me through how to order and use a Boxcar base, how to prep Illustrator files for plate-making, how to order and even set up the plates on the Boxcar base. Since I will only be printing from plates, as opposed to lead type or wood blocks, learning about the process was pretty much, to be dramatic, like being given the Holy Grail. To be less dramatic, they saved me a lot of time and mistakes.

Volta Press has an etsy shop, filled with fun products -- and they do custom work as well.

I am in love with their latest set of cards (all photos by Volta Press):




I might have bought a few... A big thanks to Laureen and John for their time and expertise!