Alyson first fell in love with letterpress as a wedding stationery designer. Curiosity led her to a class at the WNY Book Arts Center with local legend Hal Leader.
"I took it on a Vandercook – which 20 years ago, you get out of somebody's retired print studio for, like, $2,000. You're lucky to find one today for $20,000. This is a drum printer with like a giant hand crank."
While her first letterpress wasn't ideal for printing the wedding invite suite – her original plan – she realized it worked for greeting cards.
"It is a slow process, but it taught me setting type and how the different papers react, because you had a whole stack of papers, you've got to test out which papers work and which ones didn't, and all the basics of it. I completely fell in love. This is all I want to do forever and ever. I only want to put things on a letterpress.”
In Good Company
♡ Standout stationery hand printed on heirloom letterpresses
♡ Made in the KenTon, NY
♡ Founded in 2009
When Alyson dreams up a new illustration, her husband Nick finds the way to turn it into a physical thing to hold. His experience perfecting even the most complex letterpress designs (💀🌸) has Alyson running her hands over the final creations every single time.
“I will never not be in love with the feel of a letterpress image. It's just, it feels like magic to me. I drew something, and it became this three dimensional thing that someone gets to give someone else, tell them something wonderful, and for them to keep forever.”
Her creative process?
"Everything I had ever done prior to five years ago was a pen and paper, a pencil. I still do that a lot – but part of the process that we use with the letterpress, I can digitally draw with my pencil. It's still my hand. It's still being drawn by me with a pencil, but if I do it digitally, it converts to a plate much easier and much cleaner. So a lot of our letterpress designs I make that way.
"I do love my iPad. I do love my pencil and Adobe Fresco is my go to. But for anything that's four-color, like our notebook covers and a lot of our tabletop – it's still a paintbrush and watercolor and micron pens and a mess everywhere."
