letterpress

Cary points to Martha Stewart’s championing of letterpress stationery as part of the reason why a revival came around in the early aughts.

“A precious stone collection could be displayed in an antique letterpress drawer. You can put a piece of glass over it and make it into a side table or a coffee table,” Araujo says.

It was the only place she could afford to set up a communal workshop for letterpress printers, bookmakers, writers, and anyone who works with paper and ink.

This “letterpress edition” contains more than 100 illustrations from a dozen artists, living and dead, including three intimately associated with Burroughs’s work: J. Allen St. John, Frank Frazetta and Roy Krenkel.

He stooped over the metal tray containing the letterpress blocks and studied them closely, tapping to make sure that I had wedged each block firmly in place.