You'll find everything you need to know about our letterpress printing, foil stamping and
wedding photography at www.emletterpress.com
We're a short drive from Boston and offer one day ground shipping to New York and New England.
We've been a local Boston letterpress shop since 1999 and help graphic designers, institutions and brides with perfect letter press printing.

The words of Massachusetts transcendentalist writer William H. Channing (1810-1884) to encourage an inspired approach to life, designed by Mihaeko, printed by EM Letterpress is available at a very reasonable price from starlingbrood.com. 8x10 inch silver ink on black paper. Exquisitely designed and printed - perfect for any home, office, or classroom. Also available in a 16x20 poster printed in light gray ink on a cotton mould made paper from Europe. 

Insta Press

Being a letterpress printer in the 21st century is a little like being a web designer in the first century. Not really. Or that's how it feels sometimes. There's a pica ruler in one hand and an iPhone in the other. But all we want to do is figure out what else we can do for, to, on, with a piece of paper. And get your job out the door. So in the process of figuring out little things and big things alike, we'd like to invite you into another aspect of how EM Letterpress works - how we see things - and for that we're resorting to something that's not that old in this century: Instagram. Yup, we have an Instagram account. For all the little things we see that might give you an idea of how we see, and consequently how we do.

http://instagram.com/emletterpress

Happy New Year

2014 brings some changes with it to EM Letterpress. First to report is our move to North Attleboro, MA, where we are teamed up with The Artcraft Company, and can now offer almost every conceivable form or printing - or just about anything you can do to piece of paper. One of our first projects for the year combined letterpress and offset printing, as well some bindery work to create Stoltze Design's 30th anniversary celebration in the form of a 2014 calendar. We're looking forward to a year of exciting new opportunities - what else can we do to a piece of paper?

Big Man Little Press

Our new part-timer is Dave, who is by several inches the tallest man in the shop. Dave has been running presses since high school, and is now happily back to letterpress (after spending far too long with a process we hear about from time to time called "Off Set" printing, whatever that is). His transition was a matter of slowing down, and nothing like creasing 75 seating cards on a lever operated table top press (often referred to as a "One Arm Bandit") to put some perspective on things.

The Heidelberg Windmill by contrast to the table top  is a big press. It weights in at around 2200 pounds and occupies a good 16 square feet of floor space. But today as we ran a two color booklet I looked over and noticed that maybe the Windmill isn't such a large machine after all. It really is all a matter of perspective - or it could be the wide angle lens.

Padding

A note pad is a pretty simple thing. A stack of sheets glued to a piece of chipboard. With any paper cutter and a dab of glue anyone can make a pad. 250 50 sheet pads is another story. The press sheets start out as 4up, a piece of chipboard is inserted between every 50 press sheets while the press is running off the 3,125 impressions. Theses stacks of sheets and board are then trimmed, stacked, glued, and broken apart. It's been a standard job in many print shops for generations. Our new part time pressman showed off his technique for us today, and the tradition lives on.

Die Cutting

Designed by Merike Van Zanten of Double Dutch Design, die cut on one of our Heidelberg Windmills. The learning curve (pun intended) with this die was in getting the widths of the lines to meet the strictures of the die making process. Once that was figured out with the help of our very patient die maker, it was a simple process of press set up to cut 100 + sheets. Punching out all the shapes was not as easy, but our friend Merike was up to the task. Below is a shot of the back of the steel cutting die, to give an idea how well made it is.