Old School

There was time in the not too long ago when prayer cards were a staple of job shop work. My friend Ray of R. Deschamps Classic Letterpress Impressions used run quite a few of these for funeral homes (before the switch to ink-jets and digital service). He had the prayers in standing type, separated into into "His" and "Her" and all he did when the orders came in was typeset names and dates. The lockups were the same every time, and his hand fed 8x12 C&P was ready. At one time I ran some these for him. I wish had a quarter of the metal type Ray has - and his prized Intertype caster.

   Last week a priest came by and asked if we could imprint these cards for his nephew's first communion. As it turned out he had asked all over town who could do this work for him, and someone told him that we were the last ones around who could. "You need one of those old letterpress machines to feed such a small card." And so we did. He gave us 75 cards, and we delivered 73. We lost none to printing, but three jammed in the laminator. It feels good to be still relevant and useful.