The City is Still My Religion

In 2020, I debuted the portfolio project The City Is My Religion at the New York Fine Press Book Fair, a week before that venerable city shut down. It was the culmination of years of research, writing, design, typesetting, printing, and eventually binding that spanned the massive life changes around the death of a spouse, a house fire, a sick kid and more.

The anchor print for this series was, at the time, the hardest thing I’d ever designed, set and printed. The idea was to create a church-like structure that was made up of Chicago locations meaningful to me. The auxiliary portfolio included a ‘draft’ that identified these structures.

Apart from the portfolio sets in the edition of 40, a handful of extras remained, which quickly sold. Folks seemed to be drawn to it, even if some of the locations were incredibly personal to me.
So I thought this would be the year to attempt a reprint. I rarely do this, though to my relief, they get easier over time. I hope is a testament to improvements in my printing. I’m better at registration and building tighter forms. And I’m using higher quality paper that better holds the detail of the ornaments.

This form is a doozy, though, and didn’t get much easier with time and experience. I made some alterations to get the math to math, as the kids say, and to include ornaments that have arrived in the 10 years since I first printed it. I was also frustrated the first time around with how some of the colors overlapped (or didn’t) and wanted to tighten up the layers for a cleaner effect.

The black color was laid down first as none of the colors coming after would compete with its opacity. It’s also a chance to square up and fix layout problems in an attempt to keep it as uniform as possible. Of course many of these ornaments have seen the ravages of time; some do not print quite as well as they should and some are worn, printing just a little lighter than their neighbors. This is a hazard of the trade when you collect pieces that span 150 years of typecasting. I expect that nothing will ever be perfect, but I work to get them printing as well as they’re able. I agree with Jessica Spring that metal types should be awarded grace the same way that their wood cousins are.

The color inspiration is meant to draw from stained glass, overlapping to create additional colors, as if the sun is hitting it. After printing the black, I scanned a print so that I could build out the colors digitally using scans of my ornament collection. This makes the layer separations a little easier and I can build forms directly on top of them, hence the dirty prints above.
Setting these forms was very complex because there are 5 different ones. Usually in a multi-colored print, I attempt to build one form that has all of the colors in it (like this one), then pull out whatever color isn’t on press at the moment and replace the ornaments with spacing. This keeps the registration tight across multiple colors. In this case that’s not possible, so each color is set with high hopes and then adjusted on press. Many of the solid shapes are either wood type scraps or linoleum blocks.

I started with yellow as it was the lightest and had the most solid color blocks. Then I moved to blue so the yellow/blue combo to create green could be tested. Then red, orange and purple followed.

I’ve been using Fabriano’s Rosaspina paper quite a lot these days, as I love how it holds the ornaments and color so vibrantly. These tried-and-true papers are still the workhorses needed in a shop that champions type. I’ve discovered that most commercial papers made today targeting letterpress printers are designed for polymer plates and not metal/wood type.

The photos don’t really do it justice (yes, ‘better camera for flat lay photography’ is on my shopping list this year). The paper has also been impacted by layers of print and has altered as a result. It’s almost a metaphor for how repeated actions mold and change us, the way my own life has changed in the 10 years since I first pulled type for this print. But the mission is still the same. The print celebrates the structural environment of the city I love and how it creates space for all who live here.
You can find it here.

The main form for the print will be available to see at Open House Chicago, October 17-18, 2026. Then it will be distributed back into the cases so the ornaments can used for future projects.

Refresh, Renew, Reorganize

The metal type ornament collection at Starshaped is something that sparks joy and pride in me. For the past 25 years, I’ve amassed a substantial number of these tiny upright soldiers, with a curator’s eye. Nearly every set that comes into the studio starts with the question, ‘how are you going to pay the rent', meaning ‘does this ornament enhance the type of work that Starshaped does?’ Given that space is a premium, I don’t take everything that comes my way if it doesn’t answer YES to this question.
All type and ornament coming into the studio is proofed in black and white on cards so there’s a visual record of what’s available. This also makes it possible to scan them for designing digitally.

One set of proof cards goes into the large binder ring for use in the shop, and another is scanned so there’s a digital record from which to design. I compile a short list of ornaments in one file so I can easily pull the styles I need for a project. Below is a snapshot of one of these pages.

The bulk of the ornament collection is in one place in the shop, with exceptions placed on galleys, in larger type cases and various homemade shelves. The closer they are together, the easier and faster it is to work, so this winter I set about reorganizing the collection to make it more intuitive. Last summer, I acquired new quarter case cabinets to further expand storage space. Quarter cases are sized to fit 4 in a standard open case and are perfect for ornaments as these collections can get heavy. They have their own cabinets (if you’re lucky; they can be hard to find) and you can pack a lot into small spaces.
My goal was to put like with like as much as possible, such as all the miscellaneous sorts of one point size or ornaments that are similar in style. Seasonal sets and those less used can be placed together and higher up (less accessible) as they require minimal viewing. And new-to-me sets needed to fit into the cases to begin their Starshaped tenure.

I stacked the new cabinets (yes I painted them red) and started to make tape notes on what could go where and what was moved. Once starting, there’s no going back, as all cases must be labeled as soon as possible. Not marking where something goes means it’s lost in a sea of thousands of other ornaments.

This process means making a lot of decisions quickly, as well as having multiple cases out at the same time. It’s like a little ornament dance across the table as they slowly find their partners. There’s no easy way to do it. And much like a home remodel, it’s more effective to have lived with the space (ornaments) to understand one’s traffic patterns before reconfiguring a layout.

The satisfying part is compiling similar ornaments that have come into the shop at different times from different sources and getting them together as they ought to be. And lining up two color sets (like below) makes it easier to know I have both colors needed for the intended design. Two-color designs were incredibly popular for holiday printing and many still have hints of red and green ink on them from years past.

I also used boxes to help keep sets together and to move them close to whatever case was about to receive them. Some of the ornaments in quarter cases moved to other locations, such as galleys that hold larger quantities of a single design or handy boxes that are less frequently used.

The fun of handling ornaments is identifying them. Some were made at a very specific moment in time, enjoying a fleeting popularity before receding into design history. One example is ‘Harlequin’ ornaments, as shown by this specimen page provided by Val at Bowerbox Press.

A deep clean of the sets in my shop revealed that they’re sadly in poor shape. Perhaps they were used extensively in the past or jostled around too much, smashing corners of various sorts. We can only imagine what kind of history they have.

Others became workhorses that shifted from a unified collection to being separated by style. Case in point is ‘colorets’, a term I’ve found across multiple specimen books and shifting over time to represent a range of basic shapes. I chose to separate the ones I have collected to cases for circles, triangles and squares. This makes it easier when designing to grab the case that is most likely to have the shape I need.

After sorting ornaments, it’s time to proof any that are new or have slipped through the cracks over time. This included a lot of my 19th century type collection.

Below are two nearly-complete sets produced by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan (Philadelphia). While I have often referenced them in a specimen book, having a print of exactly what is in my collection, in a way that can be annotated for the number of each sort, is much more helpful for design work.

Other ornaments have been grouped together for proofing, even if they may have existed as part of different sets at some point. Some of these are very dirty and still require more cleaning and some are damaged in ways that might make them difficult to work with in the future.

Here are most of the final results of this project! The labels are digital composites of all of the proofs of the ornaments so that I can squish as many as possible on them. There’s still a little space in many of these to expand if needed.
One other homemade quarter case cabinet is in another area and I’ve used it to consolidate random cuts and other small sets that don’t get as much day-to-day traction (a collection of telephones, anyone?) There are also galleys with larger ornaments or those with a substantial number of sorts that don’t make sense filling entire quarter cases.

Overall, this process took a lot longer than I budgeted time for, making it stressful and exhausting. While attempting to make smart choices about where ornaments intuitively belong, I won’t fully know if I nailed it until I’ve done a number of projects. Having completed two major prints so far this year, I did find it faster and easier. The reorganization is promising!
The pleasure of this project is having had the opportunity to touch everything again, improving a physical connection with the collection and sparking new ideas for ornaments I haven’t thought about in a while. It’s true that sometimes you have to see things in new ways (or new places) to forge a path forward. It’s a welcome refresh for a new year.

City in a Garden, 2025

Many years ago, the Design Museum of Chicago hosted a show for local artists called The Flag and Seal Revisited. They invited folks to re-interpret the city flag and seal imagery. I thought I’d try to create something in a circular form like the seal but with nods to the city itself formed from metal type. What followed was the hardest print I’d done at that point in time. The type was set solid with very little spacing material, and was 7 colors, requiring super tight registration. Urbs in Horto is Chicago’s motto and means City in a Garden. If you live here, you know it’s true.

The first run sold out immediately so I printed a second, which also sold out. I said I’d never do it again because it was so difficult. Then I started planning for the 2025 Open House Chicago weekend, our biggest event of the year. I stared at the print for a while, knowing it would be a great seller. When I dug into what it would take to reprint, I realized that it’s no longer the hardest print I’ve done and that my skill has improved significantly over the past 8 years. So I began the process of recreating it with what I know now.
The first decision was to use a better paper that would hold the detail of the ornaments. The second was to retool it through a digital layout. I now design everything on a pica-based grid (the unit of measurement for letterpress work) and doing so significantly speeds up the accuracy and typesetting time.

Most of the ornaments and type in the shop are scanned so I can build imagery with the aid of a computer if I need to. This also helps me start to figure out what the color breakdown will be; the digital is an approximate interpretation as I pick inks once the job is ready to go. I can also easily separate the colors so I know what needs to go where for each press run. This print is six metal type colors and one linoleum cut, printed last. These are the separation cheat sheets:

Then the setting begins! I set everything together in one form, knowing a few areas will swap out for overprinted ornaments (overprinting multiple colors creates additional colors!) Because it was laid out digitally, I used a reversed printout of the design to build on for speed. I often make changes while doing this as reality doesn’t always align with digital and that’s the fun of the process. Here’s a little progression via still shots:

The last image includes a message left from shop assistant Raychel of Current Location Press, who often leaves notes of encouragement! And here’s the final form:

I ran a quick proof of the entire form to make sure the placement was correct and that I was happy with everything. A proof is not perfectly printed, just a reference going forward. It also allowed me to check the circle to aid in the sketch for the linoleum cut.

For each color run, I needed to pull out the non-printing sorts and replace them with spacing material, which holds its place and doesn’t print. I often mark spacing with a paint marker so I know what needs to be swapped out for the next color on a project. And I tried to keep the rough idea of the shape while pulling the ornaments not being printed. It’s not a hard process but is frustrating as type doesn’t like to stand upright on its own.

And here’s the final! I used Fabriano Rosapina paper in two different shades to see how the colors would perform on multiple papers. The new linoleum cut is a little more understated this time, only covering the water areas and the clouds in the sky. Overall, the design is much tighter and more detailed. I’m pleased with my registration this time around. The ‘look how much you’ve improved over time!’ experience was exactly the encouragement I needed. Find the prints here.