For current events in the Chesapeake Chapter, click here.
To see work from Chapter letterpress printers, click here.

The exceptionally nice keepsake was printed via letterpress by Chesapeake Chapter member Greg Robison. Ah, one of the things some of us love about being letterpress printers.

Greetings, my thoughtful, creative, politically responsible friends!

Welcome to a riot of obsolescence!

The Impartial Observer is an artistic and literary venture — a quarterly journal — that flies in the face of just about all contemporary trends. Chesapeake Chapter member Greg Robison is the mastermind behind it all. You can get to the website by clicking here.

This simple website is the most technologically advanced element of this whole initiative. I use email, too, of course — I’m not a Luddite — and am always happy to speak to you on the electric telephone. But the Impartial Observer itself is otherwise an entirely hand-crafted, artisanal publication. It’s a physical object you can hold, printed slowly and patiently in limited editions from cast metal type using new equipment and tools 150 years ago. As an artist, I consider it a work of art on paper. You know: “paper,” a traditional, noble material made of natural fibers, not “pay per” as in “pay-per-view.” With reasonable care, such a work on paper will last for centuries without requiring (as everything digital in the cloud does) a never-ending consumption of hydrocarbons. Just as to produce it required the destruction of hardly any hydrocarbons either. Oh, and it’s distributed strictly by hand or through the post. You can’t see it online.

The Impartial Observer is a venture that bucks other contemporary trends, too. I’m not seeking an enormous number of subscribers; I’m producing it only for friends like you. (If I don’t know you, introduce yourself. You’ll probably fit in nicely.) I accept no advertising. The Impartial Observer is not the mouthpiece for any movement or any organization’s newsletter.

Although this work flows from diverse streams of interest and activity in my life — as a visual artist, writer, Catholic, meditator, educator, and letterpress printer since childhood — I don’t intend it to be all about me. I’m inviting you, my friends, to help me write it and thereby form a loose community of reflection, creativity, and action. Specifically, I welcome from subscribers what I call “Paragraphs:” thoughtfully written texts of exactly 100 words (remember, the paper is composed by hand!), anchored in the first-person singular for authenticity, on one (or a combination) of the thematic interests we share, to wit:

• cultivation of a rich inner life through reflection, meditation, prayer, or similar practices;

• living creatively, intentionally and compassionately this one, precious life we share, and doing so with curiosity and good humor; and

• engaging in or supporting responsible social action to promote a more just, peaceful and inclusive world.

Lead Graffiti Solo Exhibition
Newark Arts Alliance
Newark, DE
December 31, 2024 – January 17, 2025
Public reception
Friday, January 10, 6 – 8 pm

Lead Graffiti was formed in 2008 by Ray Nichols and Jill Cypher as an experimental letterpress laboratory. The husband-and-wife team of artists/designers focused on public causes, a love of words and typography, passing historical and technical information forward, and a playful disregard for the usual design rules.

Located in a 2,200-square-foot space in Newark’s Sandy Brae Industrial Park, Lead Graffiti is packed with cases of wood and metal type, printing presses of all kinds, a working hot-metal Intertype linecaster, and all the gear that Gutenberg would have known.

The studio’s letterpress work is included in more than 75 significant collections of libraries and institutions, along with solo exhibitions at The British Library in London, the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts in Philadelphia. Lead Graffiti has been written up in Sports Illustrated Magazine and makes a grand entry in printer/author Chris Fritton’s book The Itinerant Printer, where he wrote, “Lead Graffiti is the incorrigible, unpredictable, and uncompromising brainchild of Ray Nichols and Jill Cypher — a shop where the only rule is there are no design rules, and the thing you learn every day is that there’s always more to learn.”

Nichols and Cypher have given dozens of talks and tours to various organizations and student groups and conducted numerous in-house and online workshops related to letterpress and bookmaking. One of the studio’s major projects was an endurance letterpress series of 115+ broadsides produced over five years (2011 – 2015), visually documenting the daily events of the Tour de France in handset type and ink on paper.

For three decades as a professor and director of the visual communications program at the University of Delaware, Nichols helped lead the program to an international reputation. He was also co-director with his teaching colleague Bill Deering of the program’s summer study abroad to London.

Beginning in 2001, the trips were for students in advertising and graphic design to visit design studios, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and museums to provide experiences with design creativity, typography and historical perspectives. A pair of early visits to the letterpress studio of Alan Kitching and the St. Bride Printing Library unexpectedly provided Nichols and Cypher with two life-altering experiences. Their creative focus switched from blink-of-the-eye advertising design to the slow and patient world of letterpress printing and book arts for the next two decades.

In 2002, Nichols, Cypher, and Deering founded Raven Press at the University of Delaware. Over the next four years, it became a new teaching tool. Cypher’s interests in typography, colorful paste paper painting, and exploring various forms of bookmaking also benefited Raven Press externally. Upon Nichols’ retirement from teaching in 2006, the couple formed Lead Graffiti, collecting presses and cases of type to continue their creative work.

In 2006, their first major post-teaching project solidified their intellectual connection to Newark. As volunteers, Nichols and Cypher were tasked with designing, photographing, and producing the 300-page hardback book “Histories of Newark: 1758 – 2008.” The design is highlighted by their photography of a citizen’s band of about 4,000 Newark residents that runs through the book.

Val Lucas / Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship Recipient / 2023

“Documenting the Engraving of Display Matrices on a Modified Preis Engraver: The Process of Jim Walczak at Sycamore Press and Typefoundry”

The process of typecasting in the United States is quickly becoming a lost art. A handful of small commercial foundries are in operation, with few making their own new designs. Val Lucas of Bowerbox Press proposes to document and pass on the process for creating new casting matrices for metal types so that printers may continue using traditional methods for new designs. One of the few typecasters able to create new matrices is Jim Walczak of Sycamore Press and Typefoundry.

Walczak, shown at back, began casting printing type in 1985 and has kept alive many of the processes used in this craft. He acquired a batch of equipment, including a modified Preis Panto Utility Engraver from typecaster Paul Hayden Duensing in 2006. Jim continues to use this machine to create custom designs and replacement sorts, and there is no existing documentation on his engraving process.

The fellowship will support research to fully document Jim’s current engraving process and piece together Duensing’s process from sparse notes and a few published articles to allow the continuation of this process for creating new matrices and help keep this branch of typefounding alive. The project would entail spending time at Jim’s shop, documenting his steps from beginning drawing to finished matrix ready for the caster. Lucas will document the process with video recordings, and written process notes that can be used as a guide for repeating this process in other shops. Lucas would like to create a written, illustrated guide, as well. Fully documenting Jim’s process will add to the pool of knowledge in the small remaining typecasting community.