The quality of our
Muskoka Wedding Stationery
is most outstanding.
Our generations of experience and dedication to quality is second to none. This is your guarantee that we steadfastly stand by. The designs are not a copy or a repeat but our own original themes.
Crisp type and logotypes are gently pressed into the acid free paper giving a touch that cannot be duplicated by modern reproduction methods of today. Dense linseed oil based inks (vegetable) that will endure for centuries. Solid dense black... and stunning opaque colours of your choosing, being mute or vibrant.
We will supply proofs until you are satisfied, without charge. This is your once in a lifetime event, that we understand must be accurate, precise and without worry or stress. We will deliver on time and will be at the price quoted, no hidden costs. This is our commitment to you and the hundreds of satisfied clients we have served over the years. You will not have regrets or second thoughts when you choose Muskoka Wedding Invitations, as your wedding stationery professional.
A BRIEF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF
LETTERPRESS PRINTING
Our wedding stationery is produced using the letterpress printing method. A process that dates back to the time of Johann Gutenburg, printer of the famous Gutenburg Bible in 1492.
The history of Letterpress printing is far more detailed than what can be described here. It is probably most easily explained by its name, letter press. Type or logotypes pressed into paper. Another description is relief method.
From the fifteenth century until only sixty years ago, Letterpress was the preferred along with Lithography as the only methods of reproducing the thoughts and ideas of scholars, or the stories of heroes and lovers. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century every single word was set by hand: every letter of every word, and even the spaces in between! The process of "setting" type by hand is too detailed to cover here except to say that the type is "composed" - picked up one letter at a time, in order, and placed into a "stick" - a wood or metal tray held in one hand to store the words as they are built into lines of type, before being made up into pages. This changed in 1884 with the invention of the Linotype by Ottmar Merganthaler. This was a type casting machine. By 1886 a Linotype machine was installed and working at the newspaper office of the New York Tribune.
A paragraph, or a page, consists of a number of lines of a fixed width made up of tall rectangular blocks of type metal, with the characters raised above the surface on top of the blocks. This page is made up on a "frame" a slanted table top. When completed transferred to a galley, then moved to a "stone". A smooth-topped table of metal or marble. A metal frame called a "chase" is placed around the type or logotypes. The space between the page and the "chase" walls is filled with wooden or metal "furniture". This is lower than "type high" being .918 so as not to pick up any ink. The final spaces are filled with expandable metal "quoins" which, when tightened, lock all the type and furniture safely within the chase, (now called a "form") and able to be carried to the press. The "form" is now placed into the bed of the press. A term referred to in printing and publishing as, "put to bed".
The image on the right shows a hand fed platen job press, the way a printer would face it. The wooden feed board is swung out to the right, with the delivery board in the middle, about belt height. On the left is the flywheel, used both to start and maintain the momentum of the press during the actual printing. At the top of the picture is the inking disk which rotates slowly during the cycle. Hidden from view, between the delivery board and the ink disk, is where the action takes place.
The "form" is locked vertically into one half of the press, while the paper to be printed is placed into position on the opposite half; the two halves being hinged at the bottom, like a V. Also attached to one half is the roller carrying arms which hold a series of rubber rollers, allowing them to roll over the face of the "form". During the printing cycle the rollers pick up ink from the inking disk then roll down over the type, depositing a thin film of ink on the tops of the characters. They then continue to roll out of the way so the two halves can come together, transferring the ink from the type to the paper. To complete the cycle, the two halves open as the rollers travel back up the "form" and onto the inking plate where they pick up a fresh supply of ink for the next cycle. When the two halves are wide apart, the pressman removes the printed sheet and replaces it with a fresh one and begins the next cycle.
The most distinctive quality of Letterpress printing, and by which one can usually distinguish it from Lithography (offset) printing, is that the printed image, whether type or illustration, is actually impressed into the paper through the pressure of the press. Not only can you often see or even feel the impression on the back of the paper but, if the lighting is correct, you can see a certain "sparkle" around the edges of the type. That is, because the type is impressed into the paper, the light causes a highlight around one edge of the impression while a shadow appears around the opposite edge. It is this sparkle which gives life to a page of Letterpress-printed type: a quality missing from offset or other forms of printed pages, and even from digital pages.
