sue daly of timber! (and founder of renegade craft fair) is a city dweller but most of her inspiration for her work comes from the great outdoors, so it’s only appropriate that she and her husband mat (also an artist) find themselves living in a home that feels like living in a treehouse. their third floor apartment in a vintage building in chicago’s hyde park is surrounded by trees on all sides. so as they’re nestled in the treetops, they’ve managed to incorporate much of the outdoors in, from the wood trim to artwork on the walls. don’t miss the complete post and check out additional images here (and the full sized images described in the captions). (thanks to sue and mat for the great peek, and to tate gunnerson for the shots!) -anne

[above: we probably spend the most time in our living room when we're at home.  our furniture is a mix of vintage and modern.  the artwork is made up of prints + paintings we've picked up along the way, featuring works by leia bell, matte stephens, sugarloop, jaime zollars, amazing talking paintings, diana sudyka, chris natali and others.  the pillow covers are designed and printed by three sheets 2 the wind.]

the kitchen is the room we put the most work into.  it used to look straight out of the great depression.  again, we stuck with the vintage/modern vibe, mixing the old with the new.  the breakfast table and chairs are vintage, as well as the cow hanging above.  the plates are from marshall field’s, and were given to my mom from my dad every year for christmas during the 60’s & 70’s.  in here we also have a nice teacup print by golden hen press.

our bedroom is super cozy.  the quilt was a gift from my sister.  in here we have paintings by our friends nick + nadine from sonnenzimmer, and a giant sleeping kitty print from another friend, jay ryan of the bird machine.

other favorite things in the apartment:  pet paintings by leia bell that mat got me for my birthday.  little house collection.  little print collection.  wooden bird + branch mobile.  owl bank, to save up for dates.

mat made a ton of stuff hanging in our apartment, including some paintings in the hallway and a collage in our bedroom.  the most infamous though, is the very first renegade craft fair poster, feauring a patchwork owl at night.  this is the print that brought us together!

in keeping with last week’s national stationery show coverage, our latest sneak peek comes to us from letter press designer olivia san mateo of olive-route. her 1950s bungalow is located in walnut creek, about 20 minutes east of berkeley, ca. besides being a charming place they love that the house is surrounded by lots of trees and close to
trails on the open space at the foothills of mt. diablo. don’t miss additional images at the end of the post. [thanks, olivia!] -anne

[above: my mom used to work for an oriental furniture store when i was growing up. so i was surrounded by lots of rosewood furniture and antiques mostly imported from china. attending architecture school also started my love for anything mid-century. so i feel that now, my aesthetic is a combination of these two strong influences. since most of my furniture tends to be darker and heavier, i lighten it up with the details such as airy chars, white vases, light walls...]

i like how masculine the dark chair and the rosewood side table look against the light walls and painting by jane kim. the base of the lamp is this pink cherry blossom jar that my mother had made into a lamp. my husband trusts my design choices, his only request is that the house not look too “girlie”, so this area is a great example of how we compromise.

i like collecting pieces from artists i know personally or have encountered at one point in the past–i feel more of a connection to the work that way and gives it a story :) my mentor, david, gave me the original linoleum block he carved for the nurse poster above my fireplace.

we spend most of our time in the backyard during the summer months. this outdoor living space is great for
warm nights. succulents and orange plastic chairs from ikea lighten things up. [right] this armoire is great for hiding things such as throw pillows, magazines, junk, etc.–i tend to put my things in compartments and can’t stand too much clutter so this works great. the plant sits on one of 2 porcelain antique drums (one of my favorite pieces). again, i feel it lightens up the space and is a great contrast to the heaviness of the armoire.

i’m loving these sweet little gift tags from breck and matt at sesame letterpress. i still can’t get enough silhouettes these days- especially if they’re done in a simple, clean way.

(Fifi, one of the American Visionary Art Museum’s Kinetic Sculptures and a true Baltimore icon, all lit up for the Preakness Parade of Lights.)

It has been a pleasure to be with everyone this week. I have a whole new deeper and more profound respect for Grace and all the other editors who work this hard on a daily basis! Thank you again to Grace!

Also wanted to thank all the artists and designers who shared their stories, work and inspiration with me this week and who make Baltimore an exciting place to be.

For everyone who has never been to Baltimore, you should come, and for those of you have been, you should come again. See what we are working on, because it is always something, and be sure to swing by the American Visionary Art Museum and say hello!

one of the things i love most about working on the sneak peeks is showcasing so many different styles and how they each fit with their keepers. today we’re transported to the “partridge house” in vermont – an old farm house built in 1778. it’s one of the oldest homes in their town, and it’s home to ceramicist laura zindel, her husband, thor, and their son, wulff. it’s quite a change from san francisco where they were just 5 years ago.  but believe it or not they found this “dream home” (as they describe it) on the internet! now they have cows at their fence and an apple orchard in their back yard. the home is still a work in progress so we’re hoping to see more as before + afters down the line. in the meantime, don’t miss more great images at the end of the post. and stay tuned for two more great sneak peeks coming up at 11 and noon! let the sneak peek-a-ton continue!  [thanks, laura!] -anne

[above: This is the other side of the porch.  The porch floor was made out of ceiling boards from the Hay Barn.   We renovated the Hay Barn into our studio, this is the view from the studio door.  I really miss the porch in the winter, we live our life out here until it is bitter cold.  All of the furniture on the far end is Amish.  ]

The hutch holds our new line of China.  The bowl on the table is Diana Fayt.  The two paper cutouts are by Rick Jones, the one on the right says “Cuando Menos se Piensa, Salta La Liebre. A Spanish Saying meaning..Things happen when you least expect them.  On the left is a Shaker Blessing, “Beneath this branch of purity do come and sit and sup with me”.

Our bedroom.  The bedding and curtains are from Anthropologie.  The large pillow on the bed is a new twist on Toile by Domestic Element.  A friend found the big ceramic pot on the armoir on the street in San Francisco.  She thought is was awful and hauled it to my house as a joke.  I think that is is brilliant and I hope no one ever claims it.  The two photographs on either side of the bed are of people that used to live in our house in the 1800’s.  The previous owner gave them to us.  When he bought the house in the 70’s, the owners moved out and left everything inside.  Larry slowly catalogued anything that had historical value, somethings he gave to the historical society in Guilford, the rest he kept.  He is slowly returning pieces that once belonged here, back to the house.  It took him a while to trust us with the treasures.

the office.  The wall paper is called “Lady of the Manor”  by Anthropologie.  I thought that it was the perfect compliment to our “Country Estate”.

I do a lot of drawing on the porch when the weather is nice, and I store my reference books and drawing supplies in here.

These are bones and shells that I have collected over the years.  My friend in Aspen lived on a ranch that had a caged mountain lion and I would raid it after he had a good meal.  Some where found on the beach in Florida with my son.  The small tile with the turtle was made by my childhood friend Janet Tobler.

This is the wall leading up to the second floor.  These paintings are made by Russian artist NIna Friday.  We have collected her work slowly over the years and think of them as our ancestors.  They have a gloomy quality that goes with the starkness of our house.  I have made up histories for all of them.  The large one is called “The Twins”  they have a pet monkey.   The one at the top is titled “Dr Katz”, he treats the twins for various disorders.

Kyle VanHorn, letterpress printer extraordinaire, wonderful neighbor and good friend. I love walking in to Kyle’s apartment, seeing stacks of whatever his most recent project is neatly placed around the room, sitting down at his kitchen table, immediately being offered a cup of tea or beer (depending on the time of day) and brainstorming about projects, getting his advice on who/what/when/where or how it would be best to proceed, talking about whatever is in those neatly placed stacks and hearing about what other plans he has brewing. (Thanks Kyle!)

You know our first conversation when we met at a mutual friend’s party was about letterpress and our shared love for that art form. I know you were a Painting major in college, what drew you letterpress?

KVH: I had my first taste of letterpress in 2000 or 2001 in a class called Zine at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I think I was fascinated by these hulking, clacking, seemingly complicated machines. I loved how much technique was involved in producing the text or image. My work in school was very technique based, attempting to find a middle ground between process and content. Letterpress seemed to have that discourse built into itself between the typesetting, the locking-up of the form, and then troubleshooting the print. I loved it (though now, looking back, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing).

When I started in that shop, we only had type. There were precious few zinc cuts available. We could carve linoleum to produce an image, but that was never my style. Polymer plates were a complete unknown to me still.

Where do you look/go for inspiration?

KVH: I work for an art school now and I frequently see my best ideas being lapsed by work that the students are producing. They’re not hindered by knowing what they can’t produce, so they just try everything. That is a great way to approach work, though harder to do the older we get.

I frequently have a student approach me and say “I want to do X, Y, and Z.” and I’ll say – “You can’t, it’s impossible because… well… hm… OH WAIT, if you do this and that first… yeah, that will totally work.” So, in that respect, I get to use the classroom space as a research and development tool, and that is incredibly helpful.

I search the internet pretty constantly, I have a list of sites that produce or showcase great work, letterpress or otherwise. But then sometimes inspiration comes from the most random places – i.e. I think the idea for my business cards came from a Comcast commercial…

I love the work of Studio on Fire in Minneapolis and the new FPO blog is really great. The folks at printeresting.org also link to a lot of interesting (get it?!) and often non-standard print projects, and that is really helpful as well.

What is your favorite aspect of letterpress?

KVH: It’s easy to say the impression (meaning the physical image being pressed into the paper) or the smell of the ink, or whatever – but like a lot of the printers I know, I really love the tools and equipment. Letterpress printing, previously known simply as Printing, was a huge industry and some of the most precise, intricate, and complicated machines ever made were developed for it.

The equipment is endless fascinating to me – I think this is because so much of it was considered worthless and sent to scrap for so long, a lot of it has become much harder to find. It was all so specialized, which is probably a funny thing to say – but for example Vandercooks – they were originally designed to proof newspaper pages, almost exclusively, and they start at 1200 pounds. I feel like nothing today is a unitasker in that sense. This old equipment did one thing and did it well.

Any favorite or exciting projects you have been working on lately (I know you are always working on something!)?

KVH: I am always working on something – you know me too well.

I often find myself working on commercial printing projects for others. I really enjoy printing for other people, whether it is business cards, art projects, or wedding invitations. If it’s not a client halfway across the country asking for print work, I might be found on the press printing for a friend in trade.

As for personal work, I am quite proud of the alphabets I produced this past winter. I wanted something that was equally at home in a child’s nursery as it is on the office wall. We have a huge press at the school that I was able to run uncut sheets of Arches, 22″x30″ through. There are some videos of that print run kicking around if you look, and a number of the alphabets are still available on Etsy.

More recently decided to make a papercraft Vandercook. Vandercooks are one of the more sought after letterpress printing presses out there. They are relatively easy to use, capable of producing large prints, and fast. They are also massive, hulking machines, roughly the size of a refrigerator laying on its side, over 1000 lbs, and fetching pretty high prices. In the spirit of sharing, I thought it might be fun for people to start their press collection with a free press that they could put on their desk. It is conveniently also Vandercook’s 100th birthday this year, so that made it a nice homage. A downloadable file of that press will be available on my website soon.

I know you went to college here in Baltimore at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and have stayed on to work and teach there. How do you feel about Baltimore? What about the art community?

KVH: I really love Baltimore (of course, as I say this, I am writing from New York City). Baltimore is a great city for so many reasons. Its a big city (at least compared to where I grew up) and there is a really strong sense of community there. Its easy to make connections and before long you feel like you know everyone (Smalltimore!). I may not be selling it that well, but I like it there. It’s close to DC, Philly, and NYC, but more affordable than all of them. There is a strong arts community, great museums, a number of independently run gallery spaces and art spaces, theaters… then there’s MICA, which is constantly adding something new to the arts community.

I have watched you slowly begin to amass a collection of type and presses. What are your plans for all this?

KVH: I have the wonderful fortune of managing and maintaining the 15,000 sq. ft. print shop at MICA. It’s huge, and the shop offers nearly every aspect of fine-art printing from etching to lithography, screenprinting to papermaking, and of course, letterpress. I know I won’t be managing the shop forever, but I have no plans to give up on printing.

I have recently managed to acquire 2 presses (bringing my total to 4), and almost 2 cabinets worth of wood type. Currently my collection is spread out between two print shops (3 presses), my kitchen (the 4th press), and my bedroom (all my type).

I want to open a print shop. I’ve seen the desire and demand for printmaking explode first hand over the past 5 and 10 years. The DIY movement is huge, and people have come to really value the hand-crafted object.

Bruce and Nolen began thinking about Post Typography, (a design studio and graphic design/illustration/conceptual lettering/musical collaboration) as undergraduates and few years later quit their desk jobs to work together full time—graphic designers by day, post-punk rock musicians by night or vice versa. Bruce and Nolen enjoy blurring lines and turning heads, but always in a smart and subtle post-typographical sort of way. Their work can be seen in the The New York Times or on a Baltimore telephone pole, both which give them pleasure. The Post Typography studio happens to be about three blocks from my house and so I popped in last week to talk to Bruce, share some watermelon and get an update on what these two crazy cats have been up to.

While I was writing my masters’ thesis for school, Bruce and Nolen were hard at work on their own epic project: Lettering & Type (part of Princeton Architectural Press’s Design Briefs series). Bruce and I would often commiserate about our various writings and projects with barely an end in sight. Luckily, their sweat and tears are beginning to pay off and the book is due out this fall.

While May is a strange time to be thinking about calendars, I couldn’t resist including these. Here are a variety of images from 2009 and a preview of the 2010 calendar, also coming out in the fall through teNeues Publishing.

Post Typography has a very democratic style and while much of their work is political, social and/or environmental in nature, they also have several projects that consist of large collaborations. These include their Public Print Lab (an interactive, public-authored art installation) the logo for Splice Today, (a quirky web magazine offering a fresh artsy/newsy perspective) which are all drawn and uploaded by users of the site and most recently their current Double Dagger posters, which are drawn by friends and fans alike.

These two never seem to rest and there are a lot of ways to catch up with them in the next couple of months. If you don’t want wait for their calendars or book in the fall, you can check them out as Double Dagger (they make up two-thirds of the band) on their upcoming tour. Or if you happen to be in Austin, TX during the HOW conference you can see the Alphabet Show that they curated and that has been touring since 2005. (You guys seriously amaze me, thank you Bruce and Nolen!)