Pavilions and Summer Sunshine: Spring Wedding Invitation #3

I am proud to share the third and final of this season's hand-carved, hand-printed wedding invitation prints! The couple gave me delightfully free reign to design their wedding invitation, with no limitations or guidelines beyond a few modest typographic preferences. They are very thoughtful people, and shared that they are moving through the wedding planning process striving to strike a balance between political awareness and social responsibility as they get married at a time when not all citizens have that freedom, and wanting to have a ceremony and reception that would be joyful and celebratory of their love and commitment. 

With this highly personal spirit in mind, I incorporated decorative elements from the beautiful late-19th century park pavilion where they are getting married for the opening panels of the trifold design, which opens up to a bright tree behind the ceremony and reception details. The warm mustardy yellow, green leaves and blue text were summery fun colors to work with, and I was tickled to have the opportunity to challenge myself with the folded design and small serif type to carve. I couldn't be happier with the end result, and I wish Eleanor and Hayden all the happiness in the world!

This 8.5" x 11" tri-fold invitation was printed at the Starshaped Press studio on a Vandercook proof press from hand-carved linoleum blocks on French cover stock paper. Designed, carved and printed by Marnie Galloway. April 2012.

Found: Letterpress Ephemera

Monkey-Rope Press is back in business after a 10-day-long holiday travel hiatus. Before heading south to Austin, Texas to spend time with family, I stopped in St Louis for a long weekend to visit more family and friends. A highlight of the trip was an evening spent at the City Museum, a 10-story former shoe factory in down town St Louis that was converted in 1997 into a surreal spectacle of a playground. It is not a museum where one walks through with silent reverence: the space is built of the city, pieced together from architectural salvage and abandoned ephemera, and the purpose of the space is play instead of contemplation. Used rebar is repurposed into climbing tubes, deep-fry pans pave the bathroom like bricks, and the walls of the cafe next to a coat check room are lined with old magnesium letterpress plates.

A sample detail of the wall

 Found wood type at the coat check/letterpress room's entrance 

Now that I have returned from out-of-town holiday adventures and have proven myself a true glutton in the face of home-made cookies, I am pleased to be back in the studio facing my work. The Queer History print series is taking a back seat for a few weeks so that I can focus more intently on the book project, in hopes of getting demonstrable progress made in time for an early-March grant deadline. Today I order paper to build my first draft mock-up, and continue to research and sketch sample pages. Off to work!