for gorgeous old books...
Old, like four or five hundred years, give or take...

We are highlighting gorgeous wood-cut illustrations from the first 150 years of printing, as well as more recent engravings from the 18th & 19th century. Bringing together the finest of both ancient and modern technologies, we create a unique interpretation of these timeless images, hopefully with  implicit blessings from the spirit of the anonymous artists!
Beginning with high-resolution scans or digital photos (for those documents with fragile bindings or other limiting factors), we retouch and redefine each to optimize the image for digital letterpress. We'll be producing greeting cards and postcards in up to three or four colors.

The image above is part of our first series. Pegasus, the flying horse, is reproduced from our copy of the 1567 Valeriano edition of Horopolos' Hieroglyphica. This book is a real treasure, not merely rare or valuable, but a gorgeous piece of 16th C book design and printing and we're very excited to bring these images back to life! The originals are black line woodcuts, which we photograph or scan and then develop the spot color plates. The dark blue background is overprinted with gold dust varnish creatiing an unusual iridescence (the photo doesn't do it justice!)

We're working on five more designs for Hieroglyphica Series I, and have a bunch of other exciting lines coming as well!

These cards are available for purchase from our esty.com shop

We'll be offering these as stocked sets of greeting cards, printed on Crane's 100% cotton Lettra with matching envelopes, and as customized greetings, with a broad range of papers, weights, ink colors and personalization options.

This 19th century engraving of an African Oryx antelope (or Gemsbok) with Japanese cut paper screen background was printed in two colors, a rich warm black and a muted lavender on Crane's 300gsm (double-weight) cover stock. ( 3.5 x 5 inch folded card )