Feb 10, 2008 11:24 pm US/Central
Finding Minnesota: Lunalux Letterpress Printing
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ―
In this age of desktop publishing and laser printers, it's good to know there's a place putting ink to paper the old way. In the heart of Minneapolis you'll find a shop where printing presses still rumble and old type faces still exist.
Just off Loring Park, in the shadow of the city is a tiny little print shop called, "Lunalux." Roughly translated, it's Latin for "moonlight".
It may as well be the definition of "old world quality," because that's what the shop's big iron printing presses spit out.
Jenni Undis is the owner of Lunalux Letterpress Printing. It's a small job shop that she began working at years ago. When its former owners decided it was time to retire, Undis bought it.
"Traditionally letterpress printing is done with lead or wood type, or with copper engraved plates," said Undis. "It's the same kind of shop my own father and grandfather worked in decades ago. I was instantly taken back by the smell of paper, ink and solvents."
Letterpress printing gave birth to the information explosion nearly 600 years ago. That's when the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg is credited with creating the first printed bible using movable "type" and a wooden printing press, hence the name "letterpress."
Centuries later Undis keeps the craft alive, only instead of printing bibles her presses turn out business cards, wedding invitations and stationery.
"The very style of letterpress printing is a raised surface that presses into that paper and so you get texture, sort of indentation," explained Undis.
Far from the sterile and quiet printing of a computer, Undis' old Heidelberg press is a symphony of noise. Suction cups grab sheets of paper and rollers carry the ink as iron gears rattle with rhythm.
For Undis, it's a family affair. Many of her brothers and sisters are in the printing business as were her parents.
She fondly remembers, "When I was little it was in our garage and I would sit in the garage and watch Dad run a press like I run now."
While computers store font styles on hard drives, for printers it's kept in large pull out trays, kept in big wooden cabinets. Pulling out a random tray you will find all sizes and styles imaginable; from tiny individual letters of lead to larger ones carved in wood.
Creating words and sentences this way is time consuming work. Printers must place each individual letter in an accurate order and set the type by hand. Some of the type is in styles rarely seen anymore.
"It's beautiful and real decorative but not a ton of application but it's really nice to have around," Undis says fondly.
Setting type into words is a lost art. Printers had to read backwards because letters are in reverse.
"A backwards 'p' looks like a 'q' ... and so you can't think forward when you're going backward," Undis explained.
And, yes, it was a printer who coined the saying, mind your p's and q's. In this tiny Minneapolis print shop, it's done daily.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Stumble It!
Reporting
