Word: websterisms
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There's not much that ben webster, a stationery designer in Salt Lake City, Utah, won't do to get his hands on another letterpress machine...
...late 2003, Webster, who produces cards using that traditional process, took possession of letterpress No. 3--he currently owns seven--by dismantling and transporting it piece by piece through a shaft he had dug in a window well. "The owner of the press told me, 'If you can get it out of the basement, it's yours,'" says Webster, 29, who started Seraph Stationery a year and a half...
...machine in good condition can fetch a high price. A Vandercook might go for as much as $6,000; four years ago, you could have bought one for less than $1,000. "If one machine breaks down, I want to have another one to back it up," says Webster...
...Webster projects that his revenues this year will crack six figures. With two full-time and two part-time employees, he produces stock cards of his own design and wholesales them for $2 apiece (each retails for $4 to $4.50), fills wedding-invitation orders from retailers and does letterpress jobs for other designers. Webster's in it for the long haul. "The final product and the effect are what I'm in love with," he says...
Fortunately, those vintage machines are still out there to be tracked down. Klinke estimates that there may be as many as 20,000 left out of several hundred thousand presses that existed in the 1960s. That bodes well for diehards like Webster, who admits he can't walk by a printed piece of paper without touching it. "If I see a flat-printed piece," he says, "I think, 'Boy, that would sure look neat if it were letterpressed...