At Papillon Press, we specialize in relief printing, and have a deep love for stationery. In October of 2022, we opened our first brick and mortar shop, which many consider to be a stationery store though we sell art, gifts, and share it with a leather-worker as well. This came to be slightly confusing to some, as they'd come in seeking writing stationery, and we never had any. I'd offer a greeting card or a mini notebook as a consolation, but we just didn't have formal writing stationery. Until now. On August 5th, for Stationery Store Day, we launched our first line of fine writing stationery. It's letterpress printed on Neenah cotton writing paper, and if we may say so ourselves, it's ever so lovely.
For this initial release, we launched four designs. One of them is larger, meant to be folded in three and slipped in the matching envelope. It features a historical design inspired by elements in a book by Johannes Enschede & Sons full of typographic elements and borders.
This set has 10 letterpress printed sheets, and 5 envelopes. The other three are smaller, and not meant be folded before being enveloped. One features a green leafy vine, similar to a willow tree. This design was completely hand-drawn, until it was digitized to make into a plate for printing.
Another features a geometric wave pattern, which can be found in both Greek and Native American histories. Printing this one was the most challenging, as the nature of this design requires much precision so that everything is aligned and straight.
The last features three blue swallows, flitting about the upper right corner. These three sets also include 10 sheets and 5 envelopes. The swallows are something I've been wanting to incorporate in a design since spending a few weeks in New Mexico on the Rio Chama in 2021, and finally that came to fruition with this stationery.
All of them are pencil, rollerball, and fountain pen friendly, and were printed on our 101 year old Chandler & Price letterpress. The inks are hand-mixed, creating unique and distinct colors.
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