Appealing
The things we truly love are locked in our hearts as long as life remains.
— Josephine Baker
This is an “unofficial” member of our series, designed as a keepsake to commemorate the first-ever Ladies of Letterpress conference, held in August 2011 in Asheville, NC. The piece is printed in metallic silver and gold ink on rich black paper.
The illustration is a play on a letterpress “lock-up,” in which metal and wood type and images are secured onto the bed of a printing press, where they are then inked up and printed onto paper. Unlike a real lock-up, our text isn’t backwards, but our love of letterpress is visible everywhere, from leading between the lines, to old-fashioned ornaments, to a heart-filled quoin (a letterpress lock-up tool) to hold the quote in place.
Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975), an American dancer, singer, actress and civil rights activist, was nicknamed the “Bronze Venus” and the “Black Pearl.” She was the first African American woman to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She later became a citizen of France, where she performed her most famous act, the “Danse Sauvage,” at the Folies Bergères in Paris—wearing only a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas.
Year created
2011
At issue
Our love of letterpress printing
Edition size
200 prints