Wood Type Print

Fooled around again today with my mismatched wood type.  I couldn't think of anything to print so I used the name of a friend who has a little pottery home business.  I'll mail her a copy she can tack to her wall.  (Or not.)

Here's the lockup.  It took a while to puzzle together because the type is odd-sized and some of the corners aren't square.  The lines aren't straight but it's pretty close.  Even if I wanted to use one font I don't have enough of any of the fonts to fill out all the letters I needed.

The wood type really shows you where you missed the ink.  (Or the type is low.)  I meant to keep running copies without inking before I finished, just to get that old-fashioned distressed look, but I forgot.  Plus I ran out of paper...  Here's some copies:

And a close-up of probably the best copy:

There are some problems.  The letters aren't straight - "pottery" has kind of a tilt to it.  I need more space between "girl" and "pottery" but I really didn't have room in the chase to add much more, but I should have added what I could.  I could have brought "dirty" down so it was closer to "girl" but the "y" extends down so far I would have had to push it up above the line.  And the centering is off.  What else? The curl in the "y" doesn't show up well because it's broken and been repaired with a couple of small nails.  I guess I could have packed some paper under that spot.

But since I'm just fooling around I don't feel too guilty.  The best part is probably the funky "r" in "Girl."

Type

Took some pictures of my type today.  I have only one metal typeface - a 24 point that I don't know the same of.  It's a pretty straightforward design.  I have a couple of old type trays and sorted this type into the tray a few weeks ago.  It probably needs a good cleaning too.

And at the Big Flea in Chantilly recently I picked up some scattered wood type - they were selling it by the letter, no complete sets.  It took two evenings to clean it all - there are probably a hundred pieces. Here are some representative examples.

And yesterday I spent a couple of hours setting up a little postcard.  I found some old blank postcards I had, a heavy 140 lb paper made for watercolors (which I never did).  And I bought this old cut on eBay that I couldn't resist - a vintage doctor or chiropractor.

And today I did the printing.

Of course after I printed it I wanted to change the caption, but too late.  Two possibilities that might be an improvement:  "You see Mr. Scott, chiropractors have certain needs..." or "Uncomfortable moments in chiropractic care:  Number 1"

It was hard getting the inking even because the wood type "m" seemed to be a little bit higher in the bed than the metal type so the type around the m like the c in chiropractor and the first set of quotation marks didn't get enough the first couple of tries.  I don't know if the wood "m" works here but I just wanted to use some wood type since I just got it.  Anyway, it was fun.  Except for cleaning the brayer - there's got to be a better way.