Schwaner Coasters Set

Hello dear Friends,

As the first real chilly weather arrives outside, we're workin' up a sweat inside the Shop ~ treadling our 1914 Chandler and Price printing press to bring you some contemplative coasters to slip under your glass of holiday cheer!

The back of the coasters, with the haiku series' title, author name, and colophon.

Poet Jeff Schwaner, author of three collections of poetry, has written a wonderful sequence of eight linked haiku entitled "Night Walk on Cape Cod." Originally published in his book, Vanishing Tracks, Schwaner recently approached St Brigid Press with the notion of letterpress printing the haiku as a set of coasters. Needless to say, we thought the idea brilliant, and set to work composing the lovely poems in metal type. Here's a taste of the depth and elegiac beauty of Schwaner's work:

~

Write about home she

said ~ many journeys later

I write about her

~

Schwaner Coasters Wine Glass Stem

~

Every walk

Is a walk with a stranger

Identity's tides

~

The first haiku in the set of eight.

Each haiku, a thoughtful little cosmos in itself, is thematically and emotionally linked with its seven companions, telling the heart's story of home, memory, and connection-through-time. All of which are fine musings to mull over a glass of wine, tea, hot chocolate, or spiced rum, and which are -- like a cup of coffee -- good to the last drop.

Each set of 8 haiku coasters (one for each poem) were designed, hand-set, and letterpress printed here in the Shop on extra-thick coaster stock. The coasters are durable, reusable, colorfast, and, when the final red wine stain at last obscures the poetry, fully recyclable and biodegradable. The top side, with haiku, are printed in dark green; the bottom side, with title, sequence number, author and printer names, is printed in deep blue. Limited edition. $16 per set-of-eight coasters.

To order from the St Brigid Press Store, click HERE.

Many thanks to Jeff Schwaner for a fun and meaningful collaboration. And all the best to each of you for a peaceful week,

St Brigid Press

Here's a video of the printing of the coasters, plus more photos of the process and the product:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoZJW2clO_E]

Hand-mixing the deep green oil-based ink for the front (poem-side) of the coasters.

Each poem in the eight-coaster set, plus the back, is hand-set with metal type.

Letterpress printed on the foot-treadled Chandler and Price 10x15 NS printing press, which was made in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914.

Each poem is good to the last drop ;-)

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