Calling Card: Blackbird Letterpress

Blackbird Letterpress is the name of Kathryn Hunter's creative and prolific letterpress company.

Kathryn Hunter started Blackbird Letterpress in Lafayette, Louisiana, in her friends' house in 2003. Blackbird began with the purchase of a Chandler and Price "Old Series" platen letterpress (circa 1904) from a long-time printer in Hammond, Louisiana. The movable type came from a printer outside of Chicago. One crisp October weekend (well, crisp in Illinois, not necessarily in Louisiana), Kathryn and her friend flew to the big midwestern city, loaded a couple tons of type and cabinets and other goodies out of a basement into a moving truck, and drove it back to Bayou Country. A collection of vintage printer's cuts came from a long-time printer in New Iberia, Louisiana (the trip was luckily much shorter that time). Blackbird Letterpress currently works out of a mural-clad building in Baton Rouge, which they share with a metalworking business and two frisky guard dogs. 

Their Etsy shop is stocked with Christmas cards, paper ornaments, perpetual calendars and handmade notebooks. Blackbird Letterpress can also be commissioned for custom letterpress projects and beautiful wedding stationery.

Thanks to Kathryn for her Calling Card. (If you'd like to be featured in a Calling Card post and have your ad in the Winter issue of UPPERCASE and on the blog sidebar, I have three spots left!)