PRINT SHOP HAS DESIGNS ON THE FUTURE
Feast Letterpress fills custom orders, offers variety of crafted paper products
The invention of printing with movable type was crucial to the development of Western civilization. It is generally held to be one of the most important inventions of all time and to have helped change the course of history.
Yet today there are those who think the printed word on paper is on its way out thanks to computers, mobile phones and those awful ebooks.
“Not so,” say Jess Brousseau and Ian Gregory who run a fine letterpress print shop in CSPACE that offers carefully designed and crafted paper products.
They exude a passion for the whole art of printing that is reflected in their own creations and the custom products that now form around 80 per cent of the business of Feast Letterpress.
Brousseau is a Calgarian who studied at Alberta University of the Arts (then known as ACAD). She took as many classes in the creative fields as she could, but after viewing the graphic design work of some of the fourth year students, she decided that was to be her field.
After graduation she worked with a local advertising agency, but felt the urge to travel and left town to freelance for what amounted to an absence of three years.
It was in Nepal that she met Gregory — an English photographer and musician who had been touring with a band in the United Kingdom and Europe for several years, but also felt the urge take a break and travel.
The couple finished their travels in Australia and while visiting a friend in Tasmania, they were introduced to a couple who were making a living by operating a letterpress studio and supplying wedding stationery across the country. Meeting with the owners — who shared their love of the craftsmanship of letterpress — was an epiphany to the young couple who had been searching for a way to collaborate in creative endeavours.
They set their hearts and minds on starting a similar business and chose Calgary as the place to make a name for themselves in design and letterpress printing. The pair wrote a simplistic business plan, researched what to buy and located a vintage Chandler & Price hand-fed press for sale in Indianapolis. They studied books on printing all the way there and back, and then set up shop in an uncle’s garage.
Their early paper products were sold at the Market Collective and they were soon printing unique business cards and wedding invitations. Two years ago, they were able to move their Feast Letterpress company into CSPACE and today have a ground floor location, where the couple enjoys going to work surrounded by so many other creative tenants.
They are indebted to help and support from many others in the business like Clawhammer Press in Fernie, Alberta Printmakers and Castle Paper.
Brousseau’s hand-drawn designs and Gregory’s printing skills can be seen via their variety of paper goods on sale in select locations, including the weekly CSPACE Farmers and Makers
Market. But currently, the majority of their work consists of filling custom orders.
Brian Queen — who has been making paper for the past 24 years at Castle Paper — asked Feast Letterpress to design and print 200 matchboxes to hold tiny 3-D printed paper moulds to be given away as keepsakes at a print conference in Philadelphia. For Two Pine Farms, they designed a logo and branding that included a wraparound label for bottles of its locally produced raw honey.
Business cards, invitations and greeting cards are available fairly cheaply through mass printing companies, but a growing number of people seem to be willing to take the time to interact with designer and printer, and be involved with the production of unique items that sets Feast apart.
Brousseau and Gregory have just bought a second, larger press
— a 16-22 Vandercook — and are also offering private workshops, as well as looking forward to making their own exclusive paper for printing.
NEWS AND NOTES
Kim Kadatz has been appointed to the role of vice-president, advancement at the Glenbow, after holding key fundraising and leadership roles at the University of Calgary. At Ucalgary, those roles included vice-president of development, in which she led a team of 50 staff, raising $50 to $60 million annually for the university.
A lifelong Calgarian, she is a board member of Two Wheel View, an organization that builds resiliency through youth cycling programs.