Wedding Invitations were really really boring until about 10 years ago. One company (Taylor Corp) owns most of the large commercial wedding invitation companies. They pretty much controlled the entire market.
About 13 years ago, right when the web started to gear up, a few brave couples wanted to individualize their weddings. They didn’t want the sweet embossed invites with angels and castles. The internet offered a chance to find unique vendors, and communicate with each other. At the same time, Martha Stewart launched Martha Stewart Weddings (the magazine).
Weddings, and the wedding invitation, would never be the same.
Letterpress also began to make inroads. Martha discovered Julie Holcomb printers, and featured her letterpress printed invitations, and even shot an episode with Martha at the press. That gave letterpress a jumpstart. (a few letterpress printers were experimenting at the same time.) Scott, my partner, had been printing letterpress as an artisan hobby since the mid 1980′s. I learned late 1995, with a local book group. Everyone was experimenting in their studios. But, most of these designers, such as Julie and Scott, came out of the fine printing and fine press movement. Julie studied with William Everson at UC Santa Cruz.
In 2001, there were only about 4 of us letterpress printers exhibiting at the National Stationery Show in NYC. Crane was trying to figure out how to get into letterpress. William Arthur was bought by Hallmark, and soon jumped on the letterpress bandwagon.
This year, it was just about all letterpress at the Stationery Show. Scads of great designers out of art school. Amazing.
Amazing!!
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