Paper Chain Kit

In letterpress, makeready is the name of the step you go through when you’re getting each layer of the print to look good. Because our wood and metal type is really old, and some letters get used a lot more than others, they wear out at different rates. Sometimes you have to shim a letter with a piece of paper so it’s tall enough to get ink from the inking rollers and then transfer that ink clearly to the paper when it passes over the inked type.

As you can probably imagine, it is a tedious process! As you are making ready (to print), it is helpful to gauge your progress by running a piece of paper and seeing how the type and images are printing. So, at each printing press in the shop, we have boxes with makereadies in them.

Every once in a while, we go through the boxes of makereadies and pull out the ones that have lots of layers printed on them. We then recycle them into other things like these paper chain kits. We hope you enjoy how they were made and the fun results!