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Jerusalem Letterpress

Catalogue

Four kinds of paper


Stationery, broadsides, ketubah sheets, and book plates. Each is composed, inked, and impressed on cotton. Quantities are small; wording is yours.

We do not keep a shop of pre-printed souvenirs. The catalogue below describes the formats we know how to print well. A commission begins with language, names, and a date — not with a template number.

Letterpress stationery suite with cards and envelopes on a felt table

I

Stationery suites

Calling cards, correspondence sheets, and envelopes printed from a single setting of the name. Hebrew on one side of the case, Latin on the other, or both on one card with a hairline between. Ink is usually iron black or oxblood; a blind-embossed monogram is possible when the paper is heavy enough.

A typical suite is fifty cards and twenty-five sheets. We will not print five hundred of anything that belongs in a drawer. Change of address, studio credits, and family letterheads are welcome when the type can be kept standing for a second pass.

Cotton card · matching envelope · Hebrew, Latin, or both

A printed broadside with a large Hebrew title and a Latin dedication

II

Broadsides

A single sheet meant for the wall: a psalm, a poem, a civic sentence, a wedding announcement that should not look like a flyer. The measure is generous. The title is set large; the colophon is small and honest about the press, the paper, and the size of the edition.

Editions are numbered. Twenty-five is a comfortable run; seventy-five is a long day. We have printed Hebrew verse with an English facing line, and English verse with a Hebrew dedication. Illustration, if any, is a block — not a photograph screened onto the sheet.

Numbered sheets · cotton broadside stock · hanging margin

Heavy cotton sheet prepared for a ketubah with wide margins

III

Ketubah commissions

A ketubah is a document and an object. We set the traditional Aramaic and Hebrew clauses from metal, leaving a field for the couple’s names, the date, and the witnesses. Latin or English translations can sit below the main text or on a companion sheet. The paper is heavy cotton, sized for a frame.

We work from wording supplied by the couple and their officiant. We do not invent halakhic text. Proofs are read twice: once for spelling of names, once for the completeness of the clauses. Gold foil and glitter stocks are declined; oxblood and indigo are the colours we keep for this work.

Single sheet · witness lines · framed-ready cotton

Small book plate impression beside metal type

IV

Book plates

Ex libris labels for a private library: a name in Hebrew, a name in Latin, sometimes a house motto of one line. The plate should be small enough for an octavo pastedown and quiet enough not to compete with a title page. We print on gummed or ungummed cotton, in stacks of fifty or one hundred.

This is not a publishing house. We do not bind books, issue ISBNs, or warehouse novels. A plate is a mark of ownership and of taste. If you need an edition of a pamphlet, ask; if you need a thousand trade paperbacks, look elsewhere.

Small format · paste-down or loose · edition of 50–100

Paper & ink

What a commission includes


A written estimate, a paper dummy, a type proof, and the finished sheets wrapped for travel. Delivery can be collected on Bezalel Street or sent by courier. Rush work is rare: type cannot be hurried without showing it.