I started in a sketchbook nobody would ever see

Dear Reader,

One thing I’m thinking about

In my day job, I handle books that are hundreds of years old, some of them printed using the exact same block printing process I use at my kitchen table. There’s a specific kind of quiet that comes from realizing you’re doing something people have been doing for centuries, with basically the same motions, the same kind of patience. I don’t think about that every time I carve. But some days it stops me for a second.

The main thing

I started block printing in a tiny sketchbook. One print, one week at a time. No plan, no big vision, just messing around at my kitchen table with almost no space and almost no money in it.

Right now I’m working on six original pieces for a stairwell show at a bookstore this fall. That’s a real jump from where I started, and I want to be honest about something: there was no single moment where I “became” someone who could do that. It was just print after print, most of them nothing special, a few of them terrible, until one day the small thing I’d been doing quietly for a while turned into something bigger without me really planning for it to.

If you’re standing at the very beginning of this, wondering whether you’re the kind of person who could actually do it: I wasn’t either, until I just started doing it in a sketchbook nobody was ever going to see. That’s genuinely all it takes to begin. The rest tends to take care of itself if you keep showing up.

Also lately

​New video’s up this week for anyone who’s seen block printing around and wondered what it actually is and how it works – the basics, a few myths I hear a lot (it’s not expensive, you don’t need much space, you don’t need experience), and what you can actually make with it.

Warmly,

If you love my newsletter and other content and want to help support me here's a link to my Tip Jar.

Support from people like you helps me continue to do what I do, and it is much appreciated.

​​​