Henceforward Shall Be Free

January 20, 2013 7:42 AM

For a stamp celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, designer Gail Anderson turned to a printing technique of the period, the classic wood types of Hatch Show Print (previously).
posted by Horace Rumpole (7 comments total)

Hatch is one of my favorites. My aunt and uncle got their wedding invitations done by Hatch (which makes sense because they're both musicians in Nashville, and the party was at a club with a band) and those invitations are some of my favorite physical objects in the whole world.

I saw the Emancipation stamp at the post office on Friday, but didn't know it was made from Hatch type. I'll have to get a better look!
posted by ocherdraco at 7:59 AM on January 20, 2013

Best "Forever" stamp ever.
posted by gimonca at 8:06 AM on January 20, 2013 [5 favorites]

Hatch is great. I have a friend from Nashville who worked there in high school (funnily enough, she bought a hand letter press and did my save the dates when I got married). I was in Nashville with my wife recently for said friend's wedding and we stopped at Hatch to check it out. Lots of cool stuff. We bought a "Hatch Cats" poster. I was disappointed that they don't do tours though (we asked).
posted by Falconetti at 8:18 AM on January 20, 2013

Gah, I was at the post office last week and asked to see the available first class stamps - was not shown these. Thanks for posting; I might have missed out otherwise.
posted by Currer Belfry at 8:19 AM on January 20, 2013

Been thinking of getting one of these and making a t-shirt of it. Pretty fantastic stamp. The Post-Office should do it to raise funds.
posted by artof.mulata at 8:25 AM on January 20, 2013

The USPO is offering posters.
posted by artof.mulata at 8:28 AM on January 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sadly, Hatch was too busy to do my wedding announcements, last year but this is cool enough that I'm going to (finally) forgive them. Of course, I have a house full of their posters and it was obvious I was going to sooner or later anyway.

As far as tours I would've sworn they used to let high-school age me see the presses and blocks just for walking in the front door, but things may have changed since the early 90's. If you do get in, Jim Sherraden has an endless photographic memory and not only remembered me but several of the bands I used to hang around with back then that he did posters for. Neat guy and hell of an artist.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:36 AM on January 20, 2013