egg press weaves
how it all started
I learned to hand set letterpress type (those little pieces of lead with a singular letter on each piece) before I started using a Mac. When I was beginning to design with type on the computer, I would catch myself reaching toward the monitor to try to move the type on the screen. The tactile allure of letterpress was sparked by my education in textiles, and the two mediums converged within a short, impressionable time in my life, as I was getting my BFA and just after. Fast forward beyond a 5-year stint at Nike just after college, when I began Egg Press, the ultimate gamble of trying to turn one of the least efficient production methods into a viable greeting card business, which would go on to employ some incredibly talented craftspeople.
why weaving?
My love of the tactile product has never diminished, nor has the attraction of analog and process-oriented tasks. Weaving is much like letterpress in that it slowly builds, one weft yarn at a time, similar to a stack of paper beginning as blank, and ending with all of the colors printed and an image created. Set up in both is laborious and requires thought and planning, with raw materials becoming something else through meticulous and repetitive work. And don’t get me started about color. The way color interacts and builds in both mediums is similar and sometimes unpredictable, in the most exciting of ways.
In the last few years, weaving has allowed me to reconnect with the enthusiasm and joy that I felt in the beginning years of Egg Press, where pleasant surprises and rich results kept me awake at night. While the 29-year-old risk-taker in me is long gone, innocence lost, wisdom gained, life lived, there is part of me that wonders: could weaving defy the odds and become another long-shot manufacturing story? Yet to be seen. In the meantime, I’ll allow myself to explore, bend my own mind, and feel all there is to feel of the fibers with which I’ve surrounded myself.
