cards to bolster the hearts of organizers working toward collective liberation
Interested in bulk cards for organizers, members, and/or staff in your movement organization or project? Visit our new online wholesale shop!
about the name
The phrase “bread and roses” is usually attributed to the 1912 Lawrence textile strike & originated in a James Oppenheim poem:
“Our lives shall not be sweated
from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies:
give us bread, but give us roses!”
Bread & Roses has been used in many social movement contexts as a metaphor for the importance of art, beauty, & rest as critical forms of sustenance. Lead & roses gives this phrase a letterpress pun: much of the type used in hand-setting & printing these cards is made of lead.
These are cards to bolster the hearts of organizers so that they remain deeply invested in working for collective liberation for as long as it takes.
about the printer(s)
I (Nicole) am currently piloting the Lead & Roses project to gauge interest in this card series, but the hope & intention is for this project to expand to include the work of other letterpress printers.
Deep gratitude to E. Oscar Maynard of Tender-Heart Press for thoughtful early conversations about this project. Special thanks also to Pilar Nadal & Rachel Kobasa for their input and their generous stewardship of Pickwick Independent Press, which my work would not exist without.
about the process
The printing for these cards involves hand-setting antique lead type, letter by letter, to create each design. The letters are then surrounded by spacing material & placed into a press (currently a Vandercook 4 at Pickwick Independent Press) and printed by inking the rollers that ink the type, and hand-cranking paper through the press (one crank for each color on each card!) The text on the back of the cards is printed using photopolymer plates to keep the time & cost of creating these cards reasonable. The images (called “cuts” in letterpress printing) are all vintage & floral-themed, sourced from Pickwick’s collection and the internet.
Not pictured: hours of patient fussing with spacing material, layout, ink coverage, and color mixing, plus troubleshooting unexpected press happenings, lots of clean-up time, and deep satisfaction when it all comes together.
Thank you so much to everyone who came out for the Lead & Roses Launch Party last Friday!
It was such a sweet way to release these cards into the wild.
In solidarity,
Nicole
Support for the pilot project of Lead & Roses is provided by the American Rescue Plan Maine Project Grants,
a subgranting program administered by SPACE Gallery for the National Endowment for the Arts.