Today we’re bringing you a MEGA edition of Behind the Stationery with the one and only Rebekah of Wild Ink PressÂ! She shares a little bit of everything: why she started Wild Ink Press, a tour of their studio and small storefront, the process behind her designs, and so much more. Thanks Rebekah!
Hello! Rebekah Tennis here – owner, designer, and general boss lady at Wild Ink Press – and I’m delighted to take you behind the scenes of our stationery company!
I started Wild Ink Press in 2009, springing out of a desire to create a cherished, finished product. I have a BFA in Graphic Design, and while I loved my job working in a corporate design firm, I found the nature of branding design to be frustrating – websites getting tweaked over and over, logos stretched out of proportion, with no finality to the work. I longed to create art that was both finished (forever!) and something that I loved, and so Wild Ink Press was born to create beautiful paper goods that others would value and enjoy. My husband Matt listened to my wild-haired ideas and we both took a series of letterpress classes at the San Francisco Center for the Book, then made the plunge and purchased a 1908 Chandler & Price Platen 10 x 15 Press on Ebay.
Our company has grown and expanded over the years (through lots of blood, sweat, and tears, believe me) and we now are a staff of seven with a retail and printing space in a converted old soda bottling shop in downtown Chico, Northern California. It houses our letterpress machines, inventory, and also our creative and packaging space. We bought the abandoned building, and it has been very rewarding to restore it to its former glory and let it shine as a 3200 square-foot open studio workspace. We now have three Heidelberg Windmills, a 1912 Golding Jobber, a Vandercook Universal I, and a baby Kelsey 5 x 8 press (for the kids) in addition to our original C & P. And yes, we do print on all of them!
