Mary stood in the middle of the gallery and realized that something was missing. We did not have any type of cards for sale. Here again, our policy of not having commercial products made it a little more difficult to find a suitable item.

I kept looking around, but no cards really fit our form, function, organic criteria. One day, I was poking around a galley in Saluda, North Carolina and found the perfect cards. My search led me to the wonderful cards of Indian Hill Press. Hall and Dan combined their talents and love for the old fashioned way of doing things to create these wonderful cards. The prints are unique linoleum carved designs and the text is printed on original letterpress equipment. You can readily see the impression marks which set letterpress apart from offset printing. Add the whimsical verse by Daniel and you have a card that is also a gift in its own right.

Here is what Dan and Hall have to say about their adventure:

"The Indian Hill Press started in 1986 when we adopted our first printing press. It dated from 1912 and weighed more than a ton. Since then, we have rescued and restored dozens of machines, learned to use them, and put them to work. We built a workshop and then expanded it when we realized the full scope of what we were trying to do. We now feel we have gathered precisely the right mix of machinery to produce practically any piece we can imagine.

Isn't Martha's Vineyard a peculiar place to pursue such an arcane craft at the end of the twentieth century? We don't think so. Our island is also one of the few places left where the craft of making wooden boats is still thriving. As cities race along at the pace of the electronic highway, it is for rural places like ours, where time is measured differently, to nourish what is cast aside. People come to Martha's Vineyard to recapture the values they have lost. Fine printing belongs with those values."

I am sad to say that these guys have decided to discontinue producing their cards. I have a good inventory but once they are gone........ sniff!