Carol J. Blinn

A Fine Design, Letterpress Printing & Publishing House

Warwick Press is a multi-faceted fine graphic design and letterpress printing shop and a limited edition publisher. Since 1973, Carol J. Blinn has provided clients with a broad range of services: from finely-designed stationery to editions of handbound books; from wedding invitations and birth announcements to silly greeting cards; from illustrations to custom printing & binding projects.

Viewers will notice that there seems to be a ducky theme to my art work. But the work of Warwick Press did not begin with ducks except for the use of a duck logo on my letterhead. There were thousands of serious, elegantly designed and printed letterheads, business cards, bookplates, envelopes, booklets, wedding invitations, and all sorts of other printed material produced for use by commercial clients. My first Warwick Press letterhead duck motif came into being at 104 Cottage Street in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Warwick’s first home. My nine-foot wide by forty-foot long shop was piled with paper, boxes of wooden furniture for locking up formes, an old Kluge press badly in need of cleaning, and a foot stapler. I sat there oblivious to the mess and made my first life-like drawing of a Pekin duck(her name was Webby) from my childhood. Webby, in various reincarnations, found her way onto my business card, then a mailing label, and finally she jumped onto my envelopes. Wherever I wanted to portray a serious and professional ‘look,’ Webby kept appearing and reminding me of the pure fun she and her sister, Debby, gave me as a child. Finally, I had to put those memories into book form, with the publication of a country memoir, “A Poultry Piece,” in 1978. Not only did I give in to ducks parading through some of my work, I decided to flaunt their silliness and use them as subject matter. I take great care in drawing the ducks and in hand coloring their bills and other body parts(when necessary). One should also note that on duck drawings used on my posters, the portraits have an uncanny likeness to this printer. As for my alter ego, Frieda Fitzenmeyer, no subject is too serious for her not to include ducks.

Over the past thirty years I have been privileged to be invited to speak about my working life. One of my favorite activities in grade school was show-and-tell. Lecturing about what I love best in my adult life brings back that early pleasure. Lectures generally take the form of speeches, most often accompanied with slides.