One of the highlights of our recent trip to Los Angeles was visiting Kevin Bradley in his Church of Type at Pico Blvd in Santa Monica, not far from the ocean.
We had seen the documentation about his letterpress paradise some time ago on Vimeo (see the clip below) and Kevin spend more than an hour showing us around his studio, explaining the whole process of his work in detail and let us sniff around everywhere.His work covers the studio from the bottom of the wall to the ceilings, and one doesn’t really know if this place is a store, a museum or a working place – in fact it’s all of that.
Kevin’s huge collection of wood and metal type may be one of the biggest in use today, and for us it was very impressive to open a few of all these numerous drawers and to explore all the beautiful typesets, hand-carved woodblocks and the weird collection of metal plates with wrestling images.. This place is just full of so much history.
The results of Kevin’s work are for sale in the frontspace of his studio (and on Etsy too, see link below), and there’s a lot. If you are into typography, letterpress or print making do not miss his holy chapel of type.
