Departures Features Hand Engraved Monograms

Departures features hand engraved monograms, here’s a quote...

     ‘In order to create her breathtaking bespoke ciphers—a combination of letters woven into a personal mark—Nancy Sharon Collins begins with a consultation, either in her by-appointment New Orleans studio or remotely. “It’s something between going to a shrink and to an architect,” she says. Ultimately, the process yields a custom emblem designed to last a lifetime.’

5/7/16 Monogram Class

Students hand drawing monograms with pencils on tracing paper.

Saturday, May 7 at Gallier Historic house in New Orleans French Quarter, experience how monograms are hand drawn then walk away with your very own pencil sketch of it (that you yourself have drawn!)

In this hands-on class examples of vintage monograms, lettering styles and engraving will be on display–students will learn to make new symbols, traditional monograms, and letterforms using these historic pieces as inspiration. By tracing, combining then retracing existing forms, new, totally original designs, monograms and letterforms will be created.

For anyone tech-curious or savvy: The class will discuss bringing sketches into digital format, vector (Adobe Illustrator) versus Photoshop (raster) will be compared. Additionally…the super secret special “Ah Ha!” moment Illustrator trick will be revealed whereby an actual monogram can be digitally rendered in 10-15 minutes (no kidding!).

This class focuses on drawing with pencil on paper. Additionally, no contemporary class would be complete without touching on digital applications, but the majority of our time will be hand drawing. A direct link to register can be found here.

Members of this class will not only take home their very own, custom, monogram sketch,  they will learn where to get 2 FREE digital fonts created from old engraver’s lettering styles created by Monotype (the largest, oldest font development company in the world) that were.

Bring your laptop! Or come without one, either way it will be engaging, educational, and fun.

Onion skin in Garden and Gun

Winter 2015 Garden & Gun magazine features onion skin stationery by Nancy Sharon Collins, Stationer.

Turn to page 58 for a look at Nancy Sharon Collins, Stationer LLC hand engraved monogram on our very proprietary onion skin letter papers.

Not only is the monogram first drawn by hand (with a real pencil a real paper), it is then engraved—by hand—onto a half inch thick steel die. After this, a 2-hour “make-ready” is required on the engraving press. Each incredibly delicate sheet of onion skin is placed in the press—one by one—individually and by hand.

Needless to say…this process is not for the faint of heart. The results, however, are absolutely unique and astoundingly beautiful.

Available now is a hand made Packette of 5 onion skin envelopes and matching , french-folded sheets exclusively available here! (Monogram and engraving additional.)

Veranda Covers Hand Engraved Stationery!

See page 76 of Veranda magazine: Hand engraved stationery by Nancy Sharon Collins.

"The not-quite-lost art of engraved stationery…A custom monogram by Nancy Sharon Collins is a thing of beauty.Hand engraved on whisper-thin stock like onionskin (the preferred medium for letter writers Ernest Hemingway and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), it says so much more than any e-mail, text, or emoji ever could—and it never loses its charge.”—Veranda Magazine, October 2015, page 76.

Nancy Sharon Collins, hand engraved social stationer, on NPR

This Thursday @ 1:00pm & Friday @ 6:30pm
89.9 FM on your radio dial your friendly, neighborhood stationer is interviewed about hand engraved stationery on WWNO | NPR:

Out To Lunch
http://wwno.org/programs/out-lunch

• Navigate to top right blue “Listen Live” button.
• Go to “WWNO”, the top selection (not “Classical” or “Jazz”).
• Go to “Streams” tab, upper left hand corner below the big black banner. (There are two tabs, “Latest Stories” and “Streams”.)

You can also listen to a recording on the interviewer, Peter Richuitti’s, Out to Lunch website. Peter is Tulane University professor of economics and his show focuses on New Orleans entrepreneurs, of which Mrs. Collins is one.