The letterpress studio of Lead Graffiti was voted Newark’s Favorite Artist of 2024 in a recent citizen poll by the Newark Post. In response to that honor, the upcoming January exhibition at the Newark Arts Alliance is an overview of Lead Graffiti’s work over the past two decades and their dedication to “printing slowly & patiently via letterpress in Newark, Delaware. ”

Lead Graffiti was formed in 2008 by Ray Nichols and Jill Cypher as an experimental letterpress laboratory. The husband-and-wife team of artists/designers focused on public causes, a love of words and typography, passing historical and technical information forward, and a playful disregard for the usual design rules. Located in a 2,200-square-foot space in Newark’s Sandy Brae Industrial Park, Lead Graffiti is packed with cases of wood and metal type, printing presses of all kinds, a working hot-metal Intertype linecaster, and all the gear that Gutenberg would have known.

⬆ A major project was a series of 115+ broadsides produced over a 5-year period (2011 - 2015) documenting the daily events during the Tour de France.

The studio’s letterpress work is included in more than 75 significant collections of libraries and institutions, along with solo exhibitions at The British Library in London, the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts in Philadelphia. Lead Graffiti has been written up in Sports Illustrated Magazine and makes a grand entry in printer/author Chris Fritton’s book The Itinerant Printer, where he wrote, “Lead Graffiti is the incorrigible, unpredictable, and uncompromising brainchild of Ray Nichols and Jill Cypher — a shop where the only rule is there are no design rules, and the thing you learn every day is that there’s always more to learn.” Nichols and Cypher have given dozens of talks and tours to various organizations and student groups and conducted numerous in-house and online workshops related to letterpress and bookmaking. One of the studio’s major projects was an endurance letterpress series of 115+ broadsides produced over 5 years (2011 - 2015), visually documenting the daily events of the Tour de France in handset type and ink on paper.

⬆ The recent hardback book highlighting the poetry of Deborah Arnold and Jill’s expressive paste paper.

⬆ Jill loves making books through Lead Graffiti, both filled and blank. This one is called Abecedaritype and is essentially an ABC book of typographic terms illustrated with type and other images she found in our collection.

For three decades as a professor and director of the Visual Communications program at the University of Delaware, Nichols helped lead the program to an international reputation. He was also co-director with his teaching colleague Bill Deering of the VC program’s summer study abroad to London. Beginning in 2001, the trips were for students in advertising and graphic design to visit design studios, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and museums to provide experiences with design creativity, typography, and historical perspectives. A pair of early visits to the letterpress studio of Alan Kitching and the St. Bride Printing Library unexpectedly provided Nichols and Cypher with two life-altering experiences. Their creative focus switched from blink-of-the-eye advertising design to the slow and patient world of letterpress printing and book arts for the next 2 decades.

⬆ Jill loves making paste paper, and this is one of her favorites. She calls it “boxes.” We used a version of the paste paper on our book, Boxcar Poems 1 - 12, shown below.

In 2002, Nichols, Cypher, and Deering founded Raven Press at the University of Delaware. Over the next four years, it became a new teaching tool. Cypher’s interests in typography, colorful paste paper painting, and exploring various forms of bookmaking also benefited Raven Press externally. Upon Nichols’ retirement from teaching in 2006, the couple formed Lead Graffiti, collecting presses and cases of type to continue their creative work.

⬆ This is one of Ray’s most recent books printed in an edition of 40 and in collaboration with Martha Carothers, a former teaching colleague. Each of the 10 interior spreads, has a different “ink pull” as the background and the text is arranged to interact uniquely with each page

In 2006, their first major post-teaching project solidified their intellectual connection to Newark, Delaware. As volunteers, Nichols and Cypher were tasked with designing, photographing, and producing the 300-page hardback book Histories of Newark: 1758 - 2008. The design is highlighted by their photography of a citizen’s band of about 4,000 Newark residents that runs through the book.

⬆ Ray likes applying letterpress to his everyday interests. This Indivisible postcard, using accented characters to represent foreign languages, is mailed from Lead Graffiti every 3 weeks to each U.S. Senator during all of 2018. This card reacted to the administration’s questionable treatment of the Central American caravan seeking asylum.

The solo exhibition Lead Graffiti: An Exhibition of Letterpress and Book Arts opens December 31, 2024, at the Newark Arts Alliance Gallery, located in the Shoppes of Louviers on Paper Mill Road. A public reception will be held on Friday, January 10, 2025, from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibit runs until January 17 and is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from Noon to 4 pm daily and noon to 8 on Fridays.

⬆ Ray loves to find ways to collaborate to spread the experience of letterpress, especially to a younger audience. This shows the 8th-grade diplomas produced by Lead Graffiti for the Waldorf School of Philadelphia. We bring our paste paper workshop to the school where the students can make the covering for their own diploma (lower left).