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From Rarified to Commonplace:  A Brief History of Hashibukuro

The chopstick sleeve originated in the Imperial Court of Japan sometime during the Heian period (8th–12th century). Ladies-in-waiting are thought to have wrapped chopsticks in scraps of silk or other fine fabrics as it was considered impolite to pass unwrapped objects from one hand to another. Hundreds of years later, hashibukuro (“chopstick envelopes”) graced the banquet tables of shoguns, and by the Edo period (17th–19th century), establishments in the Yoshiwara red light district furnished hashibukuro to their regulars. 

We presented two dozen lectures and salons in 2024, both online and onsite at the Archive. Unless you’re our biggest fans (thank you!), you likely didn’t get to catch them all. So, here are a few videos that are worth some of your holiday downtime, from insightful looks at design history to new approaches that will exercise your typographic eye.

This holiday season, Letterform Archive staff members bring you their favorite gift ideas from our shop. From letterpress postcards printed by hand to colorful design books and cozy, type-forward blankets, we’ve got unique ideas for every type and design lover on your list.

Every purchase you make helps support the Archive’s education, exhibition, and preservation programs. Dive into our favorites and find something for everyone you love.

Order your gifts now! Thursday, December 19 at midnight is the last day for delivery by December 24.

At Letterform Archive Books, the team has the honor and the privilege of crafting books that tell the story of our collection.  This year, we have been delighted to deliver up a dozen beautiful titles — ranging from an entertaining and visually splendid autobiography by lettering artist Michael Doret to a dynamic facsimile edition of Piet Zwart’s famed 1928 catalog for a Dutch cable company to Letter Love, a pleasing sampler of letterforms presented in a pint-sized postcard booklet.

I do not want to put blackface on so-called “fine printing.” I want to print negro. To use printing to express negro culture. To do to printing what the blues and spirituals did to music.

So begins Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s Citizen Printer, a compendium of works spanning the 35-year career of a storied letterpress printer and righteous maker whose practice demands justice while delivering joy.

In 800 full-color reproductions, divided into chapters on social justice, shared wisdom, and community, Citizen Printer immerses readers in Kennedy’s bold and colorful output. Armed with salvaged ink and type, the self-described “humble negro printer” layers his audacious calls to action over dense typographic or geometric backgrounds. Sourced from civil rights activists across U.S. history, ranging from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, Kennedy’s chosen messages revive the ongoing fight for abolition and ensure that its lessons still reverberate today.

At Letterform Archive we’re always looking for stuff that shows the way a designer thinks, and reveals how their work was made. People visit us not just to see final works on paper — books, ephemera, posters — but also to see all the other artifacts produced along the way to the final piece, including  sketches, proofs, and variations that never made it to print. That’s why we were so thrilled in 2018 to accept a donation from Michael Doret that includes about half of his working archive. (The other half went to the Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union in New York where he got his start.)

In the North Indian city of Meerut, not far from the national capital of New Delhi, there was once a thriving wood type manufacturing scene. The industry there continued to operate much later than in other parts of the world, churning out letter blocks until the turn of the millennium, and contributing significantly to letterpress printing in the region and beyond.