About this project
Penumbra Print Shop is Robin Sloan’s new manufacturing project, drawing together experiences and ambitions from the worlds of book publishing and food production.
Three books provided inspiration that was foundational, and ultimately irresistible. These are:
- The Book-Makers, by Adam Smyth
- The Book, by Keith Houston
and especially
- The Notebook, by Roland Allen
which makes an argument that is clear and, for the novelist, humbling: it is books of the blank variety have been crucially important to humanity.
The idea with Penumbra Print Shop is to manufacture stationery and other printed matter that is sturdy, lovely, and useful. The idea, furthermore, is to invent new forms and new interactions, using the best of what’s newly available in this century: print and computer technology alike.
We have a sequence of products planned, of which Magic Postcard is the first.
The number of virtual worlds —
The number of physical worlds is one!
In the haze of endless options, I find it bracing to recognize that this one thing is mandatory. You go to sleep in it; you wake up into it. You share it with all the other living creatures of Earth. Assaulted by digital noise, it is unmoved and unmovable. The physical world has nothing to prove.
A simple thing, but so precious in this century: solid ground.