March 15th is the Ides of March. It is on this day in 44 BC that Julius Caesar, the emperor of Rome, was assassinated.
For today, Jared letterpress printed the last words of Caesar. While we truly don’t know Caesar’s last words, the quote “Et tu, Brute?”appears in Act 3 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, where it is spoken by Caesar to his friend Marcus Junius Brutus, upon recognizing him as one of the assassins.
The phrase “Et tu, Brute?” was typeset in 30 point Engravers Old English font. This was printed with black rubber base ink using a 3x5 Kelsey Excelsior tabletop printing press.
In our print shop exhibit at the Sacramento History Museum, we like to discuss history while letterpress printing. However, sometimes we like to just highlight the sounds of the printing process.
In this video, Jared letterpress printed an image depicting the first printing press in what would later become the United States, which was Stephen Daye’s wooden common press from 1639. This was printed in green rubber base ink using a 3x5 Kelsey Excelsior tabletop printing press. 70 prints were made during this press run.
These are prints we hand out to visitors when they stop by our print shop and mention they watch our videos. Quite frankly, we hand these out to anyone!