Arkansas, Oregon, Ontario: everything is wonderful in Best Made country.
Normally we wouldn’t post twice about the same project, but these prints are so beautiful I just can’t help it.
Best Made Company is responsible for these hand-pressed woodcut prints on vintage maps, and I’m smitten. It thrills me that a small business in 2010 would use dated, inefficient printing technology to create one-of-a-kind products. My assumption is that Peter Buchannan-Smith, the gentleman behind Best Made, engages in a particular variety of nostalgia that many of us find within ourselves as an antidote to our increasingly digital and mass-produced consumer economy. I see it as a mash-up of a respect for the beauty of the handmade and a longing for the way things were once done. Pair that nostalgia with the exhilarating feeling of setting out for adventure armed with a map–yes, a real, paper map–and I’ve got an abundance of wistful and thrilling emotions coursing through me. Wow. All this from a bunch of lines and ink and colors on a piece of paper? Yes. That is the power of print.
Sometimes printed matter serves a pragmatic function, and sometimes it just makes you feel.
