Mulberries Print

For our fifth wedding anniversary, I gave Graham the gift of this limited-edition mulberries print by legendary Berkeley artist Patricia Curtan. It’s part of a series that was reproduced as illustrations for the cookbook Chez Panisse Fruit. 

Her process for making the print begins with a pencil drawing, which is transferred to a linoleum block that she carves by hand with a knife and gouges to remove the negative space of the image. She creates a separate block for each color in the image, and then prints the blocks, one color at a time, on a 100-year-old Chandler & Price letterpress. 

We’ve been super fans of Patricia Curtan’s art for many years, and I remember her signing a copy of Menus for Chez Panisse for Graham right before he started his typeface design studies at Cooper Union. She is as lovely as her art. We’re so grateful to have this piece gracing our home.

The oiled walnut frame was made by Sheela Zubkousky of Atthowe Frameworks. I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say that it is the most beautiful frame I’ve ever seen. (And I’ve been lucky to see a lot of beautiful frames!)

Do you follow the traditional anniversary gifts? Five years is wood. At first, I was thinking the mulberry branch would symbolize the strength of wood, but now I see there are multiple layers of meaning in this gift—the walnut frame, the wood-block technique, the paper itself. Happy anniversary, G! I love you!