things worth keeping twice.
the stories that tell themselves
Step into a collection shaped by time and touch. The LostCause Designs Second-Life Collection brings together handmade artisan craftsmanship, rare paper ephemera, and thoughtfully designed quality pieces — each carrying its own history, texture and understated character. Imperfect in all the right ways, these works celebrate craftsmanship, material and the enduring beauty of print.
Artist Spotlight
youngchrisgirl
San Francisco, CA
youngchrisgirl is a writer and artist based in San Francisco. She works in letterpress, hand pressing art prints on an antique 1925 Chandler & Price printer’s wheel. The process starts long before ink touches paper. She begins by etching or carving the image by hand, building the plate that will make contact with the press. From there, every print is a negotiation between the machine and the material.
She works on Color Aid paper — a designer’s color standard from the mid-20th century, where each sheet was saturated with a single precise hue. It was the Pantone of its era: ordered one page at a time, each sheet nothing but that color. Finding it now means finding old stock. The paper itself is as deliberate as the image pressed into it.
Different surfaces take ink differently. The pressure that produces a clean impression on smooth cotton will blow out on newsprint. She adjusts by feel. The same image pulled on two different papers becomes two different prints.
Each print is inked by hand, fed by hand, pulled by hand. One at a time. There is no other way to do it.
Each print is matted, sleeved, and ready to frame ⋅ Limited quantities ⋅ One of a kind
The Press Behind the Work
The Chandler & Price
The letterpress tradition in America runs forward through two hundred years of print shops, newspaper back rooms, and trade typographers. Rooted in the American printing tradition of Benjamin Franklin, the letterpress remains a timeless expression of craft, wit, and enduring design.
The Chandler & Price New Series, introduced in the 1880s and refined through the mid-20th century, was cast in iron and built to last generations. It was the workhorse of everyday American life: business cards, letterheads, broadsides, and broadsheets. The press wasn’t just a tool — it was infrastructure.
When offset printing took over in the 1960s and ’70s, most of them were scrapped. A few ended up in art schools. Fewer still ended up in the hands of artists who understood what they had.
Once the backbone of American commerce, this Chandler & Price now finds a Second Life as a medium of artistic expression.
