Tavernant's Tellings

Tavernant's Tellings was an extremely busy print shop in the city of Suzail in Cormyr, established in the 14 century DR.

Location
The shop stood on the block between the Blade Lane and Torch Street, facing the street that stretched between the Market Hall and the Lockup in the southeastern part of the city.

Services
Tavernant's Tellings held a printing press and produced its own linen rag paper. One of the shop's products were broadsheets and socialite invitations. Each broadsheet page was made by dipping mesh-bottomed trays into linen rag pulp, then pressed, dried, and trimmed to size. Then each frame's text was assembled by hand using individual letter stamps with woodcuts of illustrations. Each page was stamped with the assembled frames using ink. Assembly of each stamp frame usually took a day and was priced at 5 gp; each subsequent copy printer was valued at a single sp. Stamp frames were kept assembled for a tenday to be used for other prints; after, they were broken down to be used for other print jobs.

Tavernant's Tellings printed and bound books, priced at a single gold coin per page, while covers and boundings were priced depending on the material and any additional substances used. Some of more exotic materials used to bound books with included copper, gemstones, and dragonhide.

History
Ad of the late 14 century DR, the printing industry was still young, and the printing press's services were exuberantly-priced. Eccentric elderly Lady Tavernant opened Tavernant's Tellings simply because she grew tired of hand-writing invitations to her many parties and paying others for the service.

The shop was extremely popular and was always swarmed by traders ordering advertisement broadsheets, menus, announcements, and memorandums. Several competitor merchants were working on opening their own printshops to claim a slice of the lucrative business. Tavernant's Tellings has a somewhat annoying reputation among owners of stone buildings in Suzail that often became plastered by glued printer broadsheets, leading them to torch the posted papers off the walls nightly. This practice was the origin of the Suzailan term "scorched news."

As of the late 15 century DR, Tavernant's Tellings remained in business with its name unchanged.