Printer’s Fairs, Wayzgoose, Conferences, and Chapter Meetings, Oh My!

I think we can all agree letterpress fits the dictionary definition of niche (a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service), but when we gather as a community as we love to do, we feel dynamic, vibrant, and that we are at the peak of the printing heap.

To start, our presses are beautiful and have stood the test of time, our printing papers are luxurious and rainbow gorgeous, and our type options number in the thousands.  We can carve a lino block or make a polymer plate or handset some letters and in relatively little time, make a beautiful print or a thought-provoking broadside.  Is it any wonder we feel a little heady when we can print?

Now, put one or more of us together in the same place and we can get giddy.  Boxcar Press was a vendor at the Lancaster .918 Club Printer’s Fair in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this past weekend.  We brought our wares to showcase and sell, however, we really love the conversations, the demonstrations, and finding a tool and printed piece we need in our own collection.  We joke as we leave that we may be going home with more than we brought. And we are happy about it.

This is the way of “our kind” at our Conferences, our Wayzgoose’s, print demonstrations and field trips.  I personally enjoy the people interactions and hearing their stories. Just a sampling form this weekend:

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  • The Amish printer who works for a group that prints Russian books that go to the Ukraine. There are 11 million ethnic Russians who live in the Ukraine.  His group is still shipping books despite the war and, as you can imagine, those books are moving about the country as the people are moving around.
  • A long time customer from North Carolina, Brian closed his shop and moved up to Philly in 2019.  Cue the pandemic and he laid low.  Now he is helping a community print shop with letterpress and press instruction.
  • Some beginner printers looking for the supplies for their new love of letterpress. They pick up a few items and tips and leave us with their enthusiasm.  Always get revved up for the new printers.
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  • Putting a face to customers who were names and voices for over a decade. It is so good to really meet them and connect.
  • Visiting with other vendors with their new wares and new projects – yes, we will buy that calendar and that print and those cards, thank you very much.   
  • Marveling over the long rows of printing presses like soldiers and the type drawers and impressive equipment at the Ken Kulakowsky Center for Letterpress and Book Arts. And talking with Ken himself. 
  • Being pleasantly surprised by visitors who aren’t printers and may have a vague connection to print (publishing, marketing, artists) but thought this Fair sounded intriguing.  We hope we passed on some of our passion and introduced them to a new artisan craft. Thanks for letting us talk on and on. 
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  • Welcoming fellow Boxcar employees who drove the 8 hour round trip to surprise and support us and get their own firsthand taste of the letterpress printing fair experience. What a blast!
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  • Chatting with everyone’s favorite supplier, John Barrett of Letterpress Things . What an impressive array of table top presses.  If you are looking, check with John.
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Ornaments-vendor

We can’t encourage you enough to attend a printers fair or a Letterpress Conference (shout out to the Ladies of Letterpress this week for their conference).  There is so much to catch your eye and to marvel over if your heart is in letterpress printing.  Look for a chapter of the American Printing History Association near you and join and go to their events. Visit the various printing museums around the country and the world or a Book Arts Center.  Take or teach a workshop so the teaching and learning go on. And thanks for bringing Boxcar Press along on your letterpress journey.

Fresh Impressions: Ladies of Letterpress 2017

The Ladies of Letterpress annual conference never fails to deliver an amazing week of printing, creating, and inky, hands-on, up to your elbows fun.  Add to that two letterpress movies, and the time in St. Louis, Missouri was pretty much letterpress supreme delight. 

Cathy Smith I often find it hard to describe to other printers what the conference experience is like and to give it justice.  You are in a bubble for five days where conversations center around printing and antique presses and it’s never boring. The energy is great and I usually end up saying, “you have to go there next year”.

This year’s conference was in Saint Louis and was a collaboration with StL Print Week which is offered through Firecracker Press and Central Print.  St. Louis itself has a lot going on in terms of attractions, housing renovations, and pockets of strong community sustainability projects.

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Our activities centered around Firecracker Press and Central Print which share a wonderful joint storefront space.  The neighborhood has little “pocket parks” on many of the blocks, and is on the cusp of bursting into a vital place to live and work.  That just added to the appeal of our conference headquarters.

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

It was easy to get excited about our printing space because of the many vintage presses, the aisles of type cabinets, the retro and bohemian décor, and so much natural light.  With the help of Peter Fraterdeus, I gained a larger appreciation for wood type as we learned to look at the letters as art forms of negative and positive spaces,  I tried my hand at linoleum block carving taught by Rachel Kroh and have a new passion for this.  I love the endless possibilities of photopolymer plates; however, it was freeing to work with other tools to create printed projects.

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

What I really love is meeting fellow printers as we talk about all things letterpress.  I revel in the information sharing and passion of panel discussions, and can highly recommend Pressing On: the Letterpress Film.  

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

If you have an opportunity to see it, do so, and then watch it again.  This year, I was joined by three of our printers from Boxcar Press, plus owner Harold Kyle, and it was great to share with them the experience and value of a Ladies of Letterpress conference.

Samantha Peck Samantha is one of our windmill printers here at Boxcar Press and she agreed that being able to attend the event this year was an unforgettable time.

The opportunity to learn letterpress printing from the most advanced printers in the industry left me with a wealth of new knowledge, tips, and tricks to incorporate into my daily printing at Boxcar. Thanks to the great workshops offered, I now own my very first press that I built from household materials!

I also was able to use a variety of different presses and type to create unique prints that I turned into the covers of my handmade journals. I even got to try out linoleum block carving.

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Through hands on learning and expert printers’ shared stories and advice, I gained some absolutely invaluable experience and memories. It was very rewarding to see so many inspired and creative printers all in one place carrying on the art of letterpress printing together.

Madeline Bartley Another one of our windmill printers recalls that her best moment from Ladies of Letterpress was during her workshop, Advanced Windmill with Graham Judd.

During a demo we became curious about the condition of the windmill’s impression lever. Why doesn’t the lever release back to its usual position? The red ball lever didn’t move back far enough. The lead to Graham and I pulling out old die cut scraps from the base. Together we pulled out two waste baskets of oily paper detritus. 40 years worth!  It was like an archeological dig into letterpress history.

Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri. Boxcar Press has printing fun at Ladies of Letterpress conference 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri.

This Boxcar Lady had a wonderful time attending the conference and is looking forward to more in the future!

Leanna Barlow My experience at Ladies of Letterpress/ Print Week was absolutely amazing.  Spending time in another city surrounded by people who love the same thing you do is surreal. I have only worked at Boxcar press for about 2 years. At Boxcar we don’t set type, so this was my first time seeing such a vast collection of type! And actually getting to use it. Firecracker Press has such a great space and the staff was so talented and passionate about printing. I think what I took away from the experience overall was the willingness to teach and be taught, particularly by some who have been printing substantially longer than me. It was nice to see that there was no “generation gap,” as they call it. The older generation of printers was genuinely excited to be with the new and up-and-coming printers like myself. For me, making my own press out of everyday supplies, along with the advanced windmill class, has helped me develop as a working printer and an artist.

A huge shout-out to all the amazing participants at the Ladies of Letterpress conference this year! Have a fun story or cool thing you learned at this year’s meet-up? Let us know in the comments below!

Printing Community Spirit: Ladies of Letterpress

With the upcoming Ladies of Letterpress conference plus Print Week happening just around the corner (September 28, 2017-October 1, 2017) in St. Louis, Missouri, we catch up with Kseniya Thomas on the Ladies of Letterpress’ excellent camaraderie, fun, and cool happenings (and don’t worry fellas, Ladies of Letterpress is happily open to men as well!). The Ladies of Letterpress conference features more than a dozen workshops, panels, printers’ market, as well as a must-see showing of “Pressing On: The Letterpress Film“.

When Jessica C. White and I started Ladies of Letterpress nearly ten years ago, our goal was pretty simple: make it easier for new printers to figure out what they were doing, and why. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but it wasn’t easy in the aughts to get good info on how to operate letterpress presses with a minimum of frustration. And the letterpress community was localized and largely offline.

A lot has changed in the ensuing near-decade. Help is readily at hand online no matter what the letterpress problem, Wayzgeese abound coast-to- coast, and our own conference has grown to include workshops, business talks, technical instruction, and more. You never have to print alone, unless you want to! Ladies of Letterpress has grown and changed, and its mission now includes community cultivation, conference planning, trade-show wrangling, group projects . . .

It’s been interesting and rewarding for me to see how letterpress and printing have changed since we started LOLP. Seeing people struggle and succeed in the service of letterpress is inspiring; letterpress isn’t the easiest gig out there, but people fall hard for it and make printing work for them, and keep the art and craft of printing growing and evolving. This evolution inspires me to print my own work when I take a break from my regular jobs.

Though two people started LOLP, many, many people and organizations keep it going with their generosity, enthusiasm, and continued interest. The creative helpfulness of our fellow printers has only increased, and keeps growing as our numbers grow. LOLP represents one thing printers can make when they come together.

Boxcar Press salutes the Ladies of Letterpress and all the other organizations and clubs who are the mentors, tutors, trailblazers, and backbone of the art of letterpress.

www.briarpress.org
www.collegebookart.org
http://printinghistory.org/
http://www.apa-letterpress.com/
www.letterpresscommons.com
http://woodtype.org/
http://vandercookpress.info/
https://listserv.unb.ca
www.penland.org
http://www.thearmnyc.com/
http://www.fpba.com/
http://thebeautyofletterpress.com/
The more than dozen Book Arts Centers across the world

Ladies of Letterpress Conference

My very dear Cathy went to the Ladies of Letterpress Conference recently. (Read the post about her experience here!) She brought back many fine items, it did bring a tear to my eye to see this magnificent array! There are so many talented people out there, such a crowd of kindred souls that love this craft. Keep it up, do more! Next year’s conference will take too long to get here.

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Printers, Designers, and Paper-lovers, Oh My!

I am still on a letterpress high after attending the Ladies of Letterpress Conference in Asheville, North Carolina during the first weekend of August.  It was a well-done first attempt to bring together a group of people who had one thing in common – they love putting ink to beautiful paper.  Some do it with lead or wood type, others with polymer or linoleum, a few screen print – but we all felt an immediate kinship with each other.

The presentations and demonstrations only served to bond us more. Events were either at the conference center of the hotel, or at Asheville Bookworks.  It was all energizing. Some highlights for me included a handmade paper making overview with Frank Brannon,  and the making of the Dead Feminists Broadsides with Jessica Spring and Chandler O’Leary.  And I was delighted to watch Kelly McMahon give a ton of instruction during ‘Getting to Know Your Table Top Press’.  It was concise, thorough and loaded with great information so bravo to Kelly.  People were writing down notes feverishly.

The panel discussions were all applicable and interesting.  They covered topics such as Letterpress as a Business, Using Social Media to Promote Your Business, Community Print Shops, and the Future of Letterpress.  Long after the discussions ended, people gathered to talk over what they heard or ask more questions. We were immersed in letterpress the whole time and it never got dull.   And the personal interactions were the best part.

Thank you to all of our Boxcar customers who introduced themselves to me.  It was a treat to greet you all, friends old and new.  We’ll always have Asheville!

Take a look below at some of my favorite photos from the trip!

The colors of handmade paper are splendidly beautiful to the eye as they “hang out”

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First look at a Hollander beater:

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Raw materials in the handmade paper process

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Everything you need for printing on a table top press:

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A community print shop – Asheville Bookworks

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Boxcar Press represented at the Printers Fair

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Amy Rau of Greengirl Press and Chris Charles of Fly Rabbit Press stopped by!

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Boxcar Talk with Ladies of Letterpress

Ladies of Letterpress, an online community dedicated to women printers, began with just two women who strive to promote the art and craft of letterpress printing. Kseniya and Jessica have worked hard to build this fantastic online community where members discuss process, advice, and share resources. The Ladies are growing more and more each day and have recently awarded their first annual scholarship to one of their members to help develop printing skills and also attended the 2010 National Stationery Show in New York as a joint exhibit with some of the members.

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Kseniya
jessica-ladies-of-letterpressJessica

How did Ladies of Letterpress start?
Kseniya: Jessica and I met a few years ago at an Oak Knoll Fest, which I was attending as a book fan, and where she was exhibiting with the University of Iowa. Her fabulous badges caught my eye, and they got us talking about starting a nation-wide organization of the same name (which started as a loose association at the University of Iowa). We found Ning, and went live with it in late 2008. Now we have almost 600 members, and big plans!

Jessica: Ditto what Kseniya said. We met in the fall of 2006 at the Oak Knoll Fest, a conference for book arts and fine press, where she told me about her ideas for creating this type of community. She already had a website ‘dedicated to the proposition that a woman’s place is in the printshop’, but wasn’t seeing any real results, while I had made those patches just for fun, without envisioning much more until we started talking. We decided on the spot that we should work together to form this community, and create a forum where women printers could come together, have discussions, share skills, and keep in touch. We live in different parts of the country, so we’ve kept in touch and made it happen all through emails and occasional phone calls.

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How did each of you first get into letterpress?
Kseniya: I had a six-month-long internship at the printshop of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany after I graduated college; the internship was a part of a year-long fellowship. When I applied for the position, I really had no idea what they did there, and less of an idea about how they did it–I actually thought they made books! But I was quickly disabused of that notion when, on my first day, a retired type-compositor handed me a set of reglets and started teaching me all sorts of German letterpress vocabulary. I spent the next six months setting type from their fabulous, 1000-case collection, printing small jobs–once for a princess–and pursuing my own projects. It was absolutely wonderful; little did I know where it would lead!

Jessica: I remember seeing some letterpress printed posters and broadsides while I was an undergrad at East Carolina University, but at the time I was completely focused on sculpture, especially metal work and casting bronze and iron. It wasn’t until grad school, when a friend of mine showed me how to set type late one night, that I was hooked. By that point, my work had already shifted to printmaking and book art, and I think the tactile qualities of setting type and printing on a Vandercook brought the sculptor and printmaker sides of me together.

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Besides Ladies of Letterpress, what else do you do?
Kseniya: I’m the owner of Thomas-Printers (new site coming soon!), a commercial letterpress shop in Carlisle, PA. We debuted a new wedding line, YonderYest, at this year’s Stationery Show.

Jessica: I have a print shop and bindery, Heroes & Criminals Press, where I make books and prints, and occasional commission work. I also teach printmaking and bookbinding workshops at Asheville BookWorks, and will be teaching papermaking and book art this fall at Warren Wilson College.

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What was your very first press, and are you still using it?
Kseniya: My first press was a 12×18 C+P NS, and we still use it for big things (posters, broadsides, etc.), and die-cutting.

Jessica: Well, the secret-midnight-printing-session at school was on an SP15, which I continued to use while in school. I’ll always consider it my ‘first’. I just graduated last year, moved to Asheville, NC, and purchased a Kelsey 5×8 and a Showcard press. The Kelsey is my on-the-road press, the one that I take to differences places when I give demos. Most of my printing these days is done on the Showcard or on one of the Vandercooks at Asheville BookWorks, where I often volunteer and teach workshops.

Who or what inspires you the most?
Kseniya: I’m inspired by music, my home state of Utah, non-fiction in the New Yorker, and the wonderful work produced by the other Ladies of Letterpress! Also, of course, the desire to stay in business is very inspiring. In the same vein, I find the number of new people starting letterpress shops/studios completely inspiring. It means that people are still wanting to try the scariness of managing your own business, making things by hand–and it shows that the demand for letterpress-printing is still high.

Jessica: I’m completely obsessed with books, especially book illustrations. Some of my favorites now are the same favorites from when I was a kid: E.H. Shepard, Edward Gory, Max Ernst (especially his collage stories), and Kate Greenaway. As you can tell, I’m a little stuck in the past, but I also love contemporary comics and graphic novels, and some of my favorites right now are Anders Nilsen, Chris Ware, and Marjane Satrapi.

What’s your favorite thing about working with Boxcar Press?
Kseniya: The people who work there! The fabulous pics on boxcarpress.com! Also, the Boxcar Base, without which I might not be here today.

Jessica: A few years ago, I saved up for a 13 x 19 Boxcar Base and still use it regularly. It felt like such a splurge at the time, but now I can’t imagine getting anything done without it.

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What was the experience like for you at the National Stationery Show?
Kseniya: It was unspeakably great. The best part was meeting all the wonderful people we did, including the other Ladies in the booth. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better experience, or for better people to work with. This isn’t to say that the planning, purchasing, organizing, arranging, etc., weren’t stressful and a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. We’ll be back next year!

Do you have any suggestions for people hoping to exhibit next year or how to promote their new product lines?
Kseniya: Having only exhibited once, I don’t have much advice, except to start early! Start the fall of the previous year–earlier than you think you should. The last few weeks will be consumed with all the details, so it’s good to have as much squared away as soon as possible.

What are you looking forward to?
Kseniya: I’m looking forward to what the future holds for Ladies of Letterpress (it’s going to be great!), and next year’s NSS, seeing all our old friends again, and making new ones!

Jessica: I hope I can make it to this year’s Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair, The Book (R)evolution. I’m also excited about some special events for Ladies of Letterpress that are now in the works!

Anyone is welcome to join Ladies of Letterpress, even the guys. Membership is free.