[music]
[object hitting can - can hitting ground]
Jim Daggs: My first exposure to letterpress was at the print
shop down town in my home town of Eldora.
I had a friend.
We were downtown brats.
Our dads both had stores downtown.
We hung around together.
His folks' shop was next to the printing office.
He knew the old printer in there.
I think the first thing that I experienced was the sound of the
Chandler & Price press that he was feeding.
I was fascinated by the mechanics and the sound.
[clanking and clinking of press]
I spent a lot of time at that screen door
watching him that summer.
Finally, he said, "Why don't you come on in if you
want to see what's going on."
[music]
[clanking and clinking of press]
[music]
[music - clanking and clinking of press]
Rick von Holdt: It's terribly emotional and romantic.
It has a smell.
It has a sound.
It has a rhythm to see the wheel's spinning and all the
pistons going back and forth.
[music - clanking and clinking of press]
Jim Sherraden: The new generation is fascinated
with obsolete technology.
They've grown up with extendable fingers, Game Boy, texting.
Here's letterpress.
You bet you.
Paul Brown: Wood and metal and paper and ink.
I don't know if it awakened something that is there already.
Tammy Winn: When the paper hits the type and the
second you touch it, you usually know that there's
something unique about it.
[music]
Jennifer Farrell: It is really tangible art form.
You have all of these finite pieces that need to come
together to create something.
[music]
Dave Peat: Taking up a piece of paper off a stack, putting it in
a press and have an impression of it, put it in another stack.
Was very early on that I just enjoyed seeing this happen.
I got goose bumps right now just thinking about that first
experience I had of this beautiful type.
Fifteen, 20 years ago, I thought letterpress would die with me.
There was very little interest in it.
Why hasn't letterpress died?
It's a good question but I don't have an answer for it.
[music - clinking of press]
[music]
Gregory Walters: You start it up.
A little noisy.
Sorry.
[clacking and putting of machine]
The end product of a letterpress process is always a beautiful,
exciting print but the real heart of the letterpress process
is the type that makes that print.
The type's got to come from somewhere and this is one of the
machines that makes the type that we use.
[music - clacking and putting of machine]
There we go.
I don't like to get too close.
The only thing you don't want is metal splashing out which once
in a while happens but if everything's taken care
of and being minded, the machine will run all day
and make type all day.
[music - clacking and putting of machine]
Gutenberg invented his moveable type around 1450.
The number of books that were printed as opposed to the number
of books that were written by scribes, it was like an
explosion of information.
[hammer splitting type]
Richard Hopkins: Letterpress printing really brought
us out of the dark ages.
Prior to that time, the higher ups in the church and that's the
church ran the world, they didn't want the people to be
able to read the bible.
They wanted to read the bible and interpret for them.
Gutenberg put the bible in everybody's hands and
the type of people that Martin Luther created
his revolution and all that.
All that happened because the word was available to everybody.
It empowered the common man, really.
It's almost like the explosion of information we're going
through now with the information age.
Books, newspapers, catalogs, invoices, letterheads.
You name it.
It was pretty much printed by letterpress.
To me, moveable type is the most interesting thing.
It's what letterpress is really about.
It's the heart of the letterpress.
Now, I'm at the point where I'm 62 years old.
I figure maybe I've got 10 good years left.
What do I do with those 10 years?
I know I don't want to sit in front of the TV and watch
low-quality entertainment.
I want to do something.
I want to make something.
Things I want to do is to restore typecasting machines and
get them in the hands of people that can preserve it.
I would like to make type myself and use it.
At some point and time, I realized that there was not
going to be any hot metal left.
I wanted to grab some before it disappeared.
Old type is getting worn out.
New type needs to be made and people are making it but the
amount that's being made now is a tiny, tiny sliver of what was
made 50, 60, 80 years ago.
[buzzing - clanking]
There's probably 10 machines out of this 50 that I could have up
and running in a week's time.
What about the other 40 machines?
In my lifetime, I'm never going to get them running but at least
they're safe from the junkyard.
They haven't been scrapped.
They're still around.
Maybe someday, hopefully somebody will get them running.
If nothing else, they can be used for parts.
It is a slow and tedious kind of process.
Yeah.
I'm afraid so but it's a fun machine to watch, just to watch
everything moving around.
[clacking and putting of machine]
[music]
Stephanie Carpenter: There's a beauty that the word
letterpress is precisely that.
It's pressing letters into paper but on a bigger picture,
it's so much more.
There's really three stages of letterpress printing.
There's design or layout.
Then, the type is assembled or really composed.
It brings it into the lines and the layout.
At this point, it gets locked into a form.
That form then moves to a press.
The type is inked, an impression is made on paper.
That's where you get that beautiful finished piece.
I think the aesthetic is what draws people in, that character,
that history is something that speaks to you.
The act of setting the type, bringing together all of the
letters and the spacing material is
really what makes it tangible.
They want to know more.
That's when they start to see the process.
When I first tried letterpress, I was intrigued because it meant
I got to get my hands a little dirtier.
I wasn't sitting behind a computer anymore,
running around and tracking around and getting
all the pieces together.
You might be worn out by the end of it.
That was great.
It was so different than sitting behind my computer, which is
where I learned graphic design.
When you have to change the line spacing on a piece, just the
space between the lines, it's called leading.
It's even called leading in these programs that these
students are using.
When graphic designers learn a workshop, they need to walk
across the room to get a piece of leading
or to get a piece of type.
Then, if it's wrong, they have to get another piece.
It's definitely a physical act.
[music - clicking of type being set]
There's this great experience of touching history.
To get to know more about your craft is beautiful.
You get more of that story.
Once you get that first taste, it's hard to let it go.
[music - clicking of type being set]
[wood type hitting floor]
It's really nice because when a block gets
dropped, it gets this character to it.
We don't fix that character.
We print with it.
It communicates that this piece has had history and that story
that each piece of type has.
Rick von Holdt: A lot of my stuff is very, very old, fairly
beaten up, depending on where it came from.
I would have all these little dings and scratches and stuff.
I used to apologize profusely for that and got to learn after
a while, people said, "Oh, no, no.
We love that.
That shows that it's real.
It's hand done."
Somehow, all that passion and all that effort seems to come
through on these pieces.
You just see it.
If somebody was just sitting there at a keyboard, doing this
and that and it's there.
They press a button.
They didn't have to make all those finite little decision,
the little microscopic moves and something didn't fit or,
"Oh, gosh, I've got to change this."
A whole lot more thinking goes into the whole process.
I think you come out with a better end product.
Tammy Winn: Hopefully, what I think ...
Adam Winn: I'm sure you will.
Great.
Here's what I'm thinking.
A couple of line ornaments.
Tammy Winn: You want tiny metal up here near right out where
you're thinking of them?
This and this seem the most important to me.
It doesn't have to be this big.
Adam Winn: But bigger than the rest of the line or ...
Tammy Winn: Yeah.
Adam Winn: This could be nice.
Tammy Winn: What about the budding?
What do we...?
Adam Winn: That's kind of big.
The middle one.
Tammy Winn: No, the middle one.
Adam Winn: You can grab it.
We can see how it looks.
Tammy Winn: You said 36 point?
Does he ever clean the shop?
Adam Winn: It might be too wide.
Tammy Winn: What about 24 point?
Adam Winn: No.
It's too small.
Tammy Winn: Okay.
Adam Winn: Twenty-four bigger or smaller than 36?
Tammy Winn: I know.
I can do math.
Adam Winn: Just asking.
We're in the Red Door Press.
This is our letterpress studio here in Des Moines, Iowa.
We operate out of our old garage behind our house where we've
managed to squeeze in about 20 printing presses.
It can get a little cozy in here but it's home.
Tammy Winn: The very first press that I got was 8x12 C&P.
I pulled it out of the pharmaceutical
company here in Des Moines.
They had three presses sitting in the back of their warehouse
that had been just hanging out for about 20, 30 years.
I decided not to tell Adam about the first press.
I called my brother who had access to
a truck and a forklift.
We strapped around, hauled her across town and shoved her in
the garage on her rickety pallet.
Adam came home that night.
I said, "We're going to print."
He didn't believe me at all.
Adam Winn: I had a slightly different take on the story.
I came home from work one day, tired and worn out
from trying to earn a living.
My lovely bride to be told me that she had a surprise
for me out in the garage.
The fact that it was in the garage meant that it
was big and it couldn't be good.
She brought me out and unveiled this rusty piece of metal.
I believe my exact words were, "Huh."
Tammy Winn: You thought it was junk.
Adam Winn: I had no desire to get into letterpress.
I didn't even know what letterpress was at that time.
Tammy Winn: I think you wanted us to take it
to the junkyard and scrap it.
Adam Winn: I may have had that instinct at first.
I knew it was going to be important to her.
We worked on fixing it up.
When we got it working, I started to see exactly how cool
it was and that it wasn't just a tremendous waste of
precious space in the garage.
All right.
We need three T's.
Tammy Winn: Realize.
Printing is a privilege to me.
I do not get to do it during the day.
I would love to.
It's what I live for now.
This shop was built by the both of us.
How fricking cool is that?
[inaudible] meaning these two B's.
Adam Winn: When am I going to go there.
Tammy Winn: The shop's not going anywhere, which is great.
It's heavy so it's good to have them around.
Adam Winn: Sometimes I think that's why she keeps
me around is for moving around heavy pieces of
equipment but I'll take it.
All right.
I'm now thinking those might be too big.
Film narrator: Americans at work.
Because of the need for printed matter in practically all of
man's activities, printing now ranks four among the
nation's great industries.
The printing trades acquire most of their new workers through
apprenticeship or training on the job.
Jim Moran: Because my dad and my grandfather were printers in
Green Bay, there was a place to play.
Film narrator: Printing as a vocation attracts many young men
and women because it offers real opportunities,
good pay, and advancement.
Jim Moran: I started working there at age 10, and age 16,
they agreed to pay me.
Jim Daggs I walked in there.
I saw that those linotype machines and all the equipment
and I said, "I got to work here.
I need to experience this for a summer."
It was great.
It was a thrill.
Jim Moran: What I learned was all of the edges of printing
before being an operator, I became proficient with a broom.
That was a good thing.
That is considered the first step, I think.
You are going to clean a press all the way to the bottom
because then you would learn how to maintain
and repair the equipment.
The printer's devil, he gets to handle the hell box,
appropriately enough The hell box is that random can/box of
type that no one wanted to put away.
Maybe it fell out of a form.
It's always the bottom person who gets
the job of putting it away.
Then, they start letting you take the type out and gradually
work your way toward getting onto the press.
That was a really great way to do it because there's less
chance you're going to hurt yourself.
[music]
Jim Daggs: I'm left-handed so most of my
physical injuries are on there.
This finger went between two gears on an
old duplex newspaper press.
Yeah, this finger here went around a chain in a sprocket
that required bone to be cut back.
The surgeon was an old MASH doctor.
He patched that all back together quite well.
That's what I got left from that.
Here's an old lead burn here, lead splatter burn.
I got some of those on my arms as well.
Those are my battle scars from hot metal typesetting
and letterpress printing.
Jim Moran: If I had caught my finger in a press, my dad would
have felt sorry for me but he would have been pretty pissed
off because you shouldn't be that stupid.
There was that part that I learned from my grandfather and
then all of the itinerant printers who passed their way
through the print shop over time to learning from my dad who had
a slightly different approach than other printers.
In a very short sense, I went from printer's devil to
apprentice to partner to owner.
That final distinction of master printer is a title that was
given to people but not in a very formal sense in the way
that a master's degree would.
Film narrator: A pressman must be a skilled, conscientious
worker and the quality of the work produced
depends on his ability.
Jim Daggs: The gentleman that I apprenticed under was considered
a master printer by his other colleagues.
The community recognized him as a craftsman.
I don't think he got wealthy at it but he made sure that he
turned out quality work even though it would take more time
than somebody else would get the job done in.
Film narrator: Next week, another interesting
story of Americans at work.
Americans whose skill and effort help keep our
country great and strong.
[music]
Jim Moran: As you enter the 1950s, the photographic methods
for newspapers also, to some extent, leads to their demise.
It basically envelopes the country by the 60s.
The New York Times printed their last letterpress newspaper in
'78 but really the rest of the country had mostly abandoned it.
Jim Daggs: Offset really emancipated a lot of publishers.
Most of their machinery was getting worn out or operators
were aging but you didn't require a staff.
You were getting away from the skilled trades.
Male: I find it very sad, very sad.
I've learned the new stuff, the new processes and all but I've
been a printer now for 26 years and been
in this place for 20 years.
Six years of apprenticeship, 20 years journeyman.
These are words that aren't just tossed around.
They've always meant something to us printers.
All the knowledge I've acquired over these 26 years is all
locked up in a little box now called a computer.
I think probably most jobs are going to end up the same way.
Jim Moran: We like to throw older things away the moment we
found a better way of doing it.
It was getting shoved into the back or off the back of the
loading dock, more often than not.
Offset is everywhere.
Therefore, letterpress is really looking at
the coffin getting nailed down.
Technology was changing the business at a rate that
was very hard to keep up with.
[music]
[music - keyboard clicking]
Male: The electronic images of letters that
I have just set on this video display screen,
I'll now send to the computer.
Rich Hopkins: That whole transition put print shops like
the one I run through a tremendous financial thing
because how do we replace a machine that I paid
$120,000 for with a $6,000 PC?
Jim Moran: You also had the advent of the copying
machine at the same time.
It was a lousy technology in terms of comparison to printing
but it got better and better.
Now, my big customer is saying,
"I'm just going to put my own in, okay?
I'm sorry, but letterhead on a copying machine is just fine by
us and we're going to do it in the back room."
You could see your customers disappearing.
Rich Hopkins: I can't compete with a machine that costs $250
with a $10,000 machine.
Even though I do a better job and I know what I'm doing and
they don't do a good job and they don't know what they're
doing, they're still prevailing.
It's a sad comment but the printing industry is slowly
degrading or disappearing because people still have no
appreciation for what goes into a good job.
The industry in the past 12 years, I think, has lost about
50% of the print shops that existed.
The ones that are still functioning are like my shop.
They're just limping along on one broken leg.
[music - footsteps]
Dave Churchman: It's relaxing.
It gives the mind, which may be fraught with problems.
How am I going to make next week's payroll, for instance?
I've had that problem a few times but
it's what I enjoy doing.
I'm a civil engineer and I'm probably
a square peg in a round hole.
I would love to have not worked then because they were grungy
but love to go in old shops and love to have
seen them in operation.
In years past, I've been in some of these shops.
They weren't quite that old but you got the feel, the clutter
and the fire and the smoke and the action and blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
You feel like, you come down here and piddle and you turn
back the hands of time a little bit.
This is a hobby, not an amateur but a hobby letterpress shop.
One reason that I started buying and selling stuff, which I do as
a very occasional sideline, it's a get rich slow scheme is to
take stuff that you don't want and sell it so that you got
money or access to other stuff.
It starts slow and it builds.
You stumble on things.
You go to auctions.
People pass away and the widow calls and says,
"You know, are you interested in any of this stuff?"
There's a lot of stuff around and people want hands on.
Pick a hobby.
Photography, old cars.
Why does anybody do that stuff?
Who needs a quilt?
We don't need quilts.
We got sacks of feathers that keep us warm now, duvets, but
isn't it neat to have something put together with old
squares of cloth and an interesting geometric or
maybe non-geometric pattern.
Yes, it is interesting.
You go into another world.
It's a world of your own making.
It's no one else's.
The creative aspect is gratifying.
I'm saying creative with some reservations.
I'm not Van Gogh here.
You're creating something that hasn't presumably been done
before or something that I've created that I'm trying to fool
people with but arranging the type, selecting the type,
getting the type correctly spaced both vertically and
horizontally is a puzzle.
You're solving this puzzle.
Again, it's that other world.
You're lost in the process.
You don't want to be interrupted.
I come down here and I dick around, piddle around for an
hour, two hours, very relaxed.
Don't think about the problems upstairs.
[music - clinking - clanking]
I'm retreating into a world of my own making.
I like that world or I wouldn't have bloody well created it.
It's of my own doing.
I don't know that I'm proud of it.
It's a hell of a clutter, as you know,
but it's what I enjoy doing.
It's, again, another world.
[music - clinking - clanking]
[outdoor market background hustle and bustle]
Adam Winn: The farmers' market is a weekly event that
happens in downtown Des Moines.
It's the second largest farmers' market in the country.
This is our first year participating but we've been
going to the farmers' market for a decade.
We're really excited to be a part of it.
Tammy Winn: ... and smaller, then I can let you know.
Twenty.
When you have paper products, you get a little nervous with
wind and possible storms.
Adam Winn: We noticed pretty early on that there's a very
specific type of show where we better with others.
It's one in which people are looking for upcycled goods.
We use the antique wood and metal type on one of our 19
antique printing presses.
That number keeps going up at an astounding rate.
People really appreciate the fact that our process is
something that takes care and time ...
Tammy Winn: Do you want a print?
Female: Yeah.
Tammy Winn: Yeah.
Okay.
Adam Winn: ... and isn't just clicks on a computer.
Tammy Winn: No pressure.
I know.
We'll see.
Tammy Winn: It's printing.
If you screw it up, start over.
Try again.
Female: [inaudible].
Tammy Winn: No, you're not.
You're good.
We like to make sure that people can afford it, so a lot of our
stuff falls between 10 to $40.
Female: Oh, it's beautiful.
Tammy Winn: You did fine.
It's beautiful.
Female: Thank you.
Tammy Winn: You get that nice gradient look,
which is fun, a little salty.
It's where people can go and put a piece of art in
their home or in their dorm.
Adam Winn: Found the one you want?
Female: Yeah.
Adam Winn: Let's take a look.
Oh, you got the Athens one.
That's nice.
All right.
It's going to be $20 even.
Tammy Winn: Crushes are great but they don't
pull in a super huge income.
I don't think that I could just quit what I do right now, during
the day and survive as a printer.
Adam Winn: In order to defray the work for doing custom print,
we always pull a few extra to sell.
This was mostly metal type, some wood and....
With both Tammy and I working full time,
this is nights and weekends.
We're giving up our sleep-in on Saturday morning to get up at
four o'clock in the morning and pack our car
and go down and sell prints ...
Maybe I'm crazy but those, for the last half of the day, was it
just busier than normal?
... so we can continue the studio and continue to help
rescue the equipment, get the type somewhere that
it's going to be cared for for the next 50 years.
Tammy Winn: I don't really believe in the idea of having
stuff in the shop that wouldn't be used.
Adam Winn: I thought that with the threat of the weather this
morning, we won't get anything but I'm pretty sure we just had
our best day ever, which is cool.
Tammy Winn: I want to share it with people and not just myself.
My biggest goal would be to have a community space that people
could come into to teach from.
To find a place for that and a space for it would be really
exciting but it's a big project.
Adam Winn: We sold a lot of those.
Tammy Winn: I've printed that.
Adam Winn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rub it in.
Tammy Winn: I've been collecting the right kind of presses that
would be user friendly to people and type that people could use.
That's what we'll do for probably a while until
maybe things will change.
If it does, awesome.
The sooner the better, great.
If not, we'll see what happens.
Jim Daggs: These machines don't do well just collecting dust.
They like to be used.
[clicking and clacking]
They're made to run three shifts a day, seven days a week.
[clicking and clacking]
They get a little sluggish after they sit.
They'll let you know it.
[clicking and clacking]
Rich Hopkins: The people that ran this equipment
were brilliant people.
They were dedicated to making the equipment work.
A whole lot of brain power went into it.
The machine is a marvel.
All of this equipment was built to last forever.
The monotype machine, the same design was
manufactured for 70 years.
Now, they did improve it but they always had the idea that
we're going to improve the machine that already exists.
We're not going to come out with Windows 10 that's going to
replace everything about Windows and we're going to junk
everything about early Windows.
They don't work that way back in those days.
That's why we still have letterpress is because all that
equipment is logical and well-designed and doesn't rely
on technology that's transient,
circuit boards and memory hard disks and all that stuff.
Dave Churchman: There's no plastic.
There's no sheet metal.
There's no wires.
Look at that printing press.
It was made in 1886.
It's still running like a pickle seeder.
Rich Hopkins: That's not something that you want to haul
to the dump and dump over the hill.
I just don't want to see that much human endeavor trashed.
[clicking and clacking]
Dave Churchman: This thing is never going to end up in the
landfill, especially if I have anything to do with it.
[clicking and clacking]
I think it's important to preserve these
antiquities, if you will.
[clicking and clacking]
Jim Sherraden: Any knothole in the fence you look through,
Hatch can be there.
If you look at the history of country music, the aesthetic
inevitably is going to be a Hatch poster.
Celene Aubry: Hatch Show Print, they've been here since 1879,
continuously in production and only printing with letterpress
printing presses the entire time.
Jim Sherraden: In the 30s and 40s, it started out with these
big wood blocks because there's no advertising competition with
radio because not everybody has a radio in their rural home.
In town, there's electricity.
At home, you have to plug into a car battery
to hear the Grand Ole Opry.
Celene Aubry: It includes all sorts of live entertainment,
particularly Southern live entertainment, minstrel shows,
carnival, circuses, wrestling.
All of that stuff.
Jim Sherraden: How you going to get these folks off the tractor,
out of the cotton field, out of the coal mine
is with a big Hatch poster.
Telephone pole or Woolworth's glass window to tell or sell you
on going to a country music show.
Celene Aubry: Especially for live entertainment touring the
South, it gives a great place to get stocked
up on your show posters.
They would telegraph or call in their orders.
Advance men would go to the towns ahead of the traveling
troops, paper the town.
These posters were getting put up on week to advertise
shows coming through town.
Then, soon as that show is over or something,
it was plastered over them.
[music]
A poster to advertise your show is as important, probably if not
more important than the hair, the makeup, all of that.
All of those other accessories won't mean anything
if nobody comes to your show.
Because we helped country music establish it's visual identity
through all of the posters that we did to help advertise, we are
synonymous in many ways in a lot of people's eyes with the
country aesthetic in that regard.
We are a living connection from the past into the future by
designing and printing those posters for folks like Roy Acuff
and Bill Monroe and doing the work that we do with tide
Grand Ole Opry and those folks, even Willie Nelson
into today and tomorrow.
We do posters for folks like Taylor Swift and Dierks Bentley.
You can come and see it.
You can come and see the posters rolling
off the presses right here.
It's pretty awesome.
[music]
Rick von Holdt: The joy is in the having but the joy is also
in the hunt and you would be amazed at the amount of stories
I could probably tell, just about how things
came to be in my possession.
A lot of times, it was simply by asking.
I was working in downtown San Francisco.
The typography shop still had all the materials there.
They were going to be disposing of this quickly.
There was one face that I thought was absolutely gorgeous.
I used to bug their sales guy from time to time saying, "I
want that typeface when you guys ever get rid of this."
He kept that in mind.
Then, one day out of the blue, he said, "We're going to
get rid of all of our type.
We know you want something.
Let me know what it is."
I went through their catalog.
I think I chose 10 or 12 antique-looking typefaces.
I said, "I would be interested in these but
it depends on the cost."
A week later, I came back.
He said, "It's $36."
I said, "For which one?"
He said, "For all of them."
Dave Peat: I'm basically a collector.
I was very fortunate to start actively in 1960 because many
print shops were going offset.
Rich Hopkins: When I started seeing the industry
disappearing, I bought this stuff so that I could
keep doing my stupid journals.
Dave Peat: I was very, I won't say aggressive,
but very active in finding it.
Initially, I didn't think there'd be any out there.
Dave Churchman: It's the hunt.
Oh, yeah.
Always the hunt.
It's a form of 21st century and 20th century
archeological digging.
Jim Daggs: We hauled linotype machines.
We hauled presses.
We hauled type.
Rich Hopkins: I didn't do it but the word got out that there's
this crazy guy in West Virginia that buys this stuff.
Dave Peat: Most of the stuff I have would have been scrapped
and lost, essentially, forever.
Jim Daggs: I had publishers calling me up, said, "We heard
the rumor that you went from offset back to letterpress."
I said, "We sure did."
"Well, that's crazy."
Yeah, we went backwards.
Rich Hopkins: This shop that I have here integrates in probably
8 to 10 different monotype plants.
It is a major collection but whether that's worth $20,
I don't know.
I'm happy with it.
I'm going to keep it going as long as I can.
Dave Churchman: There's stuff out there
and it's still out there.
I keep thinking, "It's all gone, it's all been found.
It's all found homes, not my home."
Rick von Holdt: I commuted to San Francisco on the Bart train
so whatever I took, I had to be able to hold in
my lap or put in my briefcase.
They looked at me like I was nuts and they go, "Who in the
hell would want handset type?"
I said, "Well, I have a little press I just like to play with."
They, "Really?"
[clacking of type falling into breifcase]
That was the start.
Originally, I wondered if I would ever be lucky enough to
have enough type to fill a whole one cabinet of type in 25 cases
with handset type.
As it turns out now, almost 40 years later, I have over
2,000 fonts of handset type.
Adam Winn: I think every neighborhood has that one person
who starts collecting stray cats, whether they realize
that's what they're doing or not.
They start with a couple and pretty soon three and then five.
The next thing they know, they've got
20 cats living in their house.
They say, "How did this happen?"
You just can't say, "No," to the strays.
You have to bring them in.
There's this moment.
I can't quite pin down when it was but we became the people
who have printing presses.
Everybody has an uncle that has a press in their basement or a
grandfather who has type from when he was a printer.
They've kept it in the basement because they knew it was
important but couldn't quite articulate why.
That the ramp up was unexpected and it's one of those
self-feeding things that, as we get more presses,
people know we have presses.
When they see them, they call us and then we get more presses.
Tammy Winn: Adam with me alone one night and I discovered a
Kelsey but I actually have five or six Kelseys.
Adam Winn: I think you're up to six.
Every time I swear that we're done, my wife brought home, put
them in the 18th press, which was a little toy press.
I said, "Okay.
That's it.
This is as many as we can handle.
No more."
It wasn't three days later, a good friend of mine called
and said, "Hey. I'm at an antique store.
Here's a press.
Do you want it?"
Of course, we have to say, "Yes."
We have a cute little Sigwalt.
Moving up, we have a Chandler & Price 8x12,
a Chandler & Price 12x18.
Tammy Winn: She's large and hefty.
She weighs about 2,500 pounds.
Adam Winn: I think we named her Big Bertha.
Is that right?
Tammy Winn: No.
Black Betty.
Adam Winn: Black Betty.
That's right.
We've got Heidelberg 10x15 Windmill.
Tammy Winn: Her name is Brunhilda and bas-
Adam Winn: She's German.
Tammy Winn: A lot of our presses do have names.
Adam Winn: Pipsqueak.
Tammy Winn: Pipsqueak.
That's what you going to name our press?
That's stupid.
Adam Winn: It just came to me.
Moment of inspiration.
We've got dueling Line-O-Scribes that are cute, little guys.
Tammy Winn: The Line-O-Scribes, which are our favorite.
We acquired one.
Then, we had this lovely woman come to a show and see one and
said that she had one that was like it.
We didn't realize it was an exact match.
There a couple hundred away from each other in serial numbers,
which is pretty awesome.
Then, my one Pearl is from 1890.
That was a civil auction Pearl.
Then, my other Pearl is from 1912.
It's in beautiful shape.
Adam Winn: We've got one, two, five show card
presses that I can think of.
Really, the list is hard to keep track of at this point.
It grows, that 7x11 Chandler & Price, at a rate
that I can't keep up with.
Tammy Winn: Adam's going to buy me more presses.
Adam Winn: Probably.
Paul Aken: My dad felt I was the dumbest kid that he had
and sent me to a trade school.
You got nine weeks of printing, drafting, metalworking,
woodworking, all the different trades.
At that point, I fell in love with printing.
You would set up your name and whatever in hand set type,
proof it, correct it, and actually put it in a notebook.
I actually still have the notebook from junior high.
One of the favorite things that I reprinted, a little card that
said, "Ten reasons why I swear."
Of course, one of them was it pleases my mother so much.
The funny part about it is now I have more education
than anybody in my family.
Anyway, we said I'm going all the same way.
It's been about 10 years teaching a
vocational course in Waukegan.
I was training people on the vocational end
to go out and get a job.
I used to tell them that if you gave the boss 110%,
you would always have a job.
This is an automatic hand mold that I came up with.
You probably know more about it than I do.
Gregory Walters: Put that up.
That was the mat, which is held in by the spring, still.
Paul Aken: Yeah.
Gregory Walters: Put it right back together.
Paul Aken: Turn it over and ...
Gregory Walters: Cast another piece, huh?
Paul Aken: Cast another piece, yes.
One day, they came to me and said,
"Take early retirement or bereft."
Having a master's degree and god knows how many credits beyond,
I could make that decision.
I retired at the ripe old age of 51.
People retire, they have nothing to do.
Five years later, they're putting them on the wrong side
of the grass but my love has always been letterpress.
This was my dream to open up a printing museum.
This is the Platen Press Museum in Zion, Illinois.
It's 4,000 square feet of printing stuff.
I have probably 600 presses and probably
555 of them are platen presses.
If it has to do with letterpress, I probably have it.
How many hundreds of thousand times have they been determined
they used this kick and how many hundreds of thousands of times
has somebody sat there and fed this press or
that press or the other press?
It's really awesome, you might say.
I used to tell people I was a printer who collected stuff.
Now, I tell people I'm a collector who prints
but when I kick the bucket there's going to be a glut of
letterpress printing equipment on the market.
[music]
Jennifer Farrell: I remember seeing people setting type and
not understanding what they were doing or how they were doing it
and just having this pure desire to learn as soon as possible.
Then, when I did stick around and learn how to set type, it
was like learning how to read for the first time.
I'm working on a series of ampersands.
I wanted to try to push the idea of the type pictures in a
slightly different direction.
Instead of actually creating a traditional letterpress form,
I've created a sort of form that I can fill with ornaments and
type from the collection.
I knew I wanted to do Cooper Black ampersand.
It was designed by Oz Cooper here in Chicago.
This particular ampersand has a little bit of Chicago spliced
into the interior of the ampersand.
[music]
This one is at the first stages of proofing it.
It has a couple issues but I can go through now and start to look
and see what pieces need to be changed, what needs to be
swapped out and make sure that it's still is
reading as an ampersand.
This is a slight work in progress and will be part of a
larger series of similar ampersands.
[music]
[press clinking and clanking]
The late summer of 2001, I had all the time in the world
because I quit my job.
At that point, that was when I met Paul Aken and could go up to
the museum whenever I wanted to to work around Paul's schedule
and hopefully glean as much information about
printing from him as I could.
Paul Aken: I have approximately 3,000 cases of hand-set type.
She came up, went through it case by case.
We identified the type.
Now, this lady knows more about letterpress
printing than I will ever know.
I'm sure you've probably ordered one of these but Jen's book,
Alphabet of Sorts.
Jennifer Farrell: With Paul, I learned how to do everything the
right way and he never judged me from
the stupid things that I did.
When I went up there to print, he just would say,
"I wouldn't do it that way."
Then, he would show me the right way.
Paul Aken: It is such a tremendous thing.
It's made up of borders.
Rich Hopkins: Oh, yes.
I do have it.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Paul Aken: Okay.
I can't say enough about her.
She's not only being my best friend, probably,
in letterpress, she is just totally creative
and totally a perfectionist.
She just won't slop something out.
[press clinking and clanking]
Jennifer Farrell: I haven't learned everything about it,
which is what I like, as I'm constantly learning and coming
up with new projects that will maybe be harder or challenging
but if you don't try it, you don't know if it'll work.
[press clinking and clanking]
Rich Hopkins: Okay.
You're going to have to get wider again.
I'd wind it up about two points.
Celene Aubry: When I went to Italy, the island of Murano is
where they perfected and made the first clear glass.
Male: Until I have to let it go.
Celene Aubry: Then, over the course of the following five
centuries, they forgot how to do it not once but twice.
They had to remember how to do it because nobody documented how
they did it originally because they thought they
would always know how to do it.
[clacking]
Rich Hopkins: If you would please cool them off
so that I don't get burned.
Dave Churchman: We're passing along the torch.
It's like all these newbies, they need a start-off point.
Whether they get it from me or from the book General Printing
or Paul Aken or wherever they get it, they need that first
boot in the pants to get going.
Paul Brown: I really don't know how many institutions of
letterpress experience comes as part of
the graphic design program.
Does that look like it's getting ink on the letters?
Female: Yup.
Paul Brown: Okay.
It seems like since the rebirth of letterpress that institutions
are doing that, which is really interesting because probably a
number of those institutions had that originally.
They changed with the change of technology.
Now, they're getting back in.
Paul Aken: I see so many young people.
They've come to love letterpress like I do.
The colleges are really pushing it.
I don't actually offer courses here but I do have what I call
interns, somebody that doesn't have any money and wants to
come in and learn the process.
Rich Hopkins: I think the early ones were quite
intricate just like the type.
Dave Churchman: I look at is as an educational
adjunct to a formal education.
Rich Hopkins: It is a lot of extra work.
Female: When did they first start making wood type borders?
Rich Hopkins: Probably 1850s.
Dave Peat: Why am I generous with beginners is probably,
mainly going back to when I started.
People were very generous with me.
I would like to pass that onto others.
I don't necessarily really like what they print
but I'm glad they're doing it.
Female: I'm going to let everybody know
that you don't like wood type.
Rich Hopkins: No.
I love wood type.
Female: I'm just kidding.
Dave Churchman: I think it's wonderful.
They come out and they're good designers.
They have talent.
They're fed up probably look at a CRT all day.
Now, they've got a third dimension, something they can
get their hands on and be creative.
Paul Aken: The young people.
They're the ones that kick me in the ass.
I shouldn't probably have said that.
Kick me in the butt and motivate me.
Male: Put six or seven lines of ...
Dave Churchman: Drag them down the basement stairs and make
them set type in a composing stick, which is always
interesting because they get it upside down and
backwards and sideways.
There's only one way to do it.
Paul Brown: Grab this and you grab that W and make it an M.
Jim Daggs: When they do pull that first proof off the press
of all, of a sudden what they've been working with backwards
comes out as a beautiful printed piece.
Just to share that moment with them when they're looking
at it like, "I did this."
"Yes, you did.
This is how it works.
Now, you know the rest of the story."
Paul Brown: Perfect.
There you go.
Nice job.
Jim Daggs: It's a privilege to help them out.
Female: It looks great.
Stephanie Carpenter: Go and get the experience because it
might not always be out there.
It'll be in somebody's garage or their basement
and get it while you can.
Dave Churchman: They can ask questions on Google and they can
get answers but it's a whole lot easier to get the best answer
directly, face to face, from someone who has this knowledge.
Whether I have the knowledge or not, I make stuff up.
Rich Hopkins: Matthew, I believe you've made
a perfect piece of type.
Matthew: Yeah.
Rich Hopkins: Closest thing you're going to get to making a
perfect piece of type, except that it needs to
move over a little bit more.
Matthew: Same one.
Rich Hopkins: Clockwise another four clicks.
Go ahead.
Matthew: Just one or just ...
Rich Hopkins: Yeah, just one.
Rick von Holdt: I have come to see myself
as simply the custodian.
A lot of people say, "Well, I own this and I own that."
I'm going, "Well, no.
Really, you're going to become dust someday."
What does happen to this stuff?
It is a finite amount of material that is
not to be produced again.
Some things are being recast and revived but for the most part, a
lot of this stuff is just one time around.
I think that I owe somebody something somewhere down the
line to make sure this gets passed along and not simply
dumped or lost forever.
Rich Hopkins: All the machines that are in this room, they mean
nothing to anybody until you see one operate
and see what it does.
Dave Peat: The problem I have with museums and libraries is
the fact that the people in charge change.
They die, they retire, new people come in and have
different philosophies about what that museum should be.
The whole trust of the Smithsonian has gone away
from the industrial revolution.
What made our country was that sociological concepts.
It was people working and developing machines
and getting things done.
Dave Churchman: I don't trust museums.
They de-accession things.
This stuff is borderline deaccessionable,
if that's a word.
It should be in the hands of people who intend to use it.
Greg Walter's a perfect example.
He bought typecasting machines that might
have gone to a museum.
They've been used.
We've all benefited from this.
It should not go to the Smithsonian because they've got
warehouses in Maryland full of stuff.
I've been in them and I've seen it.
I'm thinking, "What a shame."
Dave Peat: They have all kinds of machinery and a tremendous
collection of matrices to make the type.
They have a tremendous collection of the actual type.
None of it is on display.
None of it has any interest of the people in charge now.
This is the terrible shame.
I would hate for my collection to end up like that.
Dave Churchman: My middle son, Andrew, because of the warehouse
where he's been a worker off and on.
I used to buy him lunch and pay him $5.
All my kids have worked at the warehouse
grudgingly, I might add.
He has enough knowledge that he knows how to liquidate this
stuff when I'm looking at the wrong side of the grass,
Andrew can come down here.
It's left to him in my will.
I want this stuff to go to end users, either embryonic
or well-schooled printers.
Andrew Churchman: We are currently standing at 470 North
Warman, which is known inside the family as the warehouse, to
the letterpressers of the world as Boutique de Junque,
J-U-N-Q-U-E.
This is the amalgamation of my father's last 45 or 50 years of
printing stuff and ephemera.
There's a smattering of different stuff here.
There are presses.
There's type.
If it's letterpress, it's probably in
this building somewhere.
He used to bring me down here.
I would work with him for free.
I protested and said, "Well, gee.
Maybe I should get paid something."
I was just a kid.
He started paying me $5 a day plus lunch.
That was the deal.
I told him I should have started a closed shop union and demanded
a 50% increase in wages but that never played out.
The bathroom has now become the chase room, which I admittedly
used once before anyone knew that it didn't
function and paid the price.
I had to clean it up.
I learned at his knee.
He was the best teacher I ever could have had.
He was super patient.
Just, when he talked, I listened.
He used to sit there.
I used to sit in that other chair, which we dug out one day
because he said, "Oh, there's this really neat
kind of captain's chair that ...
" I said, "Well, where is it," because I thought he wanted to
have it to sit in but I'd sit in that chair
there and he'd sit there.
We'd sit here and kick it around and make
grand plans for this place.
Some of it's in better condition than other areas.
There are the financial considerations.
When the roof has to be repaired and trees need to get cut down,
yeah, it's a little bit of a burden but in terms of the
volume of letterpress stuff, I'm proud to say my last name's
Churchman and that I'm Dave's son, and that
I've got a stake in this.
I think it's on me to carry it on.
He was once described by a friend of mine as a
distracted genius, easily carried off into this world but
brilliant by every measure.
It gave him purpose.
He was still on it up to December 28th.
He's still on mid-project, on moving
some stuff into the basement.
Yeah.
I'm just grateful that I had the time that I did.
I wish we had more time.
Now, what I've got is 5,000 cases of type and a bunch of
letterpress equipment but his soul is here.
That still hurts.
I see pictures of him and stuff like that.
I don't actually like being here when he's not here.
I know I have to be because his legacy, it's important to me.
I haven't really gotten comfortable in that role, I
guess or this role or whatever we're going to call it.
He can't be replaced.
[music]
Rich Hopkins: I think it's just a shame that our country by and
large, everybody's got it in their hand now instead of
working with stuff and developing stuff.
That's why I'm so excited about the computer
interface for my monotype.
Merging things together and doing neat things.
That's what I'm wanting to do.
This is the Lanston Monotype Composition Caster.
This particular model was introduced about 1904.
It was the first typesetting system that digitized type.
Therefore, even though Lanston developed a pneumatic system and
a pneumatic keyboard to drive it, it was determined very early
by people that knew anything about computers that there
should be a way to computerize the thing.
[clicking of Monotype]
I am now driving a wooden wagon with a jet engine.
The jet engine is my MacBook.
Bill Welliver, who is a friend of mine and the computer genius
behind it developed this system of hardware and software.
These are all air tubes.
These are air valves.
The air tubes lead down to here and make the machine raise and
lower pins just like the monotype keyboard did.
The MacBook sends a code over here.
It opens a valve.
The valve pushes a pin up.
The machine selects a character and casts it.
Then, it sends a code back to the computer, saying,
"I'm waiting for the next code."
In the old days when you're working with a keyboard blind,
about every fifth line, you had a mistake in it.
If you're a sloppy keyboard operator, it'd be every line.
That's a double whammy because every time a machine stopped
because of a mistake in a line, the mold gets cold, the lines
change in width because the mold got cold.
It really creates a mess.
I've actually been running my monotype with a
computer for about 15 years.
The beauty of it is that you can see the job on the computer
screen before you cast anything.
About 90% of the time, there are no mistakes there at all
because I saw them all here.
What this has done is taken 19th century technology and moved
it right into the 21st century.
It's extended the life of a monotype
composition caster immensely.
I haven't run the keyboard in two years.
That's because I got the MacBook.
Stephanie Carpenter: Hamilton Manufacturing Company started in
1880 with a gentleman named James Edward Hamilton.
He started to produce wood type different than anyone
else had ever done before.
He did it out of necessity.
It went really well for him.
The short version is is within 10 years, he started
to take over his competition.
Within 20 years, he's the largest manufacturer of wood
type in the United States.
It meant a lot more type and cabinets and cases for people,
printers specifically, across the country.
Jim Moran: They produced type until 1992, seven years after
the Mac had been invented and on the market.
It's a very strange irony that you've got the computer.
Yet, there are small applications and a need
therefore to produce type.
Stephanie Carpenter: The process for making
wood type hasn't changed.
Hamilton, the museum is doing it just like Hamilton, the
manufacturing company did it.
You start the process with perfect rock maple tree.
Then, you chop that tree down.
You actually split it in half.
After they chop the tree down, it gets sawed into half rounds
and tried out for six months to a year.
While the wood is being dried out, the original patterns
are put together by Norm.
Norm: What it amounts to is mostly tracing.
Stephanie Carpenter: He traced them using carbon paper onto a
thin piece of wood.
That thin piece of wood gets cut out, gets mounted.
That becomes your original pattern for creating more type.
After the wood gets sealed with shellac, then David cuts it to
its line size or pica height so it's ready for the pantograph.
Then, Mardell's at the pantograph.
She takes her pattern and her fresh piece of wood, sets it up
and will cut out every letter.
The pantograph is a tracing machine.
On the left side, there's a tracer and on the right side,
there's a router that goes at 30,000 revolutions a minute.
That's cutting that wood into a piece of type.
The last step in the process is hand finishing where Dave uses
engravers and knives to trim every corner to the right angle.
That whole process was done by hand.
Jim Moran: Those people that did it are way more important than
the machines they did it with.
They're disappearing fast.
It puts more gravity on those of us here at the
museum to get those voices.
The time to do it is now because like a lot of
other things it will disappear.
Then, we'll wish we knew how that happened.
Stephanie Carpenter: Hamilton Wood Type Museum is now making
wood type and printing posters as well as teaching.
Jim Moran: Some of the best-known designers in the
world are coming to us and asking if we will make type for
them because they, too, are interested in
the medium in another form.
What we're attempting to do is not just take the very latest
methods in design and turn them into type but reexamine the way
we've been speaking to each other for a really long time and
saying, "They had some great ideas.
Let's look at them again."
Adam Winn: The latest press we found is
a Chandler & Price 7x11.
Male: Okay, here is the little press [inaudible].
Adam Winn: She is a beaut.
It was rusty.
It was dirty.
There was an inch of grime on every surface.
Anybody in their right mind would look
at it and think, "Trash."
Male: Here, it has stayed pretty much in this spot.
They're not even easy to move around, are they?
Adam Winn: No, no.
Male: Dad always said there was a couple things that it needed
before he could get it running again.
Hopefully, you guys can make it work.
Adam Winn: Our experience with the presses and knowing
just how resilient they really are told us that it
actually could be a lot more.
Oh, we do have a serial number, A243.
Tammy Winn: The thing that's worried us, which is some advice
we'd always gotten from Jim Daggs is never haul
a press out of a basement.
Adam Winn: We've actually gotten a lot of advice to never,
ever try and do it but ...
Male: Yeah.
And here we are moving a press out of a basement.
Tammy Winn: So, your [crosstalk] ...
Adam Winn: This surely won't be the last time we ignore good
advice and pull a printer out of the basement anyway.
The patient is ready.
Here.
Get this smaller one.
Grab it.
Tammy Winn: You're fine.
[inaudible] fingers.
Yeah.
We win.
Adam Winn: Victory is ours.
A lot of what we do is first for us.
Things that we haven't done before.
We don't necessarily know how to do them but we have a good idea
and aren't afraid to jump in and try.
We cleaned off the press, pulled all the loose pieces off,
identified what was part of the press and what wasn't.
There's 25 pounds we don't have to haul up the stairs.
We've pulled those off for safety, both for the people
moving the press and the press itself.
[crosstalk] through and strap this as snug as possible.
Tammy Winn: This has to stay shug.
Adam Winn: Great.
Can you get that into the [inaudible]?
Tammy Winn: Yeah.
Get it up higher.
Adam Winn: Yup.
Tammy Winn: [inaudible].
Adam Winn: That's fine.
All right.
That's it.
It's where it needs to be.
We were fortunate enough that Paul had a friend
who is a tow truck driver.
Called him and brought him over and he said
he'd be happy to help us.
From there, that eased the burden considerably.
I think there's an old saying that no plan survives the enemy.
In this case, the enemy was the staircase.
Any more lift.
Right now we are sitting right up against the base of the ramp,
like it's butted up against it.
Tammy Winn: You need help, Adam?
Adam Winn: No.
Not right now.
Male: What's going on?
A little update?
Adam Winn: The sharp angle is defeating us right now.
The front end of the slide is catching on the ramp.
We need to get some lift on the front.
Tammy's going to come down with another pry bar.
We're both going to be lifting while he pulls.
When you're sweaty and tired and your back hurts and you're
covered in who knows what sort of toxic dust that's been
accumulating for 50 years, sometimes you need that reminder
of this is bigger than me.
This is bigger than the discomfort of a moment.
Right into my waiting arms.
You feel for my trap.
Tammy Winn: Uh-oh!
Adam Winn: Hi.
Tammy Winn: Hi.
Adam Winn: Sometimes, we feel like Indiana Jones.
We're out there rescuing relics from
people who would abuse them.
Is there a stopping point?
I don't know that that's our choice.
Stop, stop, stop.
Here, lift.
Need a shallower ...
Tammy Winn: You want me to go up?
Adam Winn: Yeah.
Come in further and just ...
We're making progress, go ahead and pull just a little bit.
We really have to give a lot of credit to the tow truck driver.
He was an expert of what he did.
He lowered the hook.
I hooked it up.
A little caution, a little care, we pulled
the press right up the stairs.
We are three-quarters of the way.
Oh, Glen!
Tammy Winn: It was available and you could use that.
I would say, if you're going to move a press
up a basement or out of ...
Yeah, get a tow truck.
Adam Winn: Stop, stop, stop.
You are caught on something.
Somebody on top is going to need to get a pry bar under there and
shake it loose so it slips up.
I think ...
Male: Starting to tip flat.
Adam Winn: We have to really weigh the inconvenience of
having another press on your foot and the money we have to
lay out to get it against a loss of true history.
Male: It's sitting on the plywood.
The plywood's moving out the door.
Tammy Winn: That's okay.
Once it's solid up there, let us know.
Adam Winn: The thing to understand is that a set of
type, a press may only come by once in our lifetime.
If we don't rescue something and it goes to the scrap pile,
nobody's ever going to get it again.
We going to put that other ramp out here?
Stephanie Carpenter: Letterpress printing has this beautiful
history of communicating and giving the power to the people.
It allows you to stand up against an oppressor.
Then, it's interesting because nowadays, it's a lot prettier.
Rich Hopkins: The fact is that a well-designed
piece communicates better.
If it doesn't, it's not well designed.
Typography used to be a discipline.
There were typographers.
They were people that made their living as typographers.
That whole trade is disappeared.
They don't exist anymore.
It just goes straight from Macintosh to
a copier of some sort.
Believe me, that's not the best way.
It's more of an art form now what remains of letterpress
because every person that has a computer has some
way of reproducing things.
Stephanie Carpenter: Some people might not see that it's
communicating in the same way but it might be doing
it in a more concise way.
Instead of huge broadside or a book, it's now printed in a
couple of words or a quote so I think it's beautiful to see how
letterpress has changed to run one and changed
to what it is nowadays.
[music]
Paul Aken: To me, it's still communication.
If you hand me this, I'm going to look at it and if it's a
piece of art that's, it's not as high in my opinion.
If it's something different, it communicates with me.
We look at places like Hatch.
They print some nice stuff but to me,
very little of it communicates.
It's just there.
If you like it, you hang it on your wall type of thing.
Jim Sherraden: Today, because of social media, because of
television, radio, all of the other technologies that we daily
use to receive our where and when information,
the Hatch poster has ceased becoming a functioning
tell you or sell your item.
It is now a commemorative or a celebratory item.
Celene Aubry: Posters are not necessary for advertising but
they are a really cool visual commemorative piece.
Jim Sherraden: I've always said we needed each other.
I needed this shop as much as this shop
needed somebody like me.
I hope that comment is taken with a gratitude.
That's always how it's intended.
When I walked into the shop the first time,
it was a visceral experience.
Couldn't believe the history of it that the Johnny Cash
photoplate was sitting right next to a Patsy Cline photoplate
next to a Led Zeppelin photoplate.
It was still a relatively untouched archive.
Celene Aubry: He would go through the business records and
organize the business records and could trace the history of
entertainers that he had grown up listening to or entertainers
that he was learning about for the first time by reading their
names, reminding people what we had, historically in the shop
and reminding people that we could make posters and making
the posters really kept Hatch going during
some lean times for the shop.
Jim Sherraden: You love it.
You got to live it and you got to make a revenue of that.
I am almost belligerent about it.
You had to.
You had to get this place up and running.
These presses print.
Roll that money through.
Roll those dollar bills through.
Sell the product, continue this legacy of Hatch Show Print
and the legacy of letterpress.
The part of this shop that fascinated me the most when I
got here '84 and still fascinates me probably more
today are the one-sheet carved poster blocks.
Started printing them carefully.
Anybody with any common sense saw how beautiful they were.
I started thinking about the compositions, the themes.
It made me a better artist.
I started making what I call the monoprints.
They were successful almost overnight.
[music]
We enjoy this great romanticism here as
the great Hatch Show Print.
Everybody in here has their own version of it.
Everybody in here makes great posters.
Everybody in here knows how to carve.
Everybody here looks at this place as a jewel, a gem, being
grateful for the opportunity to learn how to do all of this.
For real, learn it from the blue collar guys.
Go back in time to 1879, did the Hatch brothers
consider themselves designers?
Most certainly not.
Time has made us call ourselves designers.
When it's all said and done, we're printers.
You can put all the articles out there and all the interviews and
all the attaboys and attagirls but we're
printers at the end of the day.
[music - press sounds]
Adam Winn: Just for the record, I want all you guys to realize..
Paul, how old are you?
This is at least 40 something years since
this press has seen sunlight.
[wind noise]
The reason that I've wanted to get involved with this is not
necessarily for the art, which is amazing and I love it but
because it really is a critical and important piece of history.
Tammy Winn: I'm just soaking it all in as quickly as possible,
especially from the older generation who there's
so very little time with them.
Paul Aken: Things you'll find is like Hamilton did, beautiful,
smooth, glass-finished, perfectly flat 918 thousands,
within three thousands.
There's no finish.
It's shellacked so ...
Tammy Winn: Printing is just a magical thing and I think
people, they should try it.
[music]
Dave Churchman: Whether it's photography or stamp collecting
or you collect cameras or canoes, whatever it is,
it's a tie to the past.
I hope good ties to the past help
reduce errors of the future.
Rich Hopkins: We're still working very nicely with
machines that were built 75, 80, 100 years ago.
That's why it's still alive.
I think that's a credit to the machinery and maybe the industry
ought to focus on it a little bit more and
go back in that direction.
Gregory Walters: It gives a little focus to my life and
what I want to do with my life.
I guess there is, yeah, a symbiotic relationship.
I'm keeping them alive and they're keeping me alive.
Tammy Winn: I had no idea that you would gain not only just
type and presses and ink and all the weight that
comes with having a shop
but that you got all these friends with it.
Rich Hopkins: Best friends in many instances because we have a
passion for a common thing and also we appreciate each other.
Dave Churchman: It's big.
I mean, it's like an inch, 72 point letters.
It's big, bold letters.
It's big, bold letters like Cooper Black.
There are a few pickles and I could give you names
but I'm not because I might see myself in a courtroom
situation but they're damn few.
Rich Hopkins: But again, all of these, even when they're
McKellers are ornamented number such and such.
None of these have been named.
Dave Churchman: Which is annoying when you're trying to..
Jim Moran: I'm often quite humbled by looking at 200 year
old specimen books.
I think, "Those guys were master printers.
They had no electric lights.
They had no power equipment and they
were doing a phenomenal job."
Rich Hopkins: Can you imagine creating a Punch ...
Dave Churchman: No.
Rich Hopkins: ... with the right size that's ...
The identical features of all the other character?
Dave Churchman: No.
I have no idea how they could have done that work.
None.
I really don't ...
Rich Hopkins: With poor lighting.
Dave Churchman: With big windows.
Rich Hopkins: Yeah.
And probably everybody drinking and smoking.
Jim Moran: As everybody gets their
segment of printing history ...
Rich Hopkins: Aha!
Dave Churchman: Oh!
Look at that chromatic ...
Jim Moran: All you really get to do is advance it a little bit.
You get to carry the torch.
Don't forget that it's an honor to carry the torch even for a
brief time because really ...
Rich Hopkins: ...one or the other ...
Jim Moran: ... that's the best thing we can hope for.
Dave Churchman: Right.
I have that in 48 point ...
Rich Hopkins: Oh, really?
Dave Churchman: ... with only three caps, all lower case,
three caps, W, K, and O, I think.
Jim Sherraden: All these folks that collected type machine in
the early days, much to the chagrin, I'm sure,
of their wives and families.
Male: ...heavy quarter case of two point legs.
Jim Sherraden: Perhaps call it their
destiny that their legacy ...
Male: May have one of these from above but we can
order them to take what's come.
Jim Sherraden: It is either the box in the back of
their truck or the river bottom.
[crosstalk].
Jim Sherraden: They chose the back of their
truck to put all this stuff in.
[crosstalk].
Male: Yeah.
Well, I would just assume some ...
Jim Sherraden: I could speak for their love of the craft and
their love of the archive and say, "Thank you."
[crosstalk].
Jim Sherraden: Here, we will continue inking our blocks out.
Celene Aubry: It's incredible that at the end of the day,
you're relying on people for all of it.
Paul Aken: From my perspective, I'm at the end.
Been there and done that
but I think letterpress is going to grow.
I really do.
[music]
Dave Peat: I would like to leave a legacy.
I do hope that the people that I have helped
get started continue with it.
I've warned people, it's a disease.
You get really interested in this.
It gets out of hand.
I'll make another digression, if you don't mind.
Maybe people have the same or get the
same feeling that I have.
It's such a satisfying thing
but I think the bottom line in all of
this is creating something.
Jim Daggs: It's been fulfilling to be able to make a living at
what you like to do and be happy and healthy doing it.
I guess I look at life simple like that.
[music]
[press clinkimg and clankimg]
I intend to continue on in what other people
would call retirement years.
I tell people I've probably got 1,200 years
worth of projects to do anyway.
[press clinkimg and clankimg]
They used to have a sign on the wall said, "Keep printing
until the hearse shows up."
I guess that's probably what I'll end up doing.
[music]