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Book Arts Workshop Open Studio Hours 4:30pm - 9pm Letterpress Only
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Let us help you select the press and type best suited for your project! The letterpress studio features a number of different kinds of vintage presses for printing metal and wood type.
You’ll find a wide variety of wood and metal type available, including alphabets for Cyrillic, Cherokee, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and accented type for French, Spanish and German — we even have math type! In addition to a wide variety of engraved images, we also have a photopolymer platemaker for creating relief plates from computer files.
Some of our cases of type are more full than others, so it's a good idea to come in and have a look before you get too far along in your design! You can also download PDFs of our type specimen books to get a preview of some of the type we have:
There are a lot of ways to explore letterpress printing — to give you an idea, check out these photos of activities, classes and projects!
Examples of letterpress printed pieces and a tiny press
These are some of the things that people have made and worked with in our letterpress studio. Right when you walk into the Book Arts Workshop you are greeted with this wall of artwork. Maybe your piece will be up there some day!
On the table are some pieces in the Ojibwe language printed by folks in the Anishnaabemowin Circle, where students, staff and faculty help each other learn their Indigenous language. Also on the table is an unfurled accordion book letterpress printed by Sarah Smith in collaboration with New Zealand poet Rhian Gallagher and artist Lynn Taylor. This was a project Sarah completed while she was Printer in Residence at University of Otago as part of a Matariki Network exchange. And finally you see the tiny orange press, which Callen Votzke '13 made rollers for when he was a technical instructor for Thayer Machine Shop.
These are some of the things that people have made and worked with in our letterpress studio. Right when you walk into the Book Arts Workshop you are greeted with this wall of artwork. Maybe your piece will be up there some day!
On the table are some pieces in the Ojibwe language printed by folks in the Anishnaabemowin Circle, where students, staff and faculty help each other learn their Indigenous language. Also on the table is an unfurled accordion book letterpress printed by Sarah Smith in collaboration with New Zealand poet Rhian Gallagher and artist Lynn Taylor. This was a project Sarah completed while she was Printer in Residence at University of Otago as part of a Matariki Network exchange. And finally you see the tiny orange press, which Callen Votzke '13 made rollers for when he was a technical instructor for Thayer Machine Shop.
A result from a Pressure Printing workshop
Pressure printing works with low relief images created by gluing slightly dimensional objects such as leaves or cut paper to card stock and printing it on the press. Well, it's slightly more involved than that, but it's a terrific quick way to create printed imagery. We'll walk you through the process!
Pressure printing works with low relief images created by gluing slightly dimensional objects such as leaves or cut paper to card stock and printing it on the press. Well, it's slightly more involved than that, but it's a terrific quick way to create printed imagery. We'll walk you through the process!
Poetry printing project for Russian First Year Seminar
Students in Ainsley Morse's course RUSS: Doing Things with Words hand printed their favorite poems in an experimental way, using a roller and different colored inks to get the cool background. But first they explored avant garde typographic design and small press publishing with visiting artist, poet and publisher, Matvei Yanklevich, from Ugly Duckling Presse.
Students in Ainsley Morse's course RUSS: Doing Things with Words hand printed their favorite poems in an experimental way, using a roller and different colored inks to get the cool background. But first they explored avant garde typographic design and small press publishing with visiting artist, poet and publisher, Matvei Yanklevich, from Ugly Duckling Presse.
"Readie Pome", work from The Letterpress Intensive, by Gayeong Song '22
The Letterpress Intensive is a term-long, non credit class where participants learn about historic typefaces and how to hand set and print a piece of text using movable metal type. They receive intensive hands-on instruction in the nuances of traditional fine book typography and printing. These classes have focused on subjects such as poetry chapbooks, linoleum carved letterforms, poster design, and bilingual poetry. Look into the informational session at the beginning of each term.
The piece pictured here is "Readie Pome", by William Carlos William, designed and Printed by Gayeong Song '22. Her piece won the 2019 Letterpress Prize in our Book Arts Prize.
The Letterpress Intensive is a term-long, non credit class where participants learn about historic typefaces and how to hand set and print a piece of text using movable metal type. They receive intensive hands-on instruction in the nuances of traditional fine book typography and printing. These classes have focused on subjects such as poetry chapbooks, linoleum carved letterforms, poster design, and bilingual poetry. Look into the informational session at the beginning of each term.
The piece pictured here is "Readie Pome", by William Carlos William, designed and Printed by Gayeong Song '22. Her piece won the 2019 Letterpress Prize in our Book Arts Prize.
Used for printing on flexible paper (not board) with precise registration for complex printing like multiple colors or passes through the press, finely detailed relief images. Allows for clean single color printing or painterly hand-inking
Used for printing on flexible paper (not board) with precise registration for complex printing like multiple colors or passes through the press, finely detailed relief images. Allows for clean single color printing or painterly hand-inking
Used for printing many copies quickly (once set up) on small paper or stiff board like coasters.
We have six different examples of these platen presses which are used for printing on small paper or stiff board like coasters.
Used for printing on paper or sometimes smooth cloth or plastic. Allows for straight single color printing or painterly hand-inking
Used for proofing type and blocks before printing the final edition, letterpress printing with wood/metal type, and relief printing from wood/linoleum blocks and polymer plates on paper or stiff cardboard (not too thick). Sometimes used with smooth cloth or plastic.
Used for making relief polymer plates from images scanned or created digitally that are to be printed with letterpress
Rooms 21-25
25 North Main St
Hanover, NH 03755
Sarah Marcella Parella teaches letterpress printing, bookbinding, and other aspects of bookmaking. She works closely with faculty to create hands-on projects to strengthen the impact of their coursework—and with students and non-students on their extra-curricular projects. Sarah also produces books, prints and comics in the realm of nonsense and absurdity. Her work can be found in various collections such as MOMA Artist Book Collection; Printed Matter; The Banff Center; The Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley; Special Collections, University of Otago, NZ and others.
Deborah Howe is the Collections Conservator at Dartmouth College Library. Previously, she headed the conservation lab at Northwestern University Library. In addition to her conservation work she has been actively involved in teaching book arts. She has taught at Columbia Center for Paper and Book, the Newberry Library, the Paper and Book Intensive and currently binding classes at the Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth. She is a long-standing member of the Guild of Book Workers and is on the board of directors of the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio.
Won K. Chung teaches typographic design through a series of term-long workshops called Letterpress Intensive which focuses on fine typesetting and printing. Before retiring from corporate design work, he also taught typography and design courses at RISD, Art Institute of Boston, and the University of the Arts.
Emma is an artist who is primarily interested in facilitating creative encounters with the more-than-human world. They teach hand papermaking, bookmaking, printmaking, and natural dye and ink-making in the Book Arts Workshop, and have collaborated with the Dartmouth O Farm to grow a garden of traditional dye plants for use in fibercraft and art-making.