A nice conversation

I recently had occasion to reach out to a college classmate, Harvey Hoechstetter, who as a fellow printer has led a very interesting life. He is now living near Mendocino, California, far from his printing life in Pittsburgh. He put me onto a very interesting article in of all places, a real estate magazine, that covers the 3 women printers of Mendocino who had a lasting impression, so to speak, on letterpress. The editor/publisher of the magazine, Zida Borcich, was once a vary successful letterpress printer starting in the 1980s and is now in the magazine business. I found the stories very interesting, and being edited by a former printer, not full of the usual stuff writers put in when they don’t know what they are talking about. The material, with photos, is at http://www.realestatemendocino.com/images/REM%20749.pdf. Of the three, Felicia Rice, lost her shop in the fires that raged around Santa Cruz. In corresponding with Felicia, I found out that she shared the experience of having Jack Stauffacher as a typography instructor at UC Santa Cruz, as I had him some years earlier at Carnegie Tech.

To those who think we are now in a letterpress revival, I would hate to point out that it really started back in the 1980s, and maybe even sooner.

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