How is Everyone Doing & Introductions

This year has been great for the print shop. I’ve managed to get a new press, a Webendorfer #1, and a 55” Jacques board shear into the main shop. Getting the Webendorfer going for projects is something I’m really looking forward to next year.

I’ve also added on a second space for bookbinding. I’ve been getting a requests for binding work for a while, and I’ve been wanting to work on my own book objects, so I’ve assembled some equipment for that work.

For work—I’m getting ready to make 100 blank books for a client, and I have several business card jobs to wrap up before the holiday comes. Hopefully I can get some printing for personal work done in between.

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Looking great! Came here from your post in the Letterpress group on FB Glad to see the website working well.

Hi! Delighted to see this site come back to life. Elizabeth and Eric really deserve an enormous vote of thanks from the whole letterpress community for their tireless, selfless contributions here!

I am currently between shops, but here is what my most recent shop and library of printing books looked like:

Five Roses Press

DSR Library.jpeg

David, I don’t think your photos posted, but I’d love to see what your shop looks like. I was trying to find the picture you posted recently and I couldn’t find it!

Gerald,
Thanks. What a great idea. I know I am not all that active on Briar Press but I sure do find it useful when I’m researching anything letterpress related. It is great to see pics of your shop and read your updates. We are busy getting ready for a big event at a local history museum on the first Saturday in December. Our little museum print shop will get about 400 visitors in just a couple hours and we will give away a couple hundred 11x17 Christmas posters and a couple thousand Letterpress Christmas cards; all of which we will be finishing up printing this holiday weekend.

Hi Gerald, I saw your post shared over on FB and was happy to see things are still happening with a new iteration of the site.

This summer I bought a house, which means a lot more space, including a basement living room that has now become home to all my letterpress stuff.

So far, I’ve gotten things in place, but haven’t had time to do any printing yet. Went through cancer treatment last year, and between returning to work full time and all the other projects a new house brings with it, I’ve not been able to focus exclusively on the printshop.

But it is coming along, and I’m looking forward to being able to print in a nice, warm space with room to move around after nine years in a basement storage unit with no heating. And windows! And a door to the lawn outside (made getting the Vandercook in a lot easier). One thing that is missing is proper lighting, I’ll have to share photos once that is in place!

I would love to see Briarpress vibrant again. I miss it.

I purchased two cabinets of wood type this summer that had been in storage since the 80s. I spent the summer cleaning the type, refinishing the cabinets and making room for it in my already crowded shop.

Very happy with the outcome. Attached is a photo of the revamped shop and one of the first things I printed with the new type.

Second try and the pictures loaded.

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OK, I finally got the photos uploaded (you can see them in the original post above now, which I edited). For anyone still having problems, note that the site prefers small, lower-res, JPEGs.

I work out of a Community Art Space in the Mendips, UK (Rockaway Park). It’s been a good year in my print shop, I have moved from a smaller space (shipping container) into a bigger shared space. I’d had my eye on a bigger press for a while and the move enabled me to buy a Farley 24L to compliment my Farley 16 and a stable of Adanas.

I’m a lecturer in a university during the week and then print every weekend. I’ve been raising money for Doctors without Borders and The MV Louise Michel alongside selling my own work and I’d be a liar if I said I broke even!

The unique situation of my workspace and the amount of visitors coming through the spaces guarantees I’m sharing the history and traditions of letterpress printing.

I’ll post a quick picture of my studio space and then it’s off to the coal face of Art and Design Education for me.

Unfortunately photos won’t upload. Will try another time.

House of Jo, you need to make sure the images have a small enough file-size, and that file-names don’t contain spaces or special characters. It’s a quirk of the forum :) If that doesn’t work, you might want to try another browser, as I had to the last time I was uploading photos.

-Kim

Hi from the Museum of Printing here in Hooton Park, Cheshire, England! Although only a small workshop, since I opened in the early summer this year we have had many hundreds of visitors on our monthly Open Days - the big attraction being watching me operate the big Columbian hand-press to print keepsakes to take away. My own Silver Birch Press is also becoming active again, with several projects lining up for setting and printing. Busy but happy times getting inky fingers … greetings to the community, near and far.

Thanks for advice RE reducing file size.

Here is a quick shot of my workspace at Rockaway Park.

House of Jo @ Rockaway Park. Temple Cloud. UK

Hello all,

Lots going on in the freshly relocated print shop for me and Cathleen. I just finished refurbishing an old treadle-powered Rosback perforator and it’s working great now. Adding a set of photos to share the outcome.

Other than that, it’s just puttering about the print shop on a daily basis as time allows. I retired in early August 2024 from my day job/career and Cathleen is not far behind me with her retirement from teaching. Lots of outdoor activities planned in the future as we can commit even more time to camping, backpacking, and daily hikes.

Dan & Cathleen Cherry
Imprimerie Chez Cerise
Prescott, AZ

Punching holes is fun

Cleaned perf plate

Rust & debris

Rusty perf plate

Damaged Rosback pins

Rosback floor model perforator

Very glad to hear that a new & improved Briar site is on the way. At Skyline Type Foundry we have been posting our news releases here every month for years, but within the past year were forced to discontinue due to pix refusing to upload. Bring it on!

Happily, our long-awaited big Korrex press has arrived from Europe.
From northeastern Italy to northwestern Pennsylvania - thanks to Hapag-Lloyd ships, Norfolk Southern Railroad and Lake Erie Trucking.

The new Korrex Frankfurt press.

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I’m loving seeing all the comments here! Good to see some rejuvenation here.

I’ll try to post some updated photos of my shop soon. No major recent changes, although I did pick up a Gem perforator. I’ve had no time to clean it up yet. I’ve been too busy this year for personal projects, but I’ve had a few jobs to run for customers, including one I’m working on this weekend. We will see how capable my 10x15 C&P is at printing halftone photos!

Brent

Hello,
I am glad to see Briarpress coming back to life. I have used it quite often in the past for information. I also read APALetPress emails but I never contribute to the conversation. The reasons for this are two-fold: I’m mostly reading for information, and secondly, I forgot my password and can’t be bothered to fix it.
My shop is nothing fancy. I have some cabinets of type, one press, a bunch of old ink and I am squeezed into a windowless spare bedroom in my basement. I do however, have an ambitious printer’s devil. :-)
Lisa Reinke APA#859
~Little Light Press~

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Nice shoppes and presses! And H Hale, I love the poster.

I am in the process of packing up my shoppe for yet another house move; this will be the fifth move in 12 years. Having a wandering spirit is getting old, as am I. Currently I am trying to get all four of my APA pieces done before Armovegeddon.

The current state of my shop: the Gordon is a work in progress (and yes, the flywheel is on backwards - I will fix that before I run it).

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‘Sup, everyone. You know me by my letterpress alter ego, Reflex Letterpress. This is my fine art nom de plume, used here for the very good reason that Reflex didn’t exist yet when I signed up to Briar.

Let me see about loading an image! I’ll use one of some Ludlow slugs I’m casting for business cards.

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I’m also glad to see that BP is picking up. While I’m not doing much printing (turned 86 earlier this month) I am still enjoying helping some hand press folks with issues, and trying to get up to speed with revisions to the now-online Worldwide Hand Press Database (www.aepm.eu) as well as teaching a young Tico man about letterpress. It’s all good.

Bob

How nice to see life returning to the fantastic resource that is Briar Press! A big thank you to everyone who made it happen.

Gwen Holbrow

A Briar Press site revival is great news for the letterpress community! Thanks to everyone behind the scenes who is making it happen.

Here’s a quick summary of news from my letterpress corner of the world in North Seattle (Amada Press // APA 937):

1) For the past year I’ve enjoyed creating/printing new alphabets from existing ones, using metal and wood type. Some of you have seen the results of this work (#GothuxType) in the APA bundles or on Instagram.Take a peek:

» https://www.instagram.com/amadapress
» https://vimeo.com/860762057

2) PARTNERS IN PRINT (formerly known as the letterpress program at Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts) is now in its 4th year as an arts non-profit, born during the pandemic in 2020. We’ve been operating without a home base this entire time, offering LONG-DISTANCE LETTERPRESS classes over Zoom, engaging traditionally under-served communities through in-person letterpress printing events called PRESS POWER, supporting the generation of letterpress printers through PRINT FUTURES. And…

… we are delighted to announce that we have found our future Seattle home, and are currently raising funds to build it out and move our big presses and type out of heated storage and into the new space! Learn more about our mission and ways to give:

» https://partnersinprint.org/ways-to-give/

I look forward to hearing more about what’s happening in your shops & communities. Cheers!

~Amy Redmond
https://amyredmond.com/amadapress/