Before the Ink Dries: Keeping Letterpress Printing Alive | Nicole Rivera

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Purple smudges stain the ink desk as Matthew Lamoureux pulls down the lever on his tabletop printing press. Lamoureux carefully selects the type, metal little tiles that almost resemble Scrabble pieces. “Upside down and right to left,” he remarks, lining them up. Lamoureux has short blond hair and wears blue jeans and a 918 Printery T-shirt. He sprints into the other room with a wide grin and returns with a matching 918 apron and a gleam in his eye. He gestures to the tabletop with reverence, palms open toward the ceiling. Lamoureux’s sentences run into one another as his words leave his lips. He ties the apron tight, excitedly explaining just how each small piece works, his hands moving quickly.

“So, this is a chase, okay? This is what holds the type.” Think of a frame to hold the metal letters in place. “Now technically,” Lamoureux jokes, “all the old guys are yelling at me because I’m supposed to tie this up with string. Now this is kind of tough because it’s just one row of type.” He holds up a rectangular piece of wood. “Now this is furniture.” Furniture fills the gaps between the type and the chase. He places the slab of wood down and picks up what looks like a thin metal strip. “This is leading.” Lamoureux explains that, just like typing on a computer, the spaces in between your lines are called leading.  

Lamoureux runs Per Diem Printing in West Hartford, Connecticut, a commercial printing company that specializes in mostly digital printing to help fund his greater love: letterpress printing. 918 Printery is his own private press. The space itself is expansive, filled with the earthy scent of paper and history. The outer room is arranged as a makeshift classroom; drawers of type sit, tucked into the walls, beside a tabletop press. A larger workspace is home to his heavy-duty presses, more type, and enough paper and paint to last a lifetime. Shelves stack like Legos, each cabinet housing another treasure or antique he has collected over the years from an aging but close-knit group of printing aficionados. 

Letterpress printing has fallen out of vogue and is no longer economically viable with advancements in digital printing. The hobbyist community fights to preserve the art and the working machines dating back to the 1800’s. 

Lamoureux plays a game of selecting the right sizes of furniture to fill the space. His mission: ensure that the line of type is tightly pressed and able to hold together. Finally, he employs a quoin, a wedge-like piece, which is “turned” with a key to “lock” the type under pressure. He makes a satisfied sound and holds up the completed chase for examination.

“Setting type, printing this way, from our perspective today, [it] makes you stop. Slow down. Think about what you’re doing. If you don’t,” he muses, picking up a thick folded card to display, “you end up spelling the word Cambell wrong on a hundred different Christmas cards.” Lamoureux smiles at the error. “And now,” he continues, setting the card down on his studio table, “you’ve gone through the whole long process of setting the pipe, spacing the pipe, printing it, cleaning it, [and] putting it all away.”  

In our fast-paced world, it is refreshing to practice an antiquated process that  requires precision and care above speed. Selecting and setting the type to spell out the words, Happy Thanksgiving, took Lamoureux fifteen minutes alone. 

The air hisses loudly as the ink is rolled. The tabletop machine chimes as its parts move in tandem, like bells ringing in the wind. “Now this is the noise that everyone wants to hear,” Lamoureux remarks, continuing to pull the lever down, conducting. It’s almost musical, the steady rhythm of printing. 

Lamoureux’s fingers dance a well-rehearsed two-step as the rollers of the hand press spread the ink onto the ink desk. The painstakingly assembled type is held together tight, ensuring that the ink fully saturates the thick paper in the feed. Finally, words are literally pressed onto the paper. 

In the center of his studio sits the press that cannot be ignored. Big white block letters are embossed in the metal, housing ORIGINAL HEIDELBERG CYLINDER. It is clear, even to the untrained eye, that this press is a beast. The middle of the press resembles an engine block, imagine your grandfather’s old Buick, a vision of gleaming silver gears. 

“Part of the magic of letterpress printing, [is] it is a printing process.” 

 Of all of Lamoureux’s presses, this one is the most perilous to operate. The efficiency of this press is what makes it so dangerous to the untrained hand. The Heidelberg is best equipped for commercial printing as it has the capacity to make many copies at a time and is much faster than, say, a hand press. Lamoureux proudly stands in front of it, explaining that this press is used for much bigger jobs than holiday cards. “That’s how we print books.” 

Lamoureux also owns a Linotype. An enormous machine that looks straight out of Willy Wonka’s fabled chocolate factory. These machines were used to line the inside of the New York Times, working hard all day and every day printing the daily paper.  When he needs a spare part, or something breaks, he knows of only one man that will have the answers. “Dave Seat runs a company called Hot Metal Services. He’s one of the last people in the world that knows how to repair these machines.” 

Lamoureux stresses the importance of this tight knit community and the ink-stained diehards that hold years of knowledge and experience. There is a very real fear that when these experts are gone, the ability to fix and maintain these antique presses will be lost. “The sad thing is Dave Seat is older. He’s going to pass away one day, who’s going to help people work on these machines? John Barrett, who runs Letterpress Things, he’s in his eighties. What happens when he passes away? And the stuff that’s too big for people to take is going to go to scrap. And then there’s going to be nobody in New England selling timber and spacing and type and ink and knives and coins.” 

Johannes Gutenberg’s first printing press in the early 1400s revolutionized the way that humans were able to spread information. The Gutenberg Bible became the first book to be completely produced by a printing press and movable type. Though the process was slow and painstaking, this invention helped shape the way we, as a society, share thoughts and ideas. Words on paper became the way to exchange knowledge. Newspapers were printed, flyers made, and poetry inked and bound. 

While Gutenberg’s printing press was the most notable and most famous, the invention of the printing press took place much earlier in China. Gutenberg’s invention was using metal type, rather than wood, and he brought it to the wealthy nobility of Europe. The oldest printed text originated in China during the first millennium. The oldest known printed book, the Diamond Sutra, was produced around 868 AD. 

Letterpress printing became the standard for printing. As technology progressed, new ways of printing were created. The demand for commercial printing was growing, and printers sought new methods to keep up. By the late 1800s, offset printing was being developed. Drawing its origins from lithography, this printing method involved the ink being offset to the rubber blanket of the press and then onto the paper. Offset became an increasingly popular standard during that time. Then in 1969, the laser printer was invented by Gary Starkweather at a Xerox research laboratory. From libraries, schools, and into your own home, digital printing still dominates today. 

In 1978, the last issue of the New York Times set by Linotype was printed. “The New York Times had twenty-one of these, that they tossed out the second story window into the parking lot. They were done. They were useless.” Lamoureux gestures to his own Linotype, brushing over its antique keyboard. Digital printing relegated machines like Lamoureux’s to auction sales and memorabilia shows. 

“It wasn’t how you were going to do printing anymore. There was this gap between the move from letterpress printing to offset [printing] where this stuff was useless. Nobody wanted it. [Not] until you get this resurgence of letterpress artists doing it as a hobby, as an art.”  

Today, letterpress printing has entered the niche market and nestled its way in the hearts of hobbyists and historians. One such hobbyist is Dave Tribby. Based in Sunnyvale, California, Tribby runs the website handsetpress.org. Like Lamoureux, Tribby is a member of the American Amateur Press Association. This association is essential to the letterpress community. It provides resources for beginners and houses an expansive database of commercial and private presses around the country.

Trippy is a retired software engineer for Hewlett-Packard Co. who now devotes his time to creating art through letterpress printing. Trippy uses letterpress to mold his projects to his exact specifications, creating designs that are uniquely his own. I reached out to Trippy on my twenty-first-century typing device, my iPhone, pulling up Gmail faster than it takes me to sing Happy Birthday. Over email, he described how he relishes the control letterpress printing gives the artist, including paper and ink choices. 

“Even before computers,” Trippy writes, “letterpress printing was facing a decline with the invention of offset printing.” The industry was changing; “small shops started appearing that used an interesting marriage between digital and letterpress printing.” Trippy finds value in keeping the historical practice alive and believes that young artists can take inspiration from this craft to carry it into the future. “They learn how some of the terminology still in use came from the letterpress era. These insights change the way they use their digital tools.” 

For letterpress hobbyists, the ink runs deep. Three time zones away, the devotion to the craft is alive in New Haven, Connecticut. The Yale University print shop was established in 1936. Like most colleges and universities of the time, Yale operated their own printing shop on campus. Beginning in the 1980s, colleges began closing these costly presses in favor of smaller, cheaper digital alternatives. The John Edwards Printing shop on Yale’s campus remains one of the last remaining university shops today, with three working printing presses. The university offers workshops and classes for students to learn about the art of letterpress.

Jacob Romm was one of those students. October leaves litter the sidewalk as Romm shuffles his feet through the crisp yellows and oranges. Chai latte in hand, he knowingly weaves his way through the Yale University campus. He wears a brown knit sweater and round glasses as he raises his hand to block the glaring sun. Swiping his key card, he enters through a series of doors in Jonathan Edwards College, almost tripping over a Razor scooter left by students, and heads towards a basement door. 

 The Yale printing press studio is in the College’s basement. Romm laughs and remarks that the placement is strange, as he must enter this residence hall whenever he wants to use the space. At the bottom of the stairs, the world of the eighteenth-century publishing industry unfolds. The workshop is filled to the brim with machines that the greatest figures in history once worked. Imagine Benjamin Franklin’s brow furrowed, peering over a press, stirring a revolution. War pamphlets, stamped and pressed during the Great War. Headlines like: “Japan Surrenders, End of War!” were printed on presses like these. There is an electric buzz in the air, it’s palatable. The sound of paper shuffling becomes the steady backbeat. It reeks of creation. Gutenberg’s vision fully realized. 

The presses are intimidating in both their size and their construction. They have that antiquity to them–the kind that leaves you afraid to touch them, but also eager to start tinkering. Against one wall, towards the center of the room, is a jobbing press. A pressman would use this on small jobs that were not expected to yield many copies of a work or ones that didn’t require the full use of a piece of paper. This might include stationary, handbills, or even a small book. 

The space is big, with two long hallways lined with metal wood cabinets, storing drawers, and drawers of metal type in every font one can think of. Then, in every font one can think of in italics. One drawer is Comic Sans, next to it is Comic Sans in bold.  

 Romm hovered his foot over the pedal of the jobbing press.  He is using a type that has already been set, explaining how the ink presses into it, and then the type itself is pressed using the pressure from the foot pedal onto the paper, not unlike a stamp. “Theoretically,” Romm explains, pumping his foot down onto the pedal, causing the machine to whir and the round wheel settled alongside it to spin, “each letter is identical, but they’ve all been used, so one is darker than the other. You can see small imperfections in the way that ink has covered the type. I think those small irregularities can make it exciting to look at.” Holding out the card, it is clear some letters have been fully saturated while others are merely a brief impression on the page. In the word “Hello,”  imagine the “o” is faded giving it the effect of: Hello. 

Romm is a second-year graduate school student and PhD candidate in a joint program between comparative literature and early modern studies. He has spent his fair share of time fiddling around in the Yale print shop.

“I went to the Yale press, because I saw a poster for an intro workshop. And I was like, oh yes, sign me up. Walking in and seeing the demo, seeing how all this stuff worked. I was just like, ‘when can I come back? I’m obsessed.’” Romm opened his print shop, Letter and Spirit Press, with a lightweight provisional press kit that he assembled in his home. He recommends these kits to beginners who “don’t want to or can’t invest in one of the more heavy or expensive presses.” Made of wood and PVC, this press helped Romm get acclimated to the craft of letterpress. Romm took his interest in books, history, and the Renaissance and combined it with his knack for art and graphic design. “For me, it’s sort of a perfect combination.”

As the world advances, so does technology. Romm reflects on why letterpress printing has maintained its niche popularity. “We’re kind of realizing that there is a human handmade touch that’s really appealing to see. You can’t make that in a mass-produced process. So, part of the magic of letterpress printing, [is] it is a printing process.” 

Romm enjoys exploring his connection to historical and familial roots through letterpress. His distant relatives owned a printing press, Widow and Brothers Romm, from the late 1700s until the mid-1900s. The process of letterpress allows him to feel connected to the past in a way that is becoming increasingly rare today. Romm uses his press to create art that is meaningful for himself and his Jewish, transgender, and queer communities. Romm creates art ranging from stickers and postcards, to poems and translations. ​

Romm recently produced some broadside prints in collaboration with poet Julien Strong. In these broadsides, he skillfully uses a piece of embroidery floss dipped in ink to create a one-of-a-kind detail to stand alongside Strong’s printed poems that he must handset in metal type.  

Printing artisans like Romm are free to take any creative direction they choose. “It used to be that as a letterpress printer, you would make your money doing advertisements, instruction manuals, just like commercial printing.” Romm adjusts his glasses slightly, “But now we don’t need the technology of letterpress for that. So, it’s kind of an exciting moment for letterpress in that [it is] an accessible way to [give] voices, that might not otherwise have access to this kind of craft world, the dignity of a letterpress print which has a permanence and a sense of gravitas.”

Nicole Rivera is a staff writer for Blue Muse Magazine.

Header photo: Matthew Lamoureux in front of his Linotype machine.

Header photo courtesy of Nicole Rivera.