The DownStairs Press

Letterpresss – Books & Broadsides

Photos provided by Jack Mader.

Hand Set Type

21 x 14 inches • 15 numbered copies. Designed and printed in Sans Serif Light and Baskerville fonts on Nekoosa Linen paper. $35.

In 1990 I was given a sabbatical leave from teaching high school literature and writing to attend the Minneapolis College of Art & Design where I studied drawing, artists’ book making, screen printing and letterpress printing. As part of that year’s study I worked as an intern for the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. This broadside was printed at Minnesota Center for Book Arts on a Vandercook SP20 letterpress.

I had been enamored of letterpress printing before this time, but I did not have a press of my own yet. The opportunities offered by hanging out regularly at MCBA lead me to thinking and learning about the subtleties, the intricacies, the quiet beauties of hand set type. This early broadside is an attempt to design and print something which began to encompass the scope of my new learning.