While spending time with my family in Northern Virginia this summer, I took advantage of our “big city” location to track down a one-day letterpress workshop near Old Town Alexandria. These workshops can be hard to find, especially at the right price, and I learned that the instructor had people coming in every other weekend from places like New York and North Carolina.

Letterpress is an old printing method where metal type locked into a press bed is inked by rollers and then stamped into paper in one swift motion. It’s a beautiful process and these machines haven’t been manufactured in decades, so you’re essentially dealing with antiques. While I picked up a few skills in the technique at Notre Dame, it didn’t help that the faculty member who ran the print shop treated her graduate students like second-graders. Access to the shop was nearly impossible to attain. So much for the exploration of graduate school. Do I sound bitter? Anyway… I thought this workshop would help me nail down the basics and, potentially, be a fun way to create some personal projects.

So for a hundred bucks, Stuart Bradley meets with two individuals in his basement studio and teaches the fundamentals of letterpress printing by having the students do everything from setting type to printing to cleaning the rollers when finished. It was fantastic. Stuart also owns an old railway station about 45 minutes northwest of Alexandria where he has a few other presses and a much larger space to create. He runs a great class and as a testament to his work, the Smithsonian has collected a few of his pieces.

Now, for the beginner work that was done during the workshop, Stuart recommends starting out with a business card or a short quote, usually one color as well. I decided to print one of my favorite quotes and the result is decent, I suppose. The fun part that day was the process. I’m totally hooked on the tabletop letterpress and am hoping to have some opportunities to do this again soon. You can check out the photos in the photo section, per usual. Hope everyone is well.