St Brigid Press

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Afton, VA
St Brigid Press

Letterpress printing and small press publishing in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia Please visit our website, blog, and store at www.stbrigidpress.net !

"St Brigid Press was born out of a passion for language. We are dedicated to learning, practicing, and passing-on the art and craft of letterpress printing with hand-set type, hand-carved illustrations, foot-powered presses, and hand-sewn books. We hope you enjoy the items made at the Press as much as we enjoy creating them."

09/14/2024

I’m very happy to announce the release today of “Night Piece,” a little letterpress booklet of a lovely poem by Carol Moldaw.

Lana Lambert carved the brilliant mini super moon for the illustration. Covers are hand-marbled in India.

Booklet is 2” x 4”, in a numbered edition of 110, at $24 each.

More info, photos, and ordering here:
https://www.stbrigidpress.net/books/night-piece

07/26/2024

Great little print from intrepid traveling press mechanic Paul Moxon with a quote by Robert Vandercook, who developed the Vandercook flatbed cylinder proof press before the First World War. Vandercook is referring to the thousandths-of-an-inch precision with which traditional letterpress printing operates. In the next photo, I am holding a cast metal letter (or, “sort”) which in America are all milled to exactly .918 inches high. This uniform height of all letters allows uniform printing impressions on each page. So, .001 inches is a mighty tiny fraction, that makes a big difference!

#.918

07/25/2024

“Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.”

— Rachel Carson, in her 1954 speech to the sorority of women journalists, Theta Sigma Phi, entitled “The Real World Around Us.”

07/23/2024

Happy 125th birthday, Ruth Ellis! Legendary printer and activist in Detroit, Michigan, Ellis ran a trade printing business from her home with her partner, Ceciline Franklin, and provided a safe haven for LGBTQ folks there. Her legacy continues now as the Ruth Ellis Center .

07/16/2024

Henry David Thoreau on the astonishing ubiquity of printed matter. From his journal entry March 10th, 1856, here printed by Houghton Mifflin and Company in 1906.
#1856

07/08/2024

Sometimes, when I need a break in the print shop, I sit down in the corner of the room where much of the Press library is housed, and randomly select a periodical or book to peruse for 5 or 10 minutes. A favorite shelf holds a number of back issues of the venerable Canadian publication, *The Devil’s Artisan: A Journal of the Printing Arts*. Founded in 1980 by Glenn Goluska, William Rueter, and Paul Forage, and run by The Porcupine’s Quill since 1995, the DA offered its readers articles about printing and bookmaking and the people who undertake these crafts in Canada until 2023. The DA edition here, from 1994, focuses on the exquisite, moving engravings of Rosemary Kilbourn, including an essay by her. When I dipped into this wonderful issue, my 5 minute break ran to 20.

07/06/2024

Letterpress printing on Mohawk Superfine paper this morning, while listening to a history of paper!
Very interesting book by Mark Kurlansky. Anyone else read this?

06/24/2024

Printed up a delightful poem by Carol Moldaw yesterday, on dampened French Parchtone paper. The paper was designed to resemble parchment, but to me it always looked like the surface of the moon — perfect for this poem about the moon. Types are Goudy Old Style, cast by Pat Reagh.

06/20/2024

These trees, those mountains —always there, and never the same.

Just back from a long trek to northern Wisconsin to spend time with family, and now getting reacquainted with home — new Bluebird babies in the box, searing heat and dry skies, ripening Blueberries, Coyotes telling stories in the middle of the night, the first heavy-headed Dahlias in their garish beauty, Summer Solstice light.

Peace to all this long evening.

06/06/2024

One of the most-used tools in the print shop here is the loupe, or linen tester (and more so the older my eyes get). As I set type for this new project, I look at each line in the composing stick to make sure spelling is correct but also to watch out for damaged letters. Letterpress type is an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, and is softer than you might think — the face of the type can be scratched, dinged, or otherwise degraded enough to cause a problem when printed.
Through the loupe, I spied the damage to the American Uncial "w" in these photos and was able to replace it quickly, even before proofing with ink.
Both devils and delights lurk in the details.

05/23/2024

Manageable mess? Creative chaos? What does YOUR workspace look like?

Pictured here is the composing area of the print shop, where I am slowly but surely setting type for a new book. One of the reasons this is area is fuller than usual is that I’m using Anglo-American point sized text type with European Didot point sized display type. So, more bins of various spacing material set out than usual.

05/22/2024

One of 5 overflowing type cases full of 14pt American Uncial, designed and cut by Victor Hammer in the early 1940s. See the following photos from the wonderful book *Victor Hammer: Artist & Printer* produced by The Anvil Press in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1981.
The author of the private commission book I'm working on chose this typeface for the text, because of its
"Celtic manuscript" feel. I am assuming this lot of type was cast by The Dale Guild, but I don't know for certain. It came to me via John Horn, and he acquired it from Neil Shaver of The Yellow Barn Press.

Address

Afton, VA
22920

Website

http://www.stbrigidpress.net/

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