If getting your type and images all locked up and into registration is problematic, SFCB Studio Director Chad Johnson has designed a workshop to get you back in the swing of things on the Vandercook.

In this four-hour workshop we will review the key elements of imposing on the press and then work through setting up multiple forms across several presses, working through 2-color registrations using both movable type as well as cuts and polymer plates.

While letterpress experience is a prerequisite, students will be printing a pre-established design to keep the focus on the practice of understanding how to build a stable, well imposed forms that can be registered and/or trimmed to. It will be a fun day of hard work building competencies and collaboration. Everyone will leave with a set of printed folding cards. 

This is the first in a series of Print Practicum workshops Chad will offer to help printers build skills and versatility for their letterpress printing practice.

Prerequisite: Cylinder Core or equivalent and/or working knowledge of printing on a Vandercook. If your letterpress experience is from outside SFCB, please contact us before registering to confirm eligibility.

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided. 

About the Instructor: Chad Johnson (he/him) is an artist, printer, bookbinder, and teacher who has been living in the Bay Area for the past two decades. After earning an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he has worked in conservation labs, letterpress shops, and libraries. As SFCB's Studio Director | Resident Instructor, he brings knowledge and experience fueled by passion and enthusiasm for the art and craft of making books by hand. From digital typesetting to steamroller printing to fixing presses to talking about letterpress history, Chad is always happy to help students and artists learn to express themselves through the powerful medium of the handmade book.

Cylinder Core Certificate Program

The four class Cylinder Core Certificate Program allows students to move quickly through press basics while also addressing relief printing in general. Students who finish the four Core classes are qualified to rent press time as well as move on to more advanced classes and techniques. Core classes must be taken in order, 1 through 4.

Click here to learn more about the Cylinder Core Certificate Program and how to receive a discount!

Cylinder Core 4: Digital into Analog

Digital designs can be turned into photopolymer plates with a raised printing surface, allowing for artistic expression via letterpress that goes beyond lead and wood. You'll choose designs from our pre-made collection of polymer plates and create a coordinated stationery suite of cards, letter sheets, and envelopes using both plates and type from our collection.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: Cylinder Core 1-3

Materials to Bring: All tools and materials will be provided. Students will be designing on the fly from our collection of polymer plates, but can think ahead about whether they want traditional stationery with name/address, or something more whimsical.

Please note: Class projects are for learning particular skills and supporting class dynamics. Project ideas should be flexible, open to what class time and communal studio use will permit.

About the Instructor: Alan Hillesheim (he/him) has been wrenching around printing presses for 35 years. Printing presses need to be moved, oiled, inked, cleaned, and maintained, in short they need attention like a six year old. Maintenance is a dirty business, but a necessary one for beautifully printed anything. Alan has a passion for the mechanics of the print studio and enjoys encouraging others to roll up their sleeves and grab a wrench. His 35 years in the letterpress business and “all-ten-fingers” count speak for themselves. Join him and wear old clothes. Oh, and once the press is in fine order, Alan has a few secrets to divulge about perfect inking and stellar printing.

There are myriad instances where forms require special packing and pressure manipulation to achieve even printing. We will print the notorious pointed-flap envelope, a poem with varying line lengths, and images or ornaments within a text field. Situations where the form includes elements that need a generous amount of ink on the press, and/or a lot of packing, as well as elements with the opposite needs, will be addressed.

The class will use both Vandercook and platen presses; students who are only experienced on the Vandercook presses are welcome.

Ample time will be given to questions and show and tell from both the students and the instructors.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: Students must have completed the Cylinder Core certificate program, or have equivalent printing experience. Please email us with your qualifications if you are new to SFCB.

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructors: Alan Hillesheim (he/him) and Lisa Rappoport (she/her) will team-teach this new series of workshops for intermediate printers.

Cylinder Core Certificate Program

The four class Cylinder Core Certificate Program allows students to move quickly through the press basics while also addressing relief printing in general. Students who finish the four core classes are qualified to rent press time as well as move on to more advanced classes and techniques.

Cylinder Core 1: Experience Letterpress!

Learn about the process and practice of setting type, mixing inks and pulling impressions. Students will design and print a small edition of a folded greeting card while learning the basics of press operation.

Cylinder Core 2: Power of the Broadside

Build your letterpress skills: learn advanced justification, typesetting, and composition. Put it all together to print an 8 x 10" broadside of your own design.

Cylinder Core 3: Posterized

Get more acquainted with the press: learn about packing, roller height, and make-ready. Once you've got everything set up you'll run an edition of your own 12 x 15" poster.

Cylinder Core 4: Digital into Analog

All those fancy letterpress wedding invitations are printed from digital designs turned into polymer plates. You'll learn how to print with premade plates and walk away with a stationary suite: a coordinated set of cards, letter sheets, and envelopes.

The Weeklong Intensive rate is discounted $100 off the individual workshop fees.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to Bring: All tools and materials will be provided. Students can come to the first class with a few greeting card ideas/brief phrases.

Please note: Class projects are for learning particular skills and supporting class dynamics. Project ideas should be flexible, open to what class time and communal studio use will permit.

About the Instructor: Thea Sizemore (she/her) has been a letterpress printer, artist and instructor for over 20 years. She holds BFA in printmaking with emphasis on bookarts from the California College of the Arts with additional studies at Cleveland Institute of Art.

As founder of Kavamore Press, a custom letterpress and design studio in South Berkeley, Thea works with private clients and various artists to create ephemera for projects including some for the Carpenter Center for the Arts at Harvard, The Guggenheim and the SFMOMA. In recent years, Thea's personal work has focused on projects that use the power of print to connect and engage community including a mail art project called “Social Media Snail Mail”, an ongoing series of free letterpress posters and public printing protest events. To view more of her work, visit kavamorepress.com.

If you have heard about letterpress but are not really sure what it is or how it works, this class will allow you to peer inside the rich history and engaging techniques of letterpress printing.

This class introduces the process, the materials, the machines, and the satisfaction of printing by hand on a Cylinder proof press. Participants will learn the basics of setting type using SFCB’s vast collection of lead type and decorative ornaments as well as inking, locking up and pulling a print.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring: None

About the Instructor: Brian Lieske (he/him) wandered into SFCB many years ago and continues to haunt the place. He completed both the bookbinding and letterpress cores as well as several of the summer historic structure classes. He enjoys making fully hand-sewn books and still fights to not over-tighten his kettle stitches. He’s lived in San Francisco for more than 20 years having arrived shortly after completing an MFA at the University of Texas at Austin.

Good printing comes by knowing what a press can do. In this workshop you will examine every aspect of the press with an eye toward maintaining all of its parts as well as adjusting those parts for optimal printing.

Not only will you learn how to maintain the press and trouble shoot problems, you will also learn how to fix the press. Knowledge of press maintenance will not only keep the press in good working order, it will make you a better printer.  

Students will learn how to evaluate the condition of any hand-fed cylinder proof press quickly and concisely; they will learn how to adjust rollers and impression, control inking and fix simple problems. They will learn how to maintain the press through lubrication and adjustment.

This is a perfect companion course for students enrolled in SFCB's Cylinder Core Certificate program; appropriate for students who have completed any of the Cylinder Core workshops.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructor: Alan Hillesheim (he/him) has been wrenching around printing presses for 35 years. Printing presses need to be moved, oiled, inked, cleaned, and maintained, in short they need attention like a six year old. Maintenance is a dirty business, but a necessary one for beautifully printed anything. Alan has a passion for the mechanics of the print studio and enjoys encouraging others to roll up their sleeves and grab a wrench. His 35 years in the letterpress business and “all-ten-fingers” count speak for themselves. Join him and wear old clothes.

Oh, and once the press is in fine order, Alan has a few secrets to divulge about perfect inking and stellar printing.

Small-format tabletop presses are limited in what they can print, but offer a ton of possibilities for printers with bite-size projects without taking up much space. Here's your chance to spend a few hours learning how these diminutive little guys work and to print your own vintage-inspired postcards.

The instructor will supply postcard blanks pre-printed with a charming postcard back. Students will delve into SFCB's drawers of type and cuts to design their own simple image to print on the front. Students will come away from class with an introductory understanding of letterpress and relief printing, small format printing and its limits, and a small stack of their own postcards (plus others, if classmates wish to share)!

An excellent class for those curious about letterpress in general, and tabletop presses in particular. 

Prerequisite: None.

Materials to bring: None. All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructor: Brian Ferrett (he/him) has a printing degree from MATC and worked in offset web and screen printing. In 2008 he joined M&H Type as a typecasting apprentice under Lewis Mitchell. These days he co-manages M&H's daily operations, maintains the historic casting machines and presses, casts type and prints for the various Arion Press publications. Brian is a member of the Northern California chapter of the American Printing History Association, the American Typecaster Fellowship, and volunteers with San Francisco Public Library's annual Valentine’s Day broadside event. In his spare time he plays around with his Vandercook 219AB, C&P New Style 10x15, and his two Kelseys.

If you have heard about letterpress but are not really sure what it is or how it works, this class will allow you to peer inside the rich history and engaging techniques of letterpress printing.

This class introduces the process, the materials, the machines, and the satisfaction of printing by hand on a Cylinder proof press. Participants will learn the basics of setting type using SFCB’s vast collection of lead type and decorative ornaments as well as inking, locking up and pulling a print.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring: None

About the Instructor: Brian Lieske (he/him) wandered into SFCB many years ago and continues to haunt the place. He completed both the bookbinding and letterpress cores as well as several of the summer historic structure classes. He enjoys making fully hand-sewn books and still fights to not over-tighten his kettle stitches. He’s lived in San Francisco for more than 20 years having arrived shortly after completing an MFA at the University of Texas at Austin.