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:
Lisa Rappoport (she/her) publishes poetry broadsides and artists' books under the imprint Littoral Press. Since 1998 she has produced a series of broadsides by the poets who teach at the Community of Writers; she has also printed poetry broadsides for Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books, the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, the Northern California Book Awards, and many others (last but not least, the Poets Pulling Prints series of the SFCB). Her poetry has appeared in Nostos, Five Fingers Review, Literal Latte, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 1998 Icarus Poetry Competition and the recipient of a poetry residency at Centrum. Her poetry collection Penumbra was published by Longship Press in 2019. Her book The Short Goodbye received the Alastair Johnston Fine Press Award and was a runner-up in the Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. Lisa has taught at the New College in San Francisco, at a middle school in Lafayette, and in her own studio. Her work has been displayed nationally and is in collections throughout the U.S. You can visit her website at littoralpress.com.

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.

Learn the basics of carving and printing designs from linoleum blocks.

Students will learn how to transfer and carve a simple design into a 5 x 7" linoleum block, then use the Vandercook cylinder press to print their single-color block on either fold-over cards or on quality printmaking paper.

This workshop is open to beginners, as well as students with some letterpress experience looking for a new way to add imagery to their work.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to Bring:
Bring ideas for a simple 5x7" design; ideally at least two sketches so the instructor can help choose which will work best.

About the Instructor:
Patricia Wakida (she/her) is a bibliophile, artist and writer with a background in trade publishing. Her relations to books are kept tangible and toothsome by running wasabi press, making illustrated letterpress books, broadsides, posters and cards on a Chandler and Price tabletop platen press and a small etching press. Patricia’s book arts education began with an apprenticeship in Japanese papermaking in Mino, Gifu- prefecture, Japan in 1996, followed by an apprenticeship at the Arts and Crafts Press under linoleum block artist and letterpress printer Yoshiko Yamamoto, in Berkeley, California. She has also taught linoblock carving and letterpress workshops as a teaching assistant in the book arts program at Mills College, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and ASUC Art Studio. 

The iron hand press is a workhorse from the nineteenth century that welds modern printing to its earliest incarnations over five hundred years ago.

This class offers an overview of the practices and principals of doing edition work on this venerable printing press. From the basics of imposing on the stone to locking the inner chase and packing the outer tympan, students will get a full tour of the handpress and its workflow and walk away with a keepsake inked and printed on the Center’s own iron hand presses. 

This workshop is ideal for novices and more experienced printers alike. The concepts taught in this class are valuable to any printer's understanding of the letterpress printing process, and are applicable across all different styles of presses.

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:
Chad Johnson (he/him) is an artist, printer, bookbinder, and teacher who has been living in the Bay Area for over a decade. 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. He has experience conserving historic books, analyzing collections of rare books, working with artists and authors, printing professionally on many different letterpress machines, and teaching and sharing his love of books and printing.
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.

Does this sound familiar: You have a print project you want to get started on. You know what paper you want to use but are unsure about pre-trimming your stock or planning for best usage or making sure the grain runs in the proper direction for your final trim. If so, then we have got the workshop for you: this one!

This in-depth introduction to paper cutting will help you understand what to buy (and how much) as well as how to plan for, understand, and safely (& accurately!) trim your paper. We will cover cut scheduling, grain direction, back trim, machine safety, and final trims of printed sheets with (or without) crop marks.

There are no prerequisites, but this workshop is especially great for students who have completed our Cylinder Core series and want to pursue their own projects outside of an 8.5x11” dimensionality. 

Students who complete this course will be certified to rent time on SFCB's guillotines and electric paper cutter.

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.

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.

Now that you've completed the Cylinder Core series, you can become certified on the jobbing platen, which was developed to meet the demand for greater volumes of printing with shorter production times. 

Day 1 :: Postcard ExpressDesign, set up and run an edition of 50 postcards in this class that introduces the efficient mechanics of a Chandler & Price jobbing platen press.

Day 2 :: Photopolymer on the PlatenThe development of photopolymer opened up a new world of possibilities for letterpress. This class teaches you to integrate platen printing with polymer plates, allowing you to print whatever ephemera you can dream up!

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 1-4. Students who register but have not satisfied the prerequisite will be de-enrolled.

Materials to bring:None. 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.