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Founded by Yoshiko Yamamoto & Bruce Smith, we are a small letterpress printing studio. Begun as a publishing house concerned with the historic Arts and Crafts movement, all the publications of The Arts and Crafts Press have been letterpress printed and bound by hand. Today the Press produces greeting cards and limited-edition blockprints that are letterpress printed from hand cut blocks inspired by the turn-of-the-century movement. All of our current note cards and prints are designed by Yoshiko Yamamoto.
What is a block print?
A block print is a print made from handcut/machine cut blocks. Following the Japanese tradition, after pencil sketches and watercolor renditions, Yoshiko carves the outline block by chisels. After the outline block is carved, she pulls the first image on a very thin sheet of paper, which then is turned upside down and pasted onto the multiple colors that she needs to carve.
When all the blocks are ready, then she takes each block and locks them into the antique printing presses. She then handmixes each color and prints each color, using all the blocks that she prepared. Yoshiko sometimes uses over 20 blocks to create the desired effect.
What is Letterpress printing?
Letterpress printing is a relief print process. The printed image is produced by a raised surface (lead type for example) being inked and then impressed onto a sheet of paper. These raised surfaces have historically been anything from woodcuts to wood engravings, from linocuts to type faces. Over the past several years, a new type of plate made from photopolymer have contributed to revival in letterpress printing. At the Arts & Crafts Press, we use all of these methods, from wood blocks, linoleum blocks, to photopolymer plates.
Letterpress printing is the oldest form of printing. It produces a strong, sharp outline to the individual letters and images printed. As compared to offset lithography and computer laser printing, letterpress printed surfaces are in relief so that a slight indentation can usually be seen, if not felt, on the paper.
At The Arts & Crafts Press
The Press uses four different ways of printing: (1) Our own hands wielding a baren; (2) An Reliance iron handpress, circa 1860; (3) A Vandercook Model 4 & Model 219, circa 1940; (4) Heidelberg Letterpress KS line (circa 1950s) for printing our note cards.
The Paper we use
The earliest paper is said to have been made in China from using silk in about 200 BC. The early papers made in Europe were primarily made from raw materials such as linen and cotton rags that gave strength and permanence to the paper. As the industrialization took over the paper industry in the late nineteenth century, wood pulp became the main material for paper creating a weaker paper which would not have the lasting quality of the linen and cotton made paper.
The paper used at The Arts and Crafts Press is acid-free and, depending upon the project, can be handmade, mouldmade, or machine made. Handmade paper is literally made by hand artisans using a mould to scoop up from a vat water with a beaten pulp mixture which, when dried, forms the paper. Both mouldmade paper and machinemade paper are made by machine. The machine used for mouldmade paper is based on a cylinder-mould that allows a faster production of paper using high quality paper like the handmade. Due to its mechanized motion, the mouldmade paper is more even and regular in character than the handmade. The machine-made paper is mostly made of wood fibre, but some companies offer them with cotton rags also.
About Yamamoto Yoshiko
Growing up in Tokyo, Yoshiko Yamamoto first studied sculpture at Tama Art University in Japan, and then, after moving to California, studied music and modern American and Japanese history at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996, as she worked as freelance writer about food and architecture, she founded with her husband, Bruce Smith, The Arts & Crafts Press, in Berkeley, teaching herself (with the help of wonderful mentors) the craft of letterpress block printing.
For her limited edition prints, Yoshiko first sketches flora and fauna she finds either in America or in Japan -- anything from fir trees, pines, maples, and poppies, to heron, koi fish, and crickets --and then after multiple drawings and watercolors she begins cutting the blocks. Sometimes she works with wood blocks, usually cherry, and other times, she chooses linoleum. Yoshiko also uses hard polymer plates for some of the color blocks. She then takes these blocks and plates, printing each color separately on a Vandercook printing press, using as many as twenty blocks per print to achieve the desired effect.
Yoshiko now resides in a small coastal town in Washington with her husband, their children, and four happy chickens.
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The Arts & Crafts Press
3085 SE Buckingham Drive
Port Orchard, WA 98366
tel 360-871-7707
fax 360-871-7718
info@artsandcraftspress.com
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“The aim of the revival of fine printing is, I repeat, merely due to
a wish to give a permanent and beautiful form to that portion of our
literature which is secure of permanence. By a permanent form I do
not mean merely sound as to paper and ink, etc.; I mean permanent in
the sense that the work reflects that conscious aim towards beauty
and order which are ever interesting elements in themselves.”
— From William Morris, who began the revival of fine printing as part of
the Arts and Crafts movement:
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