VIDEO: Continuing the Tradition of Letterpress Printing in Half Moon Bay

For those who treasure the printed word and favor unique objects churned out by hand, letterpress printing is both an art and a craft to be preserved.

The Stow family of Half Moon Bay has practiced this art for more than 25 years at their gift and card shop, , housed in the Tin Palace building just past the Main Street bridge. Doug Stow and his son, Robert, print custom-designed posters, cards, booklets, and invitations. Broadsides — material printed on one side of a single sheet of paper — are one of their specialties. The elder Stow has been printing broadsides of poems read at throughout the years. He recently completed one for poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, a personal favorite of his.

Letterpress printing, a method of producing multiple copies of printed material from raised metal type, was first developed in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg sometime between 1440 and 1450, when he invented a printing press with movable type.

For 31-year-old Robert, the letterpress has been a constant in his life. "I've grown up around it, and put away type as a kid," he said. "After I graduated from college I got more interested in it and my dad taught me what he knew and how to finesse things."

In a way, Robert introduced his parents to letterpress in the first place: "My birth announcements were printed on a letterpress, and after that my parents became interested in letterpress printing as well," he said.

The year after Robert was born, Doug and Margaret Stow bought a Chandler and Price Pilot, a tabletop letterpress printer. The family now owns two, which sit in a quiet corner that comprises the printing shop at The Paper Crane.

"They started making them [the Chandler and Price Pilot presses] in the late 1800s and finished making them in 1965, so I have no idea how old they are," Robert said.

Margaret, an artist, also had an influence on her son. She taught him how to create linoleum block cuts. (Called "linocuts" for short, the artist carves the design into the block and uses it as a template for printing).  Robert now prints his linocuts into cards on the letterpress. The cards are available for purchase at the shop.

Robert says that his linocuts are inspired by the natural beauty of Half Moon Bay, as well as by the aesthetic of Japanese traditional woodblock prints. "I do a lot of cypress trees, along with cherry blossoms, landscapes, nature scenes, and cats," he says.

Rather than allow their production to be dictated by a rigid schedule, Robert says that outside of customers' orders, he and his father print what they feel like making.

One such project was printing up three booklet editions of Doug's baseball haikus in the middle of the San Francisco Giants' successful World Series season (to see the booklets, watch the video posted to the right). Each booklet was hand-stitched together. For the third edition, Robert printed a baseball stitching design from one of his linocuts on the front cover.

The booklet also featured vintage images of a baseball players printed next to a few of the haikus. The baseball players are part of a collection of images that the Stows have amassed from newspaper and printing shops that have gone out of business over the last few decades. Cabinets, made up of shallow drawers stacked on top of each other, store these images along with standard letters of various fonts and sizes.

What Robert likes best about letterpress printing is its tactile nature. "You're feeling the process throughout. You’re taking each piece and you physically move it...and stay in touch with the process. Or you’re physically carving out the image and the line comes from your hands," he said.

Robert's work continues to evolve on the letterpress, and he takes classes in San Francisco to help facilitate the process as well.

He recently finished a piece with five colors — more colors than he's ever used for one piece alone on the letterpress. Each color must be printed separately, which means the paper must be placed just right in order for the final product to look as if all the colors were printed at one time together.

"Getting all the colors to register was a good challenge," he said.

The Paper Crane is available to print custom orders on their letterpress such as posters, cards and invitations. For more information, contact the store at (650) 726-0722.

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