The Museum of Printing, North Andover, Massachusetts

10th Annual Printing Arts Fair featuring Steamroller Printing

Steamroller printing is back!

Steamroller Printing is returning to the 10th Annual Printing Arts Festival, June 16 — Father’s Day. The steamroller will print huge 3×9 feet prints from 27 individual linoleum blocks made by local artists along with other large art.

Dad will love the clang of the working printing presses, Mom will marvel at art prints being made and the kids can get ink on their fingers when they set their name in wood type then print it. Everybody will be amazed as hot molten lead is turned into lines of type and kids (of all ages) can print their own Father’s Day card.

Demonstrations of litho and intaglio printing, stone carving, and letterpress printing are on tap.

Collectors will find rare letterpress accessories while associated vendors will exhibit their specialty wares. A raffle of printing related memorabilia, art and offerings from local business will be held.

The Fair runs from 10 am to 4 pm.

Mark Fowler woodcut The works of exceptional woodcut artist and printer Mark Fowler are on display through the end of the summer.

Influenced by Japanese wood block methods and techniques, Fowler used special hand inking techniques to create individual prints of astounding vibrancy, color and details from his hand carved woods and wood engravings. The show chronologically presents 43 pieces of his works from the initial black and white wood blocks to colorful pieces based on nine blocks.

Master printer Carolyn Muskat will demonstrate color wood block printing from Fowler’s original “Day Lilies” blocks while Beverly Printer and bookbinder Ted Leigh and other museum printers will be printing Fowler’s “Snow Buntings” on the Museum’s vintage Vandercook Press. Finished prints will be on sale at a reduced price opening night only.

These wonderful pieces of art can also be seen on Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm throughout the summer.

Coming up this year:

Introductory and advanced printing classes are being set up — details and dates to follow.
Steamroller printing is back at The Printing Arts Fair, Father's Day, June 16. Many of the other presses will be running; we’ll have printing demonstrations, and of course, the clank of the Linotype machine will be heard in the land.
Wood Engravers’ Network (WEN) is holding their summer workshop at the museum from July 9–13. More info in this pdf >

. . . and the summer isn’t even half over! More to come.

Special tours and museum rental are available by contacting Kim Pickard, exedir@museumofprinting.org.

The Museum of Printing is dedicated to preserving the history of the graphic arts, printing equipment and printing craftsmanship.

In addition to many special collections and small exhibits, the Museum contains hundreds of antique printing, typesetting and bindery machines, as well as a library of books and printing related documents. A knowledgeable tour guide takes visitors around.

The Museum sits on the spacious North Andover, Massachusetts town common with free parking, only a mile from Interstate Highway 495 (see Directions).

A non-profit organization, the Museum was incorporated in 1978 as The Friends of The Museum of Printing, Inc., to save printing equipment and library materials associated with arcane technologies. The history of printing has changed dramatically during the last 200 years, moving away from letterpress printing to photographic and electronic technologies. We tell the stories of these changes using one of the world’s largest collections of printing hardware (see Collection).

The ground floor of our 25,000 sq. ft. building contains two 90-foot galleries, a large lobby, a library and access to the library’s archival stacks (four floors). The Robert L. Richter Memorial Library is named after one of the two people who began the museum effort (see Library). The second floor contains a large meeting room, offices and additional future display space.

Gallery One contains a timeline history of the manufacturing of letters. The journey starts in the foundry era, which reaches back 500 years. A guide explains the transition from hand-setting individual sorts of foundry type to mechanized hot-metal typesetting and discusses the Linotype, Monotype and Ludlow linecasting machines. Along the tour route you’ll find a Monophoto and an Intertype Fotosetter, machines which attempted to use linecasting technology to transition to phototypesetting, only to fail in competition with the electronically-driven phototypesetters. Then you’ll come upon strike-on typesetters, machines designed to produce inexpensive type which could be married to the expanding offset printing market. You’ll move on to phototypesetters, where Massachusetts hi-tech companies played a dominant role. The last chapter of this type story is digital.

Contributions to the Museum are tax deductible (the Museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization), and are always welcome.

We need halftones!

The Museum is looking to mount an exhibit on photographic reproduction and find we are embarrassingly low on a few things. We need your help. If you have a few of these to spare and can send them to us we can continue with exhibit planning.