After being cooped up and indoors for so much time due to the pandemic, it just started to feel about time to open up the (bilco, or basement) doors of Base Press and start to do long-awaited, long-anticipated Letterpress Workshops for students, friends—and whomever—at Base Press. Starting with some colleagues, friends and alums from the Jefferson Visual Communication Design program (where I teach), participants worked with the H. N. Werkman style of printing, where one collages with type and images on the press. Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman was an experimental Dutch artist, typographer and printer. He set up a clandestine printing house during the Nazi occupation (1940–1945) and sadly was shot by the Gestapo in the closing days of World War II.

This method has proven to be a very accessible way to approach letterpress printing and working with the press. No experience in printing or design are necessary whatsoever to work with this method, and generally speaking folks have a blast with it. If you have any interest in participating in your own workshop with a group of friends—or joining in on an existing workshop—please contact me and let me know. I would be more than happy to go over details with you. Workshop size limited to seven attendees, with a minimum of three attendees.