To sum it up simply, Hatch Show Print is a Magical Letterpress Land. Floor to ceiling shelves of woodtype in all shapes & sizes, wood cuts and all sorts of crazy things. As my mom would say, there's enough woodtype "to sink a battleship." There are piles and piles and PILES of posters laying around, and the walls are lined with them. It's like sensory overload and can be a bit numbing after a while. It's insane. Insanely awesome.
Excuse my crass description, it's a little hard to describe!
Within about 5 minutes of being there I met the legendary Jim Sherraden and I have to admit I was totally star struck. The whole staff is so kind. Jim was talking about how letterpress people are good people, which I find to be completely true, and said "nobody that works here is a jerk." Kinda hilarious. Design firms and ad agencies? Not so much.. With that same thought he said, "...there is just something about letterpress that brings out the best in people." What a great line. I share this same thought with him.
Today was "Inventory Day" for us Hatch Show printers, which involved counting every single poster in the shop. We counted thousands of posters. Thousands and thousands of GLORIOUS posters! It was a great way to kick off our time there as we were able to see a full range of styles. I only got 2 papercuts.
They have a 'unique' way of organizing things—basically it's all organized in piles on the floor. Which I'm totally cool with. I find organized piles on the floor to be a perfectly acceptable way of organizing! Heh.. **More Hatch idiosyncrasies to come later. There are many.** They design & produce about 600 posters a year, that's about 11-12 finished posters a week.
One of our tasks today involved going through a large wooden box of "Bin" posters. These are posters that will be sold for $3.00 a piece that are of less popular appeal. And again, we processed THOUSANDS of posters. Festivals, goofy reunions, obscure bands, etc. etc... We were encouraged to take as many posters that we wanted and I think I came home with at least 40 posters. Most interns are usually only allowed to take home 5 "bin" posters, but since we were doing heavy duty inventory, they let us take more.
Some of the MANY cases of woodtype
These shelves contain mostly woodtype, and linoleum cuts
Some of Jim's famous monoprints, and some reprints of an old "One Sheet" block
And Huey!!! He's a biggin.
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