Annual Benefit and Auction
We're in the midst of printing invitations to the Center’s Annual Benefit and Auction: to be held on Wednesday, April 7. Join us for an evening of music, cocktails, a fine art auction, and more, as we celebrate the Center’s continued success!























This year we are proud to honor the following individuals for their achievements and commitment to furthering the field of book arts: Ruth and Marvin Sackner, Collectors; Lesley Dill, Artist; Mary Coxe Schlosser, Master Bookbinder; Dikko Faust, Master Printer and co-proprietor, Purgatory Pie Press; and Ann Kalmbach and Tatana Kellner, Artists and Founders of Women’s Studio Workshop. We’d like to thank the over forty artists who have generously donated their work to the auction, as well as Courtney Booth, Assistant Vice President, Prints, from Sotheby’s, who will captivate us during the Live Auction portion of the evening. . Thanks also to our annual benefit committee, led by Roni Gross, Richard Minsky, and Idee G. Schoenheimer. Proceeds from the annual event benefit the Center’s programs and activities. Be sure to secure your tickets by calling 212-481-0295 or by visiting our website.

Starting a press is probably the most empowering thing a writer can do. We want to help writers publish their own work and the work of the people they admire, and we think it's easier to do than you suspect.

Every season, we offer a tuition free workshop for writers, our Fine Press Publishing Seminar. It's a four day intensive workshops that introduces writers to the wonders of hand set lead type, letterpress printing, and self-publishing, and hopefully inspires them to start a press and use these techniques in what they produce.



Students spend four days with Barbara Henry, our local type and printing guru, learning the ins and outs of letterpress technology. They print an assortment of texts which are editioned and collected in a portfolio for each of them to take home. Students leave with a basic knowledge of the printing on a Vandercook, and hopefully the desire to continue on with their skills.





Students also hear from a variety of presenters active in the field; we've had a wide variety of printers and publishers come speak over the years. Ugly Duckling Presse, Booklyn Artists Alliance, Peter Kruty, Kyle Schlesinger, and Ryan Murphy are only some of the people who've shared their work with us recently. This recent session in November we invited Jon Beacham, of Hermitage Beacon. Jon learned how to set type in this very workshop, here at the Center, and has gone on to publish chapbooks of poetry and set up a workspace/bookstore/exhibition space for poetry and art in Beacon, NY. You can learn more about his work here. We were very happy to see what he 's been up to.

Also in attendance this weekend was Andy Birsh from Woodside Press, who shared with his us his vast knowledge of the history of type and the intricacies of monotype. Woodside Press is the proud purveyor of traditional letterpress technology in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and the leading source for monotype in New York City. We were lucky he could squeeze a visit in to the Center during his holiday rush season!

If you are a writer interested in taking this workshop, there is an open call for entries three times a year. Guidelines are posted on our website for the Letterpress Printing and Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers on the page marked 'opportunities' . The next call for entries should be in January, for the next session scheduled for spring of 2009. Eight students are accepted into each session of the workshop.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Vandercook Proofing Press, a limited edition publication of 100 copies is being published by Roni Gross and Barbara Henry to highlight the work that master printers across the county are doing on their Vandercooks. 30 printers have contributed folios that employ techniques from handset type, to polymer, linocuts, pressure printing, woodcuts and a myriad of other methods which they describe in their individual colophons.

A number of the classes at The Center participated in working on another section of folios dealing with various printing-related issues, such as correct inking and roller height issues, handset versus polymer printing and design, etc.

There is a bound section of essays by Henry Morris of Bird & Bull Press, Michael Peich of Aralia Press, Fritze Klinke of NA Graphics, Paul Moxon and Perry Tymeson.

Scheduled for completion in early 2009, there will be a publication party at the Center in late February, which will be paired with a series of panel discussions focusing on artists, teachers and historians who are or have been involved with the press.

Framed master printer folios will comprise a traveling show beginning in January of 2009, and is scheduled to go to The Printing Museum in Houston Texas, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Columbia University in New York, The Book Club of California and the University of Washington.

This project shows an enormous range of work being done on the press today, and contains a good deal of technical knowledge that would be valuable to students and printing aficionados.

Click here for more information and to place an order.