Introduction: Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future

Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future brings together scholars, curators, collectors and printers to assess the current state of letterpress printing. It acknowledges the decline of letterpress as a commercial printing technique and considers the risks this poses for letterpress’s future. However, in describing the many uses to which letterpress is put and the diverse communities of printers who still work with it, the book celebrates the tenacity of letterpress as a process which continues to thrive despite such challenges. Letterpress Printing examines the continuing life of letterpress and applauds its revival through describing the circumstances in which it flourishes and the many ways it is now used. By setting this revival in the context of its ostensible decline, the book sets out the ways in which current practice draws upon and preserves the history of printing while taking it in new and unexpected directions.