#letterpressprinting

[video description: process recording of letterpress printing a business card, simply designed with a QR code and a name. the card is a non-standard 3.5 inch square on thick cardstock. it's fed into a clamshell-action printing press, which opens and closes as a V on a hinge. Every time it opens a printed sheet is removed and a fresh one is placed into the registration pins by hand. Every time it closes the relief printing surface on one half of the V is pressed into contact with the paper on the other half. end description.]

designed by the artist, Henry Mandell

Since 1978, Bow & Arrow Press has resided in a tiny corner of the Adams House, one of a dozen residential Houses devoted to Harvard undergraduate students. It is located in a building at the intersection of Bow and Arrow Streets, which its name originated. For 45 years, Bow & Arrow Press welcomed everybody in the community--students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the Adams House residents--and taught the art of letterpress to anybody who wanted to learn largely free of charge.

This Monday, the movers came and packed the contents of the studio, including the vintage presses and type cases, for storage while the Adams House renewal project takes place. The renewal plan had included the Bow & Arrow Press until April 16th, when Adams House’s faculty deans informed the community that the studio would not move back into their space after renovations are completed in 2025.

For 45 years, the Bow & Arrow Press has been a true community press. Over the years, thousands came to learn to typeset, get their fingers inky, and joyously run the century old letterpress. The creator of this artist’s book, scholar Johanna Drucker, used the press while she was a Harvard Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Department of Fine Arts. Drucker produced the letterpress edition of “The Word Made Flesh” in the winter of 1988-1989 with the assistance and support of James Barondess and Gino Lee, founders of the Bow & Arrow Press. Last Wednesday, Barondess (A.B.’79, Ph.D. ’93) came to the last Open Press Night and shared the early history of the press with the many younger generation printers who attended the event. 

Poet Seamus Heaney also became familiar with the Bow & Arrow during his Harvard years, and theater director Peter Sellars was among the first students to get their hands on the press.

You can read more about the Bow & Arrow Press in an article, “The Eviction of the Bow & Arrow Press” written by Craig Lambert on Harvard Magazine.