A printer can’t go to a shop-warming empty-handed. That’s why Kelly McMahon and I stopped at May Day Studio, her Montpelier letterpress shop, on our way to West Danville on November 9. She chose a piece of 30-line wooden type — a really big H — for printer Hillary Savage and the handful of artists who had just opened Hard-Pressed Community Printshop & Zine Library.
The ground floor of the new nonprofit boasts four different printing presses, a book press, cabinets of type and worktables. The star is Savage’s Vandercook SP-20, a vintage 1960s electric letterpress. Visitors at the grand-opening event used it to print posters that read “The big system can be pretty overwhelming” in big red letters.
Enabling anyone to print truth to power, one letter at a time, is built into Hard-Pressed’s ethos, Savage said. As she explained, the history of printing is “people-forward.” It has always been entwined with democracy and collective action — early pamphlets and broadsides were among the first real forms of mass media.
Savage moved to Vermont from Maine in 2021 to become the director at Bread & Puppet Press; she’s no longer in that role and now lives in Cabot. Before that, she worked with the Beehive Design Collective, which acquired the Vandercook letterpress in 2012. The collective became decentralized during the pandemic, and Savage decided to relocate her efforts to Vermont. Transporting the more than 1,000-pound press and other equipment from a second story in Machias, Maine, to the Green Mountain State was no easy feat, but they finally have a home. As Savage wrote by email, “Having a solid place to land for this project is really important.”
In addition to Savage, Kate Anderson of Burke, Peter Griffin of Danville, Hayley Lewis of Sheffield, Sarah Rackliff of Burlington and Becca Perrin of Craftsbury have been instrumental in launching Hard-Pressed. Perrin said they are looking forward to serving a wide community, from beginners to established printmakers.
The shop-warming event drew a crowd of Vermont printers and artists from far and wide, as well as curious community members. Norwich book artist Stephanie Wolff and Lydia Evans, of Letterpress by Lydia in Braintree, emphasized the importance of the facility, where experienced printers are on hand to help and to maintain the machines. Newcomers rely on the expertise of printers who know the noises of a press, the feel of its rollers and when to stop the press for a fix, Evans said. It’s a body of knowledge that exists because of community shops such as Hard-Pressed.
Upstairs, the zine library is getting off the ground, as well. The collection is partially Savage’s own, with other issues from the Beehive collective and Burdock Zine Distro in Plainfield. Visitors can flip through crates of the small-run publications and hang out in the comfy space to read. Sterling College student Ollie Quinn, who is studying the medium, was helping out at the event; she’s excited for the research possibilities the library brings to the area.
Hard-Pressed is currently open to the public on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m., and planned memberships will allow regular access. The team will offer one-on-one or small group trainings on the presses, and the printshop is open to commercial jobs printing posters, chapbooks and broadsides. Savage welcomes ideas for how to use the space, though all the details aren’t worked out yet; she described it as a place where artists can “make things in community, hang out in the library and be able to support each other creatively.”
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This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2024.
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