In honor of the snowy city we call home, Boxcar Press presents Flurry: A Journal Among the Printers. We will publish original articles on letterpress quarterly here.

When we started printing in the Twin Cities in the late 1990’s, the crowd at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) treated us with true Midwestern kindness. They welcomed us with open arms and were generous in the sharing of their printing knowledge. At MCBA, printers of all stripes—commercial printers, fine press printers, art printers, hobbyists and everyone in between—joined in their love for letterpress, which at the time still seemed like a very marginal process. There really wasn’t too much distinction between a fine press printer and a commercial press printer back then, because commercial printing projects were few and far between. We loved this sense of community–of all these printers gathered around their presses and connected by the love of letterpress.

The recent success of letterpress printing in the commercial world has brought a lot more outside interest to our community. Letterpress’ growth has helped Boxcar Press grow, and now we want to give back. With Flurry, we hope to share knowledge and to appeal to all of letterpress’s practitioners: from fine press printers to commercial printers, from seasoned veterans to exuberant newcomers. Too often there seems a great divide between the fine press and commercial letterpress world. We want us all to be friends, united by our common interest in cast iron. We’re particularly interested in profiling and interviewing the printers who helped push letterpress into the twenty-first century—so we know on whose shoulders we stand.

Chiefly, we want to inspire, educate, and entertain. Why is Boxcar Press doing this? We’re excited that Flurry can become a gathering place for you, after hours, when you’ve finished your last press run of the day. We love letterpress and, if you do too, we want you to feel at home here. They’ll be no sales pitches, no advertisements, just pleasure and wonder at how cool our collective craft is. The great thing about communities in the 21st century is that they’re no longer determined by geography. Sit back, relax, and join in. Let us know what you think and what you’d like to share.

Thank,
Harold Kyle and Debbie Urbanski
Editors