It was with great anticipation that I showed up half an hour early on a horribly rainy, yet warm Michigan winter night. I was going to see legendary proponent of Letterpress Jim Sherraden speak about his tenure and his experiences at Hatch Show Print in Nashville. I was first turned onto Hatch by my letterpress mentor Arie Koelewyn of the Paper Airplane Press here in East Lansing.

At first it looked kind of glum with only myself and another gal there – typical Michigan turnout, I thought bitterly to myself, but was also over joyed that I might get to pick Jim’s brain a little more if there was low attendance. However, things took a turn for the best as we moved to the eight o’clock hour, and the place was reduced to standing room only.

Jim made a lot of good points about printing, design, etc… as he spoke, but it was his enthusiasm, passion and dedication both for the work and for its preservation that really struck me. I talked with Jim very briefly after the presentation, and after the folks in attendance cleared out. We talked only briefly, but his enthusiasm really rubbed off, and left tossing and turning through the night contemplating the possibilities of letterpress in my future. Every few months I need something like this. The daily minutiae of quoting jobs, getting stuff procured for those jobs, and then running those jobs (the best part being the pulling of the first print) it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture – Preservation. Jim made quite a cogent point about preserving through production. I liked that. It’s stuck with me.

What also really stuck with me was how dedicated to preserving this old style approach Jim was. He’s definitely dedicated, no neo-Luddite here, just a Luddite. I say that somewhat tongue and cheek, and without any patronizing cynicism. Like me, this guy see the value in doing things the old fashioned way, not always the quickest, or most profitable, in fact usually neither of those, but you get something from doing the work, and holding the work. There’s a tactility that comes through the work. Being on the other side of the press now, I know that it’s also there when you’re doing the work. With letterpress now in full vogue mode, I can see how preservationists could take a position similar to Jim’s about preserving both Hatch and the process, but to think he took this attitude when letterpress wasn’t the coolest thing in fresh design, but rather it was an antiquated production style that was being replaced (quickly) by offset printing presses. These old letterpress machines weren’t worth much more than highest scrap yield that a printing business owner could negotiate just to be rid of the things… However, at that time, Jim was working to preserve not just the process, but this way of printing life; not just this aesthetic, but the old wood type to make sure the process would have the tools for the years to come, and not just a print shop from yesteryear, but a small slice of Americana.

I think that letterpress enthusiasts like myself will be thankful to Jim Sherraden, for his tenacity and foresight for decades to come.