The Petrarch Press

In 2007, the first CODEX bookfair gathered together an impressive congress of the world’s finest private presses, book artists, artisans, curators, collectors, and scholars. This year’s CODEX International Book Fair and Symposium is coming soon, from February 10 through 13, 2013 at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, California. Among this fine company of over 180 international printers and book artists, we are glad to have our place. We hope you will come find us there!   More…

IN OCTOBER 2010 the Press acquired its own Monotype Thompson typecasting machine, along with dozens of series of matrices, the small recessed molds for the three-dimensional letterforms that are the essence of letterpress printing. Our Thompson caster will give us more control over the ‘fit’ and appearance of the types we use in our handmade books, and it opens up the possibility for designing our own typeface.   More…

LAST YEAR, THE PRESS RECEIVED a commission to produce a small letterpress edition of poetry: a personal volume of 50 sonnets for the author’s own distribution. The author had heard of the Press from a colleague who had seen our fine-press publications, and preferred the handmade quality of our letterpress editions over a plain paperback, print-on-demand booklet.   More…