The Petrarch Press

THE OXFORD FINE PRESS BOOK FAIR on November 5 & 6, 2011 in Oxford, UK, is the largest international show of fine presses and their work. Of course the Petrarch Press will be there. Every two years, the UK Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) works with the Fine Press Book Association to organize this event. Once again, we are looking forward to meeting old and new friends and enjoying the old-world ambience of Oxford and London, where the seeds of traditional fine-press printing first took root. We hope to see you there.

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…