A dispatch from Clark Library reference assistant and Horn Press student officer Derek Quezada:
This past weekend, the latest incarnation of UCLA’s Horn Press had its first major meeting of the year. For the greater part of the afternoon, student officers, club members and anyone interested in the “slow technology” of letterpress printing sacrificed their Saturday and helped to create wonderfully unique holiday cards that will be sold for the group’s annual fund-raising event. For many of those who haven’t had the opportunity to receive a hands-on introduction to presswork before it inspired many ‘wow’ moments when the connection between process and product was made.
Since its revival by book artist and professor of bibliography Johanna Drucker, the UCLA Horn Press has at long last found a new home at the Broad Arts Center in the Design and Media Department, after having been expelled from its original headquarters in the Young Research Library and winding up in ‘temporary’ residence at the Clark’s gate house for the not so insignificant period of 17 years (where it remained unused because of a combination of logistics and non-weight-bearing floors)! The first letterpress equipment acquired by a library school in 1961, the Horn Press has had a long and interesting history that is worth reading about here. [The Clark also has an archive of material related to Horn Press founder, Andy Horn, which includes holiday cards printed at the Horn Press and at Horn’s personal press, the Battledore Press.]
If anyone is interested, the cards will be available for purchase the week after Thanksgiving from Monday November 30th to Friday December 4th between 12-1:30 in the Information Studies Commons in the GSEIS building on campus. They feature hand carved linoleum cuts and designs produced by club members at only a dollar fifty each. The profits will help support further Horn Press programming and the development of a printing community on campus with the aim of fostering greater interest in the book as an object worth studying.
Another article about the Horn Press holiday cards is here, at UCLA Today.