Grateful for the students who joined us for our 1st class at our new home @ the Station last week! They spent a rainy Tuesday evening exploring letterpress printing & book binding w/teachers extraordinaire Lyall Harris & Nancy Kober. More classes like this: vabookarts.org/classes/wint...

Interested in learning about Book Arts, typesetting & printing your own Holiday Cards, or exploring Folded Book Structures? Come take a class with us! vabookarts.org/classes/

Seen at @virginiabookarts.bsky.social, Liz Schneiders & students' printing using just tetrapaks (eg broth & oat milks cartons!) & tiny plastic Sizzix craft/scrapbooker presses or etching presses #DHmakes

Upcoming *free* intro to book arts workshops (letterpress printing+bookbinding!) 11/18 & 12/2, plus paid classes (w/member discount): typeset+printing your own holiday cards; simple folded book (or zine!) structures; & if you've printed before a brushup on our presses vabookarts.org/classes/wint...

Thanks to everyone who came out to our (re)opening events this weekend! See vabookarts.org to check out our upcoming classes (including some free intros to letterpress & bookbinding!) or become a member. We aren't open to drop-ins daily, so email us ([email protected]) if you want to learn more.

Virginia Book Arts is re-opening to the public! Join free events open to all next week: 1ST FRIDAY: Fri Nov 7 5-7pm OPEN HOUSE: Sat Nov 8 10-4pm Drop by 600 E. Water St (Cville near Downtown Mall) Pull a print on a press, 👀 past collab projects+member art, enjoy snacks & meet local book artists 📚🎨

10 days 'til open house! Busy calibrating presses, readying makeready, building new ways to explore our huge type collection. All (nonmembers welcome!) are invited to visit 11/7 5-7 (Cville 1st Friday) & 11/8 10-4. See our new space+learn how you might dig book arts w/us! mailchi.mp/ccb542e70408...

We're reopening soon! Lots of info on joining as a member or donating to help us become sustainable & accessible, upcoming workshops, & free public events this Nov 7 & 8: mailchi.mp/ccb542e70408... Also see our Insta (www.instagram.com/vabookarts/) & website (vabookarts.org) to learn more.

Today we changed the tympan paper (sheets covering cylinder that holds paper you're printing onto) on @vabookarts.bsky.social's 2 Vandercook presses. Beautiful layers of folks' past printing (including lots of mine, between being one of the most frequent printers & getting sloppy when testing 😂)

Hoping to print with this at the printshop as soon as the presses are available again.

Lasercut a printing block of @virginiabookarts.bsky.social's new logo (a letterpress typecase, with the places v, b, & a go highlighted) #DHmakes

Our drying line (and rubber chicken!) is up, & our steering group has been hard at work pecking at various other infrastructure needs toward filling that drying line with our community's prints again.

Cville folks, tonight 5:30-7:30=our weekly BookMakers gathering! Free+open to all. Mix of old+new attendees, book artists+folks just getting started. Many bring projects to work on, but there's often short demos & equipment you can experiment w/too (wood letterpress type+BookBeetle press tonight!) +

In "case" you weren't sure what our new logo was referencing...it's a California job case (particular layout for organizing moveable type for letterpress work) with the cells for letters V, B, A highlighted:

Thanks to @virginiabookarts.bsky.social's @josefbeery.bsky.social for keeping our book arts community not just alive but growing by leading a weekly public+free time to craft in camraderie, carrying on & expanding our Block Night/Open Studio tradition after our Book Arts printshop+bindery closed.

Next stop, printshop (& bindery)! Our new space is in Charlottesville's former railroad station, near the downtown bus center & east end of the pedestrian Downtown Mall. We're full steam ahead on getting the space ready to open for community art & learning.

#Cville region folks, missing (or excited to learn more about) book arts? Drop in for BookMakers: every Wednesday 5:30-7:30pm (downtown JMRL Madison Rm) for friendly, free printing, bookbinding, zine, etc. text art community. Open to all: bring your own project, or try out the BookBeetle press! +

The Vandercooks have landed! 🛬Volunteers have been hard at work cleaning, painting, & moving our printshop & bindery equipment into our new space. Next up: unpacking & planning everything up through reopening (membership, open house, workshops...). Sign up at bottom of vabookarts.org for updates!

We're delighted to share we're now a member-run non-profit w/a new Cville location, + our new Insta (www.instagram.com/vabookarts/) & website (vabookarts.org)! Scroll to the bottom on the latter for listserv signup, to hear when we're ready to open & offer events, & ways you can help.

Letterpress typecase handles & labels are their own little bits of art:

Working on photographing @virginiabookarts.bsky.social's type collection yesterday with @josefbeery.bsky.social, I realized there's a plain-looking type cabinet where someone had painted just the insides of each typecase/drawer a different bright color 🌈

Lets us see % wood vs metal type, counts of the various typefaces, frequency of various point sizes. Going to work w/@josefbeery.bsky.social to document the type's use history, quirks, condition. Hoping to add photos of prints made w/as much of our type as I can, to show what to expect.

I'm making a database+photo gallery for @virginiabookarts.bsky.social's big (370+!) wood+lead letterpress type collection, before it's packed up: pull out+photo each case, add descriptive data to Airtable db based on others' existing typeface+variant+pointsize list+I added 27 more metadata fields 🙀+

Studio Two Three 'supports art making for personal+social change...the role of the arts in civic voice+engagement, partnering w/activists+leaders to provide space for creative advocacy initiatives' (www.studiotwothree.org/our-mission). 💜 their charter (I see some #DHmakes values there!):