FULL STEAM AHEAD

Letterpress Depot had a great time printing at the district-wide STEAM night at Englewood High School.

Science Technology Engineering Art Math all were on display as we had the kids print on our Adana 8-5, Vandercook proof and Provisional presses. Thanks to photographer Bryan for capturing Marc, Tom, Dave with his LEGO(tm) printing and Patti in action with the families.

AND…we had our first vehicle donation, which brought in almost $300 for the Depot and will go towards our Capital Campaign! If you have a car to donate, click here. And if you want to donate to help us raise the rest of the money to finish rehabbing our 1915 RR Depot, so we can welcome you inside, click here.

Checks also welcome, sent to Letterpress Depot, Box 798, Englewood CO 80151. For Venmo/Paypal etc, or any other questions, email us at info@letterpressdepot.org or call/text 720-480-5358. Thank you!

Signed, Sealed and Delivered

So many lovely/loving cards! So much fun at our very successful fundraising Valentine printing event.

It was hosted by Depot president Jason Wedekind of Genghis Kern and Depot board member Cara Jo Knapp of KnappDesignCo

With their help, and with Depot printers Tom Parson and Ian Van Mater (and with Bryan Dahlberg documenting it all), the guests printed their one-of-a-kinds cards. Here are just a few…

And also signed..sealed…our grant from the State Historical Fund! Their support is so important, and so is the 25% match we were able to raise from our donors. Thank you! Now major rehab work can continue on the upper historical level.  To get the rooms empty so our contractors can work, we have a storage pod in place (any strong arms want to volunteer to help with the move? Email info@letterpressdepot.org)

We truly are grateful for the $83,000 raised. But we still have a ways to go to reach our capital campaign goal so we can get the whole building finished and open for you. We always appreciate your donations. Any questions, call/text 720-480-5358 or write info@letterpressdepot.org

Watch for a printing event around St. Patrick’s Day!

Fun times ahead, fun times behind...

Join us on 2/12 from 4:30-8:00 for a Valentine’s Day themed fundraiser! Knapp Design Co. and Genghis Kern are teaming up to bring you an evening of printing! REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND.

This is an open house-style event; you are welcome to come and go as you can. Your donation of $30 or $50 not only gets you in the door of Genghis Kern’s beautiful print shop, but you will have the opportunity to design and layout up to 15 cards that you will hand-feed through one of their vintage printing presses. We will also accept additional donations in person if you feel inspired to create more.

And that’s not all we’ve been up to!

Letterpress Depot recently printed with students at Charles Hay World School, as part of our commitment to Englewood Schools!

Soon we will be able to share pix of construction being started, thanks to you all who helped us make the match for our State Historical Fund grant. And once we raise the next $213,000, we can get started on the rest of the work needed to get occupancy. We are the closest we have ever been! As always, you can always donate to the Depot here.

Depot year in pictures

We were excited to see so many of you at printing events this year. And we were touched by how many of you also donated to help us get our Depot home in shape for occupancy. Thank you. You still have a few minutes to make a 2024 donation (although of course we will happily accept them in 2025 as well😉). As always, we are grateful to the State Historical Fund for believing in and supporting our project.

See you in 2025! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and NEW** on BlueSky. Email info@letterpressdepot.org or call/text 720-4805358 anytime.

GRATEFUL

Our capital campaign is chugging along, thanks to all of you who donated recently. And wow, with all our efforts this year, we have reached our first goal of $83,000 – that was the amount needed to activate our grant from the State Historical Fund! With these funds, construction can start on the deteriorated parts of our Depot home. We are beyond grateful for longtime supporters and new donors who made this happen. And to History Colorado for recognizing the importance of saving this iconic building.

But like the little engine that could, we can’t stop here. We now are pushing towards our overall goal—another $217,000 to finish the entire building and get occupancy. Once we have that, we will have workshops, exhibits, community events. We can welcome in everyone from kids to seniors, as they learn the joy of letterpress printing. We will show off presses that told the stories of the West.  So if you missed out on giving earlier, we always are open for donations. 

Questions? Ideas for others to ask for donations? Email info@letterpressdepot.org, call/text 720-480-5358. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, X and just now! BlueSky.

It's the Day!

We’ve raised $52,000 of the $83,000 needed to match our wonderful State Historical Fund grant. (And with that grant and our great supporters we’re almost 60% towards our capital campaign goal!) Special gifts appreciated, but very dollar helps. Thank you!

Santa says: We've been nice!

Nice enough for gifts to be sent to Letterpress Depot through Colorado Gives!

We are making great progress - so far we have raised over $45,000 of the $83,000 we need in order to access a new major grant from the State Historical Grant. The Colorado Gives special matching initiative ends December 10 (clock’s ticking!) but we can receive tax deductable donations any time in any way that works for you.

While getting our Depot home ready, we've been making a difference in the community by introducing kids to the fascinating world of letterpress printing. Just recently, we were at Cherry Creek schools and then, donning Elf hats, we printed with Santa at the Englewood Civic Center. Your support will be instrumental in opening our doors to the public and furthering our “Preservation through Education” mission: keeping letterpress and the book arts alive in this increasingly digital age.

Questions? Suggestions for major gifts? Call/text us at 720-480-5358 or email info@letterpressdepot.org

Giving Tuesday: An imPRESSive boost to our Capital Campaign

THANK YOU for the wondrous burst of activity and generosity!

But if you missed that day, no worries! The Capital Campaign continues. Colorado Gives goes through December 10; our campaign continues until we have enough to open the Englewood Depot building to all of you!

Even while we are fundraising, printing continues! Our press will be set up next to Santa during the Christmas Tree Lighting Holiday Market on Saturday, December 7 from 2-5pm. Stop by and say hello and come print with us! That’s at The Guild’s CitySpark space on Inca Street in Englewood CityCenter. HO HO HOPE you can join us!

5 REASONS WHY WE PRINTERS CARE ABOUT A RR DEPOT

And why we are asking for your help during Colorado Gives & beyond…

#1 It started as just being pragmatic – we know of too many community print shops and museums forced to move from their rented spaces; we wanted to find a home for our living letterpress museum that we could own, in every sense of the word.

#2  We then fell in love with the  1915 Englewood Depot and the fact it’s only one of two remaining Mission Style Santa Fe Railroad buildings in the country.

#3  There’s a lot of synergy between our depot and letterpress— they share a time period of glory, an historic legacy and artistic overlap. Railroads and letterpress printing both played large roles in the history of the West. And they both use very heavy equipment!

#4  We believe the way to preserve the legacy and the history of type is to use it, to bring traditional knowledge into the 21st century imagination. The same applies to a building. It is only brought to life by adaptive and creative re-use, while remembering its past.

#5  Besides preserving traditional printing and an iconic building, we also have become the home for the presses and typefaces once used by Colorado and other printers who have retired or passed away. They live on in the Depot.

 So our goal is to raise the needed funds to get the living letterpress museum opened in this rehabilitated railroad depot. Then we can welcome you all in for workshops, demonstrations, exhibits and events. Help bring the building alive so our living letterpress museum can truly come alive!

We have $50,000  to go to provide the $83,000 needed for our State Historical Fund grant. Then another $217,000 to help us get complete rehab done! Every dollar helps. And special gifts help especially! Colorado Gives goes through December 10. Let’s see how much we can raise by then!

Intertype used at the Denver Post back in the day! Press pictures by Bryan Dahlberg

Any questions or thoughts on where we might seek more funding, call/text 720-480-5358 or email info@letterpressdepot.org. THANK YOU!

It takes a community!

Lots of smiles when we printed recently at Cherry Creek High School with students and their families. Now we need your donation to help us open our Depot home to bring more smiles, more printing to the community. To achieve full occupancy and use of the Depot, we need $550,000 and we’ve already raised half that! The State Historical Fund has given us a grant for $250,000 to rehab more of the interior and our immediate goal is to raise $83,000 as a match for that grant. The Colorado Gives incentive program (now through December 10) is the perfect time to give us a special gift.

Your donations have already helped make it possible for us to accomplish construction milestones like a new eco-friendly HVAC system and electrical service.

Once we have this $83,000 match, we can: Fix the walls! Raise the floors for ADA access! Install plumbing! Repair plaster! Fix windows! Add fire safe doors!. We will be so much closer to opening the building, allowing people of all ages to participate in this historic art form. Please give before midnight December 10 to help us access the Colorado Gives incentive match.

Checks also welcome to PO Box 798, Englewood, Colorado 80151. Questions? email info@letterpressdepot.org or text 720-480-5358. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. And check out the most recent episode of the Hot off the Press Podcast to hear from our board members Jason Wedekind and Cara Jo Knapp about the Depot’s mission and how your donation will make an impact!

We can do this! Hop on Board!

Rendering of upper level of Depot - our vision of community, printing and exhibits.

We can make this vision a reality with you help and by thinking BIG!

And Colorado Gives (now through December 10) is the time for BIG thinking!

We want to open our doors so you can come print and see the wonder of letterpress, historic preservation and railroad history. But first, we need to finish rehabilitating the Depot. That’ll take another $550,000 …but wait! We already have almost half raised, thanks to the State Historical Fund, that has given us a grant of $250,000! Our goal is to raise $83,000 as a match for that grant as soon as we can. And then raise another $217,000 to get it all done!

CAN YOU DONATE A SPECIAL GIFT TO HELP US GET DOWN THE TRACKS?

Any questions/suggestions, email info@letterpressdepot.org or call/text 720-480-5358. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and X

LETTERPRESS DEPOT MEETS HOWDESIGNLIVE!

And a great time was had by all. We got to share our Reliance Washington Hand Press with the great designers attending HowDesignLive.

You’ll notice our sweet little Adana got some notice along with her big sister press! But that day, the hand press was our star (below with ace photographer/printmaker/printer Bryan Dahlberg)

And here’s who we —the Depot printers, trying hard to get our building on track to be open to the public. We have $280,000 to raise out of our $500,000 goal (thanks to the State Historical Fund for the major boost). Donations welcome. And any ideas of who else to ask, welcome!

Any questions, email info@letterpressdepot.org, call/text 720-480-5358. Follow us @letterpressdepot on Facebook and Instagram, @letpressdepot on X. And oh did I mention, you can donate now or during the five+ weeks of Colorado Gives “Day” November 1-December 10! THANK YOU!

975lb Press Goes Mobile!

On its way to HowDesignLive2024

We love our tabletop presses, but when the opportunity came to show off our Reliance Washington Hand Press at HowDesignLive2024, we couldn’t resist. It also was a great way to push forward our new capital campaign to raise another $335,000 towards our $550,000 goal of getting the Depot building open so all of you can come there to pull a print! It took many hands on deck to get this press ready for its adventure.

Board member/photographer/artist/designer Bryan Dahlberg has used the press to pull limited edition prints that he then marries with photography. He and Tom Parson put together the deconstructed press when it was acquired.

More on the history of the press below. But in case you’re anxious to help our campaign and want to know RIGHT NOW how to help, please donate here. The State Historical Fund has been invaluable in helping the Depot, but to finish construction and get the doors open for workshops and events, we also need you.

Rendering of the future top level of the Letterpress Depot

On the lower level, the Depot has two hand presses - one survived the SF earthquake!. The hand press evolved from wood to iron around 1800. Soon after, NY printer and grocer Samuel Rust patented some of the best ideas. He refused to sell out to his hated competitor, R. Hoe & Company, so Hoe had one of his employees tell Rust he also hated his boss and was setting up his own company. Rust gladly then sold him the patent and all his equipment for $3,000 and agreed to not compete for eight years. When the charade was revealed, Hoe took it all over and produced thousands of the model. (Rust went on to patent and sell lamps.)  When the press patents expired, several other companies started turning out Washington presses.

Thinking Big! And gaining steam to get us down the tracks.

For more intel, follow us @letterpressdepot on Facebook & Instagram, @letpress on X, email info@letterpressdepot.com or call/text 720-480-5358.

Summer's almost gone - but we're just starting!

What a way to end summer - by printing non stop at the Englewood Block Party…and at the Rocky Mountain Book & Paper Fair.

And by moving some old new presses and type into the Depot (check out that hanging press).

But we’ve only just begun! We just launched a capital campaign to help us get occupancy. With support from the State Historical Fund and individuals, we have raised over $200,000 towards our $550,000 goal. It sounds like a lot, but we are the little engine that could. We know we can! With everyone’s help, we can finish construction and open the doors. Your donation is an investment in the preservation of this historic building, the future of letterpress printing, book arts, and our continued community involvement. Donate at https://www.letterpressdepot.com/donate . All ABOARD!

If you know anyone who might want to donate, or if you have any questions, email us at info@letterpressdepot.com or call/text 720-480-5358. Follow us @letterpressdepot on Instagram and Facebook and @letpressdepot on X. Thank you!

Things are heating up!

Heat pump installation has begun at the Depot! It will be so nice to have heat this winter (and dare we hope AC as the temps go up?)  Donations helped us get a start on paying for this system.  THANK YOU. (We still do have a ways to go, so assistance  always welcome.) And while hese next pix may not throw sparks…

they are one of the last steps (we hope) to get the electricity working. To connect power from the Xcel pole to the building, we had to dig an almost 40 foot long, 2-3 foot deep trench for undergrounding the conduit. Thanks to Tom, Jason, Robert, Kirk, Bryan and Jasper for straining their muscles for the cause! Note the tool of choice - a pickax -in the first image. Now we’re hoping for the electrician to complete the circuit.

Meanwhile we’ve been printing at the Rocky Mountain Stamp Show. Some Scouts were there working on their merit badge in stamp collecting.  And other kids having fun too. Thanks to Marc, Tom and Patti for showing them how to get inky.

It’s spring at the Depot. If you can…spring…for any donations, go to https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/LetterpressDepot or click below.

For more info about any of our work, email us at info@letterpressdepot.com, or text 720-480-5358. Follow us @letterpressdepot on Instagram, Facebook and @letpressdepot on X.

What an ending to Month of Printmaking!

Photo by board member Bryan Dahlberg

Letterpress Depot printers Bryan Dahlberg, Marc Silberman and Tom Parson and volunteer Tim Vermeulian joined over 70 other makers at this year’s Small Press Fest. Note the mini-press in a box thatBryan used to print Jabberwocky on - he made that press himself!

Thanks to Bryan and Dave Laskowski III for capturing the scene. And to all who came to print with us! For more Depot intel, contact us at info@letterpressdepot.com or call/text 720-480-5358. Follow us on Facebook & Instagram (@letterpressdepot) and on X (@letpressdepot). See you somewhere!

Next up: Small Press Fest, Saturday, March 30

Letterpress Depot will be at Small Press Fest March 30th from 11-4 along with 70 zine, book, comic, print and other DIY makers at the Globeville Center. Our prints are still up this month at the wondrous Spectra Gallery. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us last week at Belleview Park and at all our Open Studios - from Englewood to Fort Collins! Here are just some pix of the inky fun.

Some more details: Globeville Center is at 44th and Grant; Spectra Gallery is at 1836 South Broadway. You can contact us at info@letterpressdepot.com or call 720-480-5358. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram. See you somewhere!

Next Up: Belleview Park March 23 & Spectra Gallery

If you missed us at Arvade Center, come see us at the Spring Market in Belleview Park this coming Saturday, 10-2pm. And see our work on display the rest of March at Spectra Gallery (1836 S Broadway). If you haven’t been to Spectra and seen its immersive display, GO!

And here’s what you missed at Print Jam! Lots of people, lots of printing - Bryan Dahlberg on a mini etching press, LEGO (tm) printing conceived of by Dave Laskowski II and printed on an Adana by Jason Wedekind, Tom Parson on another Adana, and Marc Silberman on a Vandecook proof press. And note the mini press in a box made by Bryan too!

For more info, get in touch: info@letterpressdepot.com, 720-480-5358. And see you at the Spring Market!

Last year’s Spring Market

Five very different presses...see the ink fly

Come out of the snow to a warm celebration of printing. Letterpress Depot will have five presses in action at the Arvada Center, March 16, 11-4. You’ll see Bryan Dahlerg on his handmade mini press and 12" wide etching press turning out historic woodcut prints…. Tom Parson on an Adana, printing botanic images by L.W. Durrell from Colorado Adgricultural College (the precursor to CSU)… Dave Laskowski II printing from your LEGO(tm) designs… . And Marc Silberman giving you hands on fun with a variety of images.

Follow us: www. Letterpressdepot.com and @letterpressdepot on FB and IG, and @letpressdepot on X. Questions? info@letterpressdepot.com, 720-480-5358

"Print Jam" March 16---and a whole lot of other printing going on!

Four different presses, historic prints, plastic building blocks and even some Jabberwocky - all will be part of the Letterpress Depot’s demonstration and hands-on events at the Arvada Center March 16, 11-4. We promise you will see presses and printing you’ve probably never seen before! Mo’Print, the Month of Printmaking, has been a busy time for us. But as always, we’ve also made time for the schools. At Cherry Creek High School, we tried out LEGO(tm) printing, inspired by Depot board member Dave Laskowski II. (You’ll have a chance to do this with Dave at “Print Jam.”)

We also printed with the kids at Cherrelyn Elementary, and loaned press and type to Colorado’s Finest High School of Choice for their “Wanted” project.

Print Jam demonstration is in the Arvada Center’s Main Gallery, with hands-on fun in their History Museum. Other March events include the Spring Market, March 23 at Belleview Park, and the Small Press Fest, March 30 at Globeville Center. We look forward! If you need more details, info@letterpressdepot.com.