Each of the workshops honors a craft associated with its particular city. In decades past, printing was the largest industry in San Francisco, and the Levi’s Workshops in San Francisco fuse this tradition of craftsmanship with new technology. The Mission District storefront housing the workshop serves a wonderful purpose — and offers serious fun in the process.
Various local nonprofit organizations are having materials printed right here, right now, on an impressive array of equipment — most of it on short-term lease from local printers. There’s a Vandercook 32-38 from the Hicks Brothers, and a Vandercook SP25 from Maia de Raat’s Dandy Lion Press. A pair of platen presses have been imported from The Arm in Brooklyn. There’s screen-printing equipment from Logos Graphics — Gutenberg shirt suit you to a T?
The various presses are “peopled” by local artists as well as printers from the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB). On my first visit to Levi’s Workshops, I asked programming director Adam Katz (whose own enterprise is — so appropriately — The Limits of Fun) exactly how the big presses had gotten into the building. “Aha,” he replied, “that’s a good question. And the answer is that we moved the presses in before we put the doors on.” Katz’s brother Joshua holds the headiest responsibility at the workshops, as Levi’s head of “Collaboration, Partnerships and Creative Concepts.”
For spontaneous creativity, check out the table of special rubber stamps, handy if you have a surface you wish to adorn. And a spiffy Ricoh copier means you can create a ’zine off the cuff, on the spot.
The workshops calendar is jam-packed with creativity. Alas, I missed Stefan Sagmeister. Also missed the Rock Paper Show event. The almost-eponymous book, Rock Paper Show: Flatstock Vol. 1, is an awesome anthology of 20 years of collaboration between artists, illustrators, and printers of concert posters. This initiative of the American Poster Institute is flat-tastic. Can you see posters at the Workshops? Natch, and below are three of my favorites.
This Thursday evening, August 12, I’ve reserved a spot at the Porchlight: A Storytelling Series reading. Porchlight just celebrated its eighth anniversary in July. Attendees will receive a limited-edition commemorative book, letterpress-printed on the premises … on, as it happens, Mohawk papers — the stories are on Loop Feltmark White (100% pcw), and the cover is on Solutions Premium Linen — in the perfect shade of True Blue.
Sub Rosa, the New York agency collaborating with Levi’s on the workshops, has masterminded an extraordinarily ambitious printing parlor, or maybe palace, specifically for nonprofits. The energy and enthusiasm are practically kuhntagious. Dan Connor of Sub Rosa, workshops manager extraordinaire, is so mentally nimble, he could turn on a thimble. And the very next best thing to being there: the highly visual Levi’s Workshops blog, wonderfully written by freelance journalist Drew Toal.
Revel in the Levi’s Workshops calendar for the rest of August. If you can arrange to be in town, quick-click and reserve yourself a spot or two or three.
Alyson Kuhn will report next week on the Porchlight reading. At the end of August, she will show several of her favorite works printed at the workshops.
