Bluestocking Press
2727 Sulphur Springs Ave.
St. Helena
(707) 963-0962

It may be a lost art to some people, but no one has told St. Helena artisan Jennifer Garden, proprietor of the acclaimed letterpress printing shop known as Bluestocking Press.

Using hand set metal type in the style of Gutenberg, letterpress printing is to commercial printing what a Bentley is to a Buick. Life is all in the details when it comes to letterpress. Where the typical offset press is constrained when it comes to the weight and types of paper that can be used, letterpress shops are free to use a wide variety of types and weights of paper. These include special printmaking and handmade paper to deboss the inked impressions – the type and the graphics – onto the paper. The result? Spectacular, in a way so subtle, so refined, but visually so striking and sculptural to the touch as to appear almost magical when it is in your hands.

Working in a beautiful restored barn above St. Helena and using a Chandler and Price Platen press from the 1940’s, Garden produces work that ranges from stationery and business cards to wedding invitations, wine labels and announcements heralding everything from the birth of a baby to the launching of a boat. Each project is one-of-a-kind, each ink color is hand-mixed and printed separately. Designs are limited only by the imagination.

Like any work of art, creativity and talent do not come cheap. Business cards begin at $300 (for a standard quantity of 500) and go skyward, depending upon the complexity of design and the amount of color; a thousand dollars is the starting point for wedding invitation packages, which include the invitation, reply card and envelopes for a run of between 100 and 250. What do you get? Exclusivity for one thing, an almost transcendental appeal in an era of e-mails and laser printers.

Garden had been involved in exhibition design for museums and had degrees in philosophy and museum studies as well as custom bookbinding experience in Boston, San Francisco and the Napa Valley before turning to the letterpress full time in 1993. “When I opened Bluestocking Press my goal was to merge my interest in fine art and craftsmanship,” the Napa Valley native said. She still runs a one-person operation in the Valley, but her clients are nationwide with word-of-mouth endorsements bringing her a steady stream of patrons looking for printing that is decidedly non-electronic in an electronic age. And that may be a big part of the appeal right there.