This sentiment was certainly true in 1879 when brothers Herbert H. and Charles R. Hatch opened Hatch Show Print, a printing shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Their handcrafted posters screamed slogans such as "More Power, More Pep," "So Many Girls You Can't Count Them All," and "Always Clean, Always Good." Now 130 years later, Hatch posters hold their own as a stirring and refreshingly tactile con-trast to the digital advertising world.
The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in partnership with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum celebrates the time-honored graphic art tradition of posters. "American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print" first opened in Seattle in 2008. Since then, it has been on a tour that will ultimately include 13 museums across the country. The exhibition is supported by America's Jazz Heritage, A Partnership of the Wallace Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. From September 9 through October 31, the exhibit is on view at the Boston University Art Gallery, located at 855 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. (Phone them at Address: 617.353.3329, for gallery hours, special exhibition related events, etc.)
"American Letterpress" features over 100 historical and contemporary posters and over a dozen hand-carved wooden blocks - some on view for the very first time. Whether in posters promoting a Johnny Cash concert or a carnival performance, advertising the rodeo or the Grand Ole Opry, or capturing the modern-day verve of a concert by Coldplay or The Strokes, posters printed by Hatch Show Print capture the heralded traditions of American letterpress printing and graphic art at their very best.
Letterpress refers to the printing process of inking and impressing letters. Generally, this term is used by professional and amateur printers who use metal and wood type to prepare textual documents such as broadsides and posters. Imagery can be included in a letterpress product, but in order to print text and image together, the image is prepared at the same height as the type. Simply put, this is a process where letters are pressed into paper with ink rolled in between. By exhibiting posters and woodblocks together visitors can better under-stand the letterpress process.
"Hatch is a survivor. We keep ink on the blocks and dust off their backs," said Jim Sherraden, the exhibition's curator and chief designer at Hatch Show Print. "We're in constant production, and we've survived all the changes in printing technology to become the antithesis of contemporary digital design. I'm thrilled that we can share our story and our art through this exhibition." As part of the exhibition pro-gramming, Jim Sherraden gives a slide lecture about Hatch's colorful history and devotion to hands-on letterpress printing in a digital era. For much of the 20th century, Hatch's vibrant posters served as a leading advertising medium for Southern entertainment - from vaudeville and minstrel shows, to magicians and opera singers, to Negro League baseball games and B movies. Many of Hatch's most loyal clients were Grand Ole Opry stars. Each Hatch Show Print poster is a unique creation, individually hand-crafted and inked onto paper in a pains-taking process that dates back to the 15th century, i.e. letterpress.
The shop that produces these colorful posters has long been a downtown Nashville landmark and the guardian of a very special piece of Americana. Now owned and operated by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Hatch Show Print not only carefully re-strikes some of the original, hand-carved wood blocks to reproduce classic images on the massive, old letterpresses, but also designs and prints over 600 new compositions each year, continuing in the firm's tradition.
For more American Letterpress venues, visit the Web site, www.sites.si.edu.