Letterpress printing at Bella Figura

We take our inspiration from early printers like Johannes Gutenberg, who letterpressed slowly and deliberately, choosing the best materials because they wanted their printing to last for a really long time. They wanted to reach into the future with their handiwork. And wow, did they succeed: get your hands on any book from the 15th Century, and you'll find the ink as rich and deep and gorgeous as the day it was printed. Those early books are housed in libraries and collections now and rightly cherished like priceless treasures.

In our Syracuse, New York print shop, we're surrounded by letterpress every single day and we never grow tired of it. That would be like growing tired of watching the first snow fall or a newborn baby sleep. Daily we take part in our historic craft, and daily we are blown away by the beauty of the printing that comes of our presses.

We're not an invitation company that dabbles in letterpress— we are ink-in-the-veins letterpress printers. We eat, dream, think, and sleep letterpress. We're here because we love the craft and we want to see letterpress techniques preserved for future generations. We're here because we couldn't be happy doing anything else. Every single day, letterpress reminds us that, no matter what is raging outside in the world, we can still create something worthy and joyful and enduring.

And oh, by the way, we think our printing presses are the coolest things ever. They are amazing precision instruments from a lost era of machining. They don't make stuff like this anymore: thousands of cast-iron mechanical parts on each press, each part clinking, whooshing, clacking. It's the sound that our heart makes. It's the sweetest sound in the world to us.

Understanding artisan printing: Letterpress is a historic printing method. Because our printing is done on antique printing presses, each piece that we print will be subtly unique. No two pieces are entirely identical, and letterpress printing is not an exact science. Subtle variations in inking, color, impression and position are to be expected. These small variations are part of what makes letterpress beautiful, trust us!