Earlier this month, The Hatch crew had the opportunity to participate in the 73rd National Folk Festival. Among the waves of people that visited our tent were students, fellow printers, curious strangers to the process, and a handful of folks with their own stories and memories of the shop. We went in ready to educate others about what we do, but ended up learning a thing or two ourselves. Manager Jim Sherraden reflects on our experience:
I was excited about going to the Folk Festival and having a tent and a demonstration, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how benign our experience had been in the 80s when we would go do downtown festivals. What I've learned is that as we've accelerated into the 21st century, and live in this screen saturated society, a letterpress demonstration is as fascinating as the gentleman from MTSU who was recording vocals and songs on an Edison wax cylinder recorder. To the casual observer there was no difference between what we were doing with letterpress–in other words, representing the early 20th century as printers– as he was representing early 20th century technology as a sound engineer, and we look forward to next year.
 |
| Printing festival show cards |
 |
| Cards we printed on site |
 |
| View from inside our tent |
 |
| Our tent featured a backdrop painted by Jim |
 |
| Sharing our work |
