"These poems could have been uttered while lighting a candle in a large, empty cathedral."--Frannie Lindsay. Birch Brook Press is a popular culture and literary publisher of handcrafted books and art portfolios, featuring letterpress editions produced at our own printing, typesetting, and binding facility in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. Though most of our books are produced with antiq
ue methods and tools, on books of substantial size with content that is better suited to modern means, the Press uses current-day technology to bring them into print, while maintaining high standards of design and in selection of materials. Because quality letterpress books are more time-consuming and costly to produce, Birch Brook Press uses only high-quality text and cover stocks, often employing hand-mixed inks, and printing from handset classic typefaces in metal, with art printed from wood or metal engravings cut by fine artists, led by Frank C. Eckmair, our artistic director. Six printing presses--including a Heidelberg Cylinder and a V-45 Miehle Vertical--are in use at Birch Brook Press. We also cast much of our own metal type on a Monotype casting system to supplement our 300 cases of American Type Foundry fonts. Despite the high costs and slowness of this process, we keep the prices of our books competitive with those produced much more cheaply so that readers may have access to these ancient crafts and in books that increase in value the longer they own them. Why produce books slowly in the age of high-speed technology? Because reading is not merely a mental but a sensory activity, and we believe that placing readers in direct contact with quality papers and cloths, in books made with continuous direct human involvement, adds a measurable quality to the reading experience, especially when it is combined with imaginative content and fine writing. In addition to the books we publish as Birch Brook Press titles, we are also called upon by individuals, other presses, and institutions such as state library systems and the University of North Carolina, to produce special broadsides and award-wnning books in handcrafted letterpress editions.
