Twenty years after Gutenberg invented movable type, Catholic nuns were setting type in Florence—pioneers in the history of women and publishing. They were followed by the inspiring stories of Charlotte Guillard, Anne Franklin, and Virginia Woolf, as well as the dispiriting story of U.S. women barred from working in union print shops in the 1970s.
At 6 pm on Friday, March 22, Kathleen Walkup discusses the history of women printers in a free lecture, “Your Hands Will Always Be Covered with Ink: Nuns, Widows, Mavericks and Other Passionate Printers.” Sponsored by the Press at the Palace of the Governors and the Santa Fe Book Arts Group, the lecture is free in the History Museum Auditorium.
Download a high-resolution image of women working at a Victorian-era press by clicking on "Go to related images" at the bottom of this page.
Walkup is a professor of book art and director of the Book Art Program at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., where she teaches typography and letterpress printing, artists’ bookmaking and seminar/studio courses that combine print culture and book history with studio projects. She is also book art director for the MFA in book art and creative writing, the first such program in the country. Her interests include the history of women in print culture and conceptual practice in artists’ books. Her most recent curatorial project is Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop (Grolier Club, New York, 2010, plus several other venues). She edited the catalogue for the exhibition and contributed two essays. Walkup served as a consultant to the PBS series Craft in America.
The Palace Press is a working exhibit within the New Mexico History Museum. Besides displaying presses from the early days of New Mexico printing, along with a recreation of artist Gustave Baumann’s print studio, it produces award-winning books and poetry broadsides in celebration of the written word. Through its support of book arts-related events and exhibits, the Palace Press underscores the History Museum’s commitment to the written word and the legacy of our shared stories.
