Book Arts is all about pushing boundaries: explore the unconventional.
Take a break from reading and look at letters! Letterpress is a process of printing using hand-set metal or wood type, which is inked and pressed into paper. Whether utilitarian or artistic, typography explores the dynamic relationships of form and space to letters, words, and paper. Come explore our museum-quality type collection and our range of presses, from our c.1890 Wahington hand press to our midcentury Vandercooks –– we can almost garauntee you'll never look at printed matter the same way again. Here's a slew of resources to find out more and get started, with games, glossaries, guides and graphics.
Tucked away in the depths of Pendleton West, Wellesley's Papermaking Studio (PNW 114) is home to the entire process of making paper in the Western tradition, from beating plant or cloth fibers into pulp, making a slurry of pulp and liquid, forming a sheet on a mold, couching onto felt, perhaps adding colorful inclusions or a watermark, and drying the finished sheets.