Blackbird Letterpress
Kathryn Hunter began Blackbird Letterpress in 2003 in Lafayette, Louisiana, after she bought a Chandler & Price 8×12 letterpress. Since she couldn’t move the 1100lb press into her apartment, her friends, Pudd & Leigh Anne, came to the rescue by offering their back room as a printshop. The type came from a printer outside of Chicago. Pudd & Kathryn flew up to to the Windy city and loaded a couple tons of type and cabinets and other goodies out of a basement into a moving truck, and drove it back to Bayou Country. A collection of vintage printers’ cuts came from a long time printer in New Iberia, Louisiana. The printshop grew up little by little in that back room from 2003-2007 until it was bursting the seams. Blackbird then worked out of a mural-clad building in Baton Rouge from 2007-2016, which they shared with a cool metalworking business and two frisky guard dogs. The printshop moved in Fall of 2016 and has expanded in space and equipment. They use the original C&P 8×12, along with a Vandercook SP15, C&P 10×15, and 2 Heidelberg Windmills. and have 2 new frisky guard dogs.
