I admit I’m drawn to places that give me the feeling of stepping back in time. When I crossed the threshold of Hatch Show Print I felt that nostalgia, with the creak of the wooden floor and the smell of old paper. I was a bit thrown when the manager barked at me, “How can we help you, Tourist?”

“Oh, I’m just looking.”



I am a tourist seeking out old, handmade things. Hatch Show Print self-describes as “indeed ‘a tonic for the information age.’" But Hatch Show Print is not a museum or quiet place where you are supposed to look and not touch. It’s alive and grinding away with huge letterpresses and sloppy ink. It’s one of America’s oldest letterpress shops and its history is evident in the floor to ceiling wooden cases of type.



“So, what are you doing here, Tourist?”

“Actually I’m here to see if I can take some photos for Etsy’s blog.” Jim Sherraden, the manager, Brad Vetter, the designer, and a couple of the other folks there had heard of Etsy (in fact, two of the women who work at Hatch Show Print are Etsy sellers—BettyTurbo.etsy.com and SnowOwl.etsy.com). And so my status ratcheted up one notch from Tourist to Serendipitous-Web-Personality. I was invited to walk behind the counter though one of those wooden, waist-high swinging doors and treated to an explanation of how to set type and hold it in place with filler pieces called “furniture.” I’m sure they would have done the same for any enthusiastic tourist who appreciated the art of letterpress. They just like to call a spade a spade and acknowledge the fact that handmadeness is, for most people, something to gawk at.




Hatch Show Print is basically one large L-shaped room with the bulkier letterpress machines in the back. Posters, largely two color concert posters for the local Nashville country music scene, line the walls—wherever there aren’t cases of type. For old time country music fans, it’s fun to pick out the greats, such as Elvis here, and take notes on the lesser known. You can purchase prints in the front, and if you’re in need, you can hire them to do small-run jobs.




FURTHER RESOURCES
You can take a “virtual tour” on the Country Music Hall of Fame website

More of my photos on the Storque flickr set

A related note:
I went to see some live local music in Nashville at the Station Inn. The members of the band Radiola not only play like crazy but many of the band members are luthiers too. The band leader and his singer wife called her sister out from the kitchen to sing a duet and the whole place felt like family and friends.