Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair - Fresh Ink

Sea Heart City Press Brings Letterpress Greeting Cards Made for Real Mail to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:50:06 GMT

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Meredith Akery founded Sea Heart City Press in 2013 with a simple and durable premise: make letterpress cards that make you want to send real mail. Working from a home garage studio in West Belmar, New Jersey, she designs, hand-letters, illustrates, and prints every card herself, using a collection of vintage presses including a Chandler & Price 10x15, two Kelsey Excelsior models, and a Golding Official. The press has operated through studio shares at the Heurich House Museum in Washington, DC and the Crane Arts building in South Kensington, Philadelphia before finding its current home by the New Jersey shore, where the coastal environment threads through much of her design vocabulary.

At the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair, visitors will find a full range of Sea Heart City Press letterpress cards — occasion cards for birthdays, weddings, sympathy, and friendship; sharply-worded anytime cards; and the plant-pun series (Hydrangea, Gladiola, Impatien) that has become a recognizable part of her catalog. Each card is printed with deep letterpress impression on quality stock, carrying the tactile quality that makes the difference between a card that gets kept and one that gets recycled. The cards are direct and warm, often funny without trying too hard, and designed for the kind of handwriting that deserves a real envelope.

Find Sea Heart City Press at the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 11am–4pm, on the 200 block of N. Washington Street in Havre de Grace, MD. Admission is free — learn more at chesapeakeprintersfair.com.

Mason Jar Press Brings Independent Literary Publishing to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:38:08 GMT

From handmade chapbooks in 2014 to a nonprofit small press with twenty-plus titles, Baltimore's Mason Jar Press brings its catalog and its semiannual journal Jarnal to Havre de Grace.

Mason Jar Press is a Baltimore-based independent publisher with a specific mission: amplify writers whose work pushes the boundaries of literary norms, with a particular focus on BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and globally underrepresented voices. Founded in 2014 by Ian Anderson with modest beginnings in handmade, limited-run chapbooks, Mason Jar Press has grown into one of the Mid-Atlantic's most active small literary presses — and in 2025, it reincorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

At the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair, visitors can browse and buy from Mason Jar's catalog of poetry collections, fiction, nonfiction, novellas, and hybrid works, as well as recent issues of Jarnal, their semiannual literary journal publishing poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and cross-genre work. The press publishes three to six titles a year and has released well over twenty books, including translated work and debut collections from writers who might not find a home elsewhere. The handmade chapbook tradition that started the press is still present in its DNA — Mason Jar treats the book as a made object, not just a container for words.

Find Mason Jar Press at the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 11am–4pm, on the 200 block of N. Washington Street in Havre de Grace, MD. Admission is free — learn more at chesapeakeprintersfair.com.

Paper Moon Bindery Brings Fine Binding and Book Restoration to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Mon, 04 May 2026 20:26:25 GMT

Fine binding, custom enclosures, and restoration from a Philadelphia studio

Olivia Barber is a Philadelphia-based bookbinder whose work under the Paper Moon Bindery name spans three distinct areas: fine binding and design commissions, custom enclosures, and book restoration. She works at AKA Bindery, a Philadelphia studio with a reputation for high-quality restoration and custom boxes for rare books. Her practice is grounded in the tradition of the book as a crafted object — one where the structure, cover material, and finishing decisions are as intentional as the text inside.

At the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair, visitors will find Paper Moon Bindery's handmade paper, cards, notebooks, and boxes— work that demonstrates the range from functional beauty to collector-grade fine binding. Barber's restoration work includes rebacking and rebinding historic volumes, including sets on the history of Philadelphia, and her design binding commissions take on projects where the cover becomes a considered response to the content within.

She has studied fine binding and restoration at the American Academy of Bookbinding, North Bennet Street School, and Penland School of Crafts.

Paper Moon Bindery represents the kind of bookbinding practice that treats every structure as a problem worth solving well and every book as a worthwhile endeavor.

Frederick Book Arts Center Brings A Wide Range of Book Craft to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:21:17 GMT

One of the Mid-Atlantic's Most Fully Equipped Book Arts Studios Joins the May 9 Lineup

The Frederick Book Arts Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit studio and education center at 127 South Carroll Street in Frederick, Maryland, built around a single guiding principle: that the art of the book encompasses every step from blank paper to finished binding, and that each of those steps deserves to be taught, practiced, and kept alive. The center maintains a fully equipped letterpress studio with Vandercook proof presses and clamshell platen presses, a complete book bindery, a printmaking studio, an etching press, and a film-based photographic darkroom — a breadth of equipment that makes it one of the most comprehensively outfitted book arts facilities in the mid-Atlantic region.

At the Chesapeake fair, the FBAC team will bring printed work and bound books that reflect the range of their studio practice: letterpress ephemera, hand-bound journals, printmaking editions, and the kind of made-by-hand objects that let you see the decisions behind every layer. Their workshop calendar runs year-round and reaches into bookbinding, wood engraving, alternative photography, drum-leaf and raised-cord journal structures, and collaborative letterpress projects combining printing and binding in a single piece. The FBAC team are as interested in the conversation at the table as the objects on it — if you've ever been curious about setting type, building a clamshell box, or pulling a print on a Vandercook, this is a good place to ask.

Find Frederick Book Arts Center at the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 11am–4pm, on the 200 block of N. Washington Street in Havre de Grace, MD. Admission is free — learn more at chesapeakeprintersfair.com.

A Volunteer-Run Living-History Letterpress Shop Returns to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:04:44 GMT

The Ephrata, Pennsylvania nonprofit print shop returns to Havre de Grace with letterpress work made on historic presses kept alive by Saturday-morning volunteers.

Conestoga Press, a volunteer-run living-history letterpress shop in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, returns to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 2026. If letterpress printing is a craft of impressions, Conestoga Press is a craft of stewardship — housed in the Carriage House of the Theodore Sprecher Museum at 249 West Main Street and operated by the Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley, the shop is kept alive by volunteers who show up most Saturday mornings to keep the presses inked and running.

A working museum, not a static one

What sets Conestoga Press apart from most vendors you'll meet at a letterpress fair is that it isn't a business in the usual sense. It's a nonprofit print shop whose mission is to preserve and demonstrate the craft — and the machines themselves are part of the collection.

The centerpiece is a Bronstrup wrought-iron hand press from the 1850s, the kind of cast-iron lever press that would have been familiar to a printer working in the decades around the Civil War. Alongside it sits a 1926 Chandler & Price 8×12 — the workhorse platen press of the early 20th century — and more recent additions including a No. 14 Pearl press, donated by Julie Hocking of Hocking Printing Company (publisher of Ephrata's Shopping News). Their Bronstrup is cataloged in the Association of European Printing Museums' worldwide handpress database, which gives you a sense of its historical weight.

Translation: when you pick up something from their Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair table, you're holding work made on equipment museums elsewhere keep behind ropes.

Part of the Chesapeake APHA community

Both Glyph Design Studio and Conestoga Press are active in the Chesapeake Chapte r of the American Printing History Association (APHA) , and the Fair is in many ways an APHA-adjacent gathering — a chance for chapter shops and friends of the chapter to get their work in front of the public. Conestoga has been part of it from the start. They've exhibited with us in Havre de Grace in previous years and they keep coming back, which says something about the community of printers this Fair is building year over year.

Randy Newcomer , the shop's typesetter, has put it simply: what he values most about fairs like this is the chance to share the craft. That ethos comes through in the work they bring — letterpress pieces from the shop that read less like a product line and more like an invitation to come learn how any of it is made.

Dechanique Brings Handmade Sequential Art to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:47:51 GMT

Comics & Zines
Where the Zine Tradition Meets the Print Arts

Dechanique is a Hyattsville, Maryland–based artist working in adult comics, illustration, and self-published zines — the kind of intimate, hand-produced work that lives in the same tradition as the letterpress and bookbinding at the heart of this fair. Operating from just outside Washington, D.C., in the dense creative community that clusters around Hyattsville's arts district, her practice centers on drawn narrative: comics that tell stories with specificity and visual economy, and zines that make that work accessible and shareable in small-run printed form. Dechanique's comics are rooted in sensuality, magic/fantasy, genderplay, and alt-history, inspired by their early loves of Sailor Moon, Ranma ½, and Bondage Fairies.

At the Chesapeake fair, visitors can expect a table of original adult comics, artist zines, and illustrated work — the kind of hand-held publication that rewards the same slow attention as a finely printed broadside. Self-published zines and handmade comics occupy a distinct corner of the print arts universe: low-run, high-intention, made to be read and passed on. Dechanique brings that energy into a fair that spans the full range of what it means to make something with paper, ink, and intention. Whether you're already a zine collector or have never held one, this is a good place to start.

Find Comics & Zines / Dechanique at the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 11am–4pm, on the 200 block of N. Washington Street in Havre de Grace, MD. Admission is free — learn more at chesapeakeprintersfair.com .

Base Press Brings Award-Winning Typographic Letterpress to the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:42:28 GMT

Frank Baseman's prints hide the message — you have to figure it out.

Base Press is the letterpress studio of Frank Baseman — graphic designer, printer, design educator, and A.P.A. member — operating since 2016 from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. Baseman's work sits at the intersection of graphic design and fine-press letterpress printing, and it shows in the conceptual rigor of his output. His Rebus Quotes series earned a Judge's Choice Award at the 2019 AIGA Philadelphia Design Awards, and his prints are held in permanent collections at the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at the Cooper Union, Poster House in New York, the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione in Cornuda, Italy.

At the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair , visitors will find letterpress prints from Baseman's ongoing series, including the Rebus Quotes prints — typographic puzzles that encode familiar sayings through imagery and type — as well as books, cards, and typographic explorations drawing on wood and metal typefaces sourced from and developed during his residencies at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and the Tipoteca Italiana in northern Italy. His Yiddish Words book, letterpress-printed in Hebrew wood type, has been featured by Steven Heller's Daily Heller and entered permanent collections at multiple institutions. Base Press work rewards close looking: the impression of the type in the sheet, the layering of color, and the wit embedded in the composition all come through at arm's length in a way no screen can replicate.

Find Base Press at the Chesapeake Print & Book Arts Fair on May 9, 11am–4pm, on the 200 block of N. Washington Street in Havre de Grace, MD. Admission is free — learn more at chesapeakeprintersfair.com.