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Base

Name

Kathleen Burch

Gender

Female

Location

San Francisco, CA

Country

US

ZIP Code (if applicable)

94133

Birthdate

1952-07-18

Email

kathleenburch@gmail.com

Make/model of press(es)?

Invisible City

Printing for How Long?

Vandy SP-15 (hand-cranked)

Services Offered in Addition to Letterpress?

Book design, typography, exhibition signage design

Apprentices or Interns Welcome?

Contact Me for Details

Bio

Co-founded the San Francisco Center for the Book in 1996, Immediate past-president of The Book Club of California which upholds both Fine Printing and California History. Before 1996, spent 3 years trying to rejuvenate Fine Print Quarterly and was also on the board of the Pacific Center for Book Arts (PCBA) – both of which experiences led to starting the SFCB with Mary Austin. In the 80s, I was in the Mills College Graduate Program for Book Arts, the president of Burch & McElroy type & design studio in San Francisco, and interacted a great deal with Burning Books independent publishing house to publish short-run offset artist’s books & other publications with artists and musicians, including my own book “Indicia…a romance” an artist’s book with two playing card decks, and a monograph about the history of the design of playing cards and true love. Trained on a Colt Armory at Mills, but once I got my hands on a Vandercook, I never looked back. I prefer my own SP-15 (I’ve had two), but mostly print at the SFCB on the Vandercook IVs. I really think of myself as a typographer, first… all of my book design, printing, and exhibition designs stem from typographic visual information design thinking. I fell into typesetting in the mid-70s, then a recent English Lit grad from Mills College, and that’s formed the intellectual basis from which all else has grown… in fact, I remember the exact moment when I realized that I didn’t have to get a graduate degree in Lit, that typography could take me as far as I wanted, and it has, indeed. I have two mantras: “A bad day printing is better than a good day fishing” and (due to proliferation of contentless artist’s books) “Let’s Get the Words Back Into Books!”

Kathleen Burch

Profile picture of Kathleen Burch

@kathleenburch

Active 7 years, 6 months ago