Enduring Impressions: Private Presses & Their Legacies

Celebrate printing history with the American Printing History Association (APHA) in San Francisco on October 23-25! Join us at our 50th annual conference for an engaging weekend filled with talks, tours, and in-person and virtual paper and panel presentations. Conference lectures and presentations will explore diverse private press legacies, from unsung San Francisco and California printers, the modern Chappel Movement and German typography, to specific small presses like the Allen Press of Lewis and Dorothy Allen, Mills College’s Eucalyptus Press, the Taller Martín Pescador in Mexico City, and Pazifische Presse’s anti-Holocaust work in Los Angeles. Other panelists and paper presenters will discuss descriptive bibliographies and fine press printing, women private press printers, leisure crafts and social theory, privately printed Black genealogies, Jack Stauffacher’s letterpress revival, anarchist printshop praxis, and European privately printed Bibles.

APHA’s primary venue for in-person panel and paper presentations will be the Special Collections & Archives department at the J. Paul Leonard Library of San Francisco State University.

Conference organizers will also draw from San Francisco’s rich cultural landscape, with tours, demonstrations and workshops to be scheduled at Arion Press, The Book Club of California, San Francisco Public Library’s Book Arts & Special Collections Department, San Francisco Center for the Book, Letterform Archive and other local venues. A complete schedule of events coming soon!

Registration is now open and available on APHA’s secure payment page. Registration fees, which have been kept low to make the conference accessible to a wider audience, are set as follows: $65 for current APHA members and $85 for non-members; $35 for current student members and $45 for student non-members.

To learn more and to complete your registration, please visit https://printinghistory.org/2025-conference/.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

J. Paul Leonard Library, 1630 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, United States