It's a new school year at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, and there is a new space on campus, the Center for Book Arts. Some of the fundamental pieces inside this new space are not new.
"All of this equipment is old."
Jay Fox, director of the Center for Book Arts and an assistant professor at UAFS, is standing in between four printing presses.
"A lot of this equipment has kind of fallen out of industry use. So some of the presses that are here came from local print shops like Weldon, Williams & Lick. Some of them have come like, we just got a press recently out of a print shop in Oklahoma City."
This center doesn't just boast printing presses, but letterpress equipment too. The center is part of the 15,000-square-foot Windgate Art and Design studio building expansion. There's a wood shop, ceramics studio and art and design. Department chair Katie Waugh points out a collection study room.
"So this is actually a way for us to differently share with community our art collection. So we are an art collection. We are a collecting institution, so we have an art collection that is on exhibition, but we do also have works that are not out for display. And so this will give us a chance to bring things out to people, to view in closer contact and be able to study as objects of study."
Many of the disciplines that will be practiced by students, faculty and community in this new expansion are centuries old. Jay Fox says the work in the rooms making up the Center for Book Arts will be connected to some of the earliest practices of printing in this space.
"We have the tools and materials to make books, from making our own paper, producing our own content through letterpress printing and other printing techniques. And then hand binding, like cutting, sewing, stitching and gluing up books ourselves."
While printing presses and letterpresses aren't exactly in high demand in 2026, the classes at UAFS using these pieces are. Fox says his fall classes, Introduction to Book Arts and Fine Printing and Bookbinding, both have a wait list. Department chair Katie Waugh says that high interest and the expansion of book arts on campus in general can be traced directly back to former faculty member Katie Harper.
"So we're really realizing a vision and a dream that transcends even my time here and Jay's time here. And so it's been years of collaboration and support, and we're really grateful for the support of the Windgate Foundation to realize this as well. And then all of the collaboration that took to produce this construction project, this building, this studio. And then of course our students to have been really responsive to this. And so we can't build something like this without having some student interest and involvement and excitement as well."
And none of these classes would be possible without the equipment. Jay Fox says the oldest press here dates to about 1912. And as he puts it, it's lived a life.
"So we have these presses, we have four Vandercook. One came from Fine Arts Engraving in Oklahoma City. One came from Weldon, Williams & Lick. I'm not sure the provenance of this one. I believe that this one came out of Indiana. And it had been refurbished when we got it. And this is, there's not many of these around. This is a Universal III. And it just has a good sound. It runs nice. The size and scale of this machine is really helpful. So we can print up to 18 inches wide up to 25 inches long, I believe."
Somebody particularly romantic about these machines might imagine just what they've been used for all these decades: concert posters, campaign signs, brochures and in the case of Fort Smith-based Weldon, Williams & Lick, World Series tickets or passes to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey events all over the world. One of the big letterpress desks contains wooden letters that might have been used to print circus posters. Holding a wooden apostrophe and a wooden M, Fox explains.
"These large figures were often called circus type, because that was like a big client of letterpress shops, was always like circus posters. And it is made for headlines and made to like, grab people's attention. It's made to be like legible and big and bold and read from afar."
There are much smaller letters available as well, as small as 10-point or 6-point lettering, requiring some people to squint to make sure the correct letter is in hand. It's that sort of needed attention that led to the phrase mind your p's and q's, since those lowercase letters can be easily confused. In fact, the terms lower and uppercase letters refer back to the letterpress heyday as well. Typesetters often needed to work fast to meet deadlines, and so specific letters were always placed in specific compartments, with capital letters in the top or upper cases. Or consider the expression to coin a phrase.
"Have you ever had to make a deadline? You're like setting a story to physically fit within the confines of a press. All of these like coins to turn a coin of a coin, a phrase, right? A quoin is the tool that you use to lock up the type."
But beyond these language links, why is interest growing in book arts in this digital age?
"I think it's interesting that students are searching this out at this point in the world. And I think that there's been, like this has been a field that's been gaining momentum and interest for a long time. But especially since COVID when students are forced to like sit at a computer all day and like, learn and ingest media that way. It means something to handle material and make something physical in the space."
"I agree, absolutely. And I think that we always come back to wanting to make things as people. I think that when we have these shifts into new technologies and certainly the digital, we can kind of see historically that people tend to always come back to the hand in some way."
Department chair Katie Waugh adds that some students are approaching book arts from studio work, others from graphic art, each finding their own way into the discipline. And the Center for Book Arts is central to a nine-hour Certificate of Proficiency in Book Arts, available at UAFS.
"Many students in the past have actually already taken the courses required for the certificate, so it's really a way of kind of honoring that and making sure that they have something to kind of reflect that experience, but it also helps to guide students if they're interested in this process, to give them that kind of framework to understand how to achieve that. And it is all kind of easily stacked within our existing art studio, art majors and graphic design majors. So students can achieve this while they're on their way to their major requirements."
And you can see all of this equipment, the presses up close, as well as the other studios in art, in the Windgate Art and Design building on the UAFS campus during an open house tomorrow afternoon from 4 until 6. The center will also serve as a hub for showcasing practitioners in book arts. This fall, work by Sarah Bryant and Katie Baldwin, "Small Patches of Land," will be on exhibit beginning in mid-September, with a reception featuring the artists on Oct. 1. And Jay Fox says, don't be surprised if you become seduced by book arts yourself.
"There are a few like enticing, magical moments that happen in letterpress. Like when you ink up a press, you get to see this like spread of ink across these rollers. And you introduce that smell and the sound of those presses running. The first time that you proof type or the first time that you proof an image that you've like drawn or carved. There's like a really, it's a magical hook, right? Like it gets in you and you start to like chase that feeling."
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