Happy Accident Broadsides Workshop

Join letterpress artist Mitch Cohen and Museum of Printing Director Operations Mitch Ahern as they put on a workshop combining experimental letterpress monoprint techniques with printing customized broadsides. This is a unique printing workshop using everyday items to create unique backgrounds — including, but not limited to, bathmats, pool covers and other items. You have to do it to believe it. The session will conclude with a letterpress printed keepsake on the background you created. We can then take those backgrounds and use them to print broadsides on the Columbian iron hand press. Visitors can pull their own print, and can even customize a print with their own name. The Happy Accident Broadsides Workshop is free to the public, thanks to a grant from the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism. Mitch Cohen is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of letterpress printing and a long-time practitioner of the “black arts.” He is the co founder of the Printmaking and Book Arts Center in Rochester, New York, a division of Flower City Arts Center and has taught letterpress printing since 2005. He has a BS in Printing Education from Rochester Institute of Technology. Mitchel Ahern is the Director of Operations at the Museum of Printing, where he teaches workshops, manages printing equipment donations, and serves on the board. He also has his own shop Mitchelka Show Card Press in Lynn, Massachusetts.