Printing from the centre of your life — Andrew Steeves at the Press of the Varying Hare - letterpress - typography

A little video for my press: www.pressvhare.com/blog-2/a-pro...

Finished maple syrup (at about 226°F) coming off the evaporator pan into a cone filter, ready to bottle. It smells every bit as good as you’re imagining.

One last evening maple sap boil as spring takes off. This sugaring season was erratic, and mid way through I worried it would be a low yield, but it turned out to be my best syrup year ever with this setup due to heavy late-season runs. The weather does what the weather does.

Learning a new press. Making progress sometimes looks like making a mess. (Making a mess is some people’s whole aesthetic.) Today, bad printing; soon, good printing.

Also, still winter.

Maybe this is too inside baseball for a post, but when I cast the word ‘Linotype’ on my Ludlow Typograph caster (rival, though on many ways complimentary, typecasting systems), the line of type stuck in the mould, would not eject and jammed the machine. Did I anger the typecasting gods?!

Just finished a new broadside for Halifax poet Matt Robinson. Set with metal type from Margaret Atwood’s Salamander Press and Oberon Press, it features a Zamboni made of wood type. Copies available for purchase from the poet. DM @mattrobinsonpoet on IG.

Sky from the printshop window.

January Woodshed

New year. New shop. New business name. Same old relentless drive to create and connect.

I moved three presses to the new shop yesterday; things are starting to take shape. I bought this Vandecook 219 cylinder press from Leo Arkelian in 1999, moving it out of his trade shop (Halcraft Printing) on Robie Street in Halifax. Most of my best letterpress work has been done on this press.

I’m slowly shifting materials up to the new shop at Black River Lake. My library is mostly moved now, and my metal type and matrices. The big stuff (presses, casting gear) will follow soon. May beat winter yet.

It's official! The Press of the Varying Hare will be a Heidelberg shop. I just landed a 1950s German Heidelberg T 10x15 automatic platen, a 'windmill’. I won't have this press in fighting form until later in 2026, but it's here in my barn waiting for the new printshop to be ready.

I had a sign made to mount on my rural mailbox post. It's small, but not all wayfinding sings at the top of its voice. This sign’s job is simply to reassure those who already know what they are looking for that they are indeed in the right place (Yes, this long lane leads to your destination').

Meanwhile, up on the printshop roof.

I’m still doing a little printing in the old shop, finishing the last trade books before manufacturing shuts down this fall and the publishing company I cofounded in 1997 gets sold. This press is going to a new home, but most of the rest of the gear in this video will come with me to the new shop.

I’ve been building a home for my new printing and publishing venture, Press of the Varying Hare. Steel is nearly complete on three walls (the fourth will wood) and I will soon be on to the roof. Electrical work starts next week. Hope to be moving presses and type up by autumn. Stay tuned!