Crown Point Press was founded in 1962 and has been publishing prints since 1965. Since then more than 100 artists have worked in their studio, including sculptors Tony Cragg, Leonardo Drew, Anish Kapoor, Gay Outlaw and Alison Schotz. The Crown Point archives are housed at the San Francisco Museums of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Art historian Susan Tallman, in her 1996 book Modern Printing, describes the Crown Point Press as “the most important American print shop in the revival of printmaking as a medium of serious art. Much of the credit for this goes to Karen McCready, Crown Point’s director of sales from 1982 to 1995. She opened and ran the Crown Point Press gallery in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, and her success there contributed to the addition of Asian woodblock prints to the press press activities.
In 1982, the 20th anniversary year of Crown Point Press, the press began a program in which two or three artists traveled annually to Kyoto, Japan, to work with printmaker Tadashi Toda. His family had passed on the traditional skills of printing watercolor prints on wood since the 17th century. This program led to a similar program in China, which began in 1986. Both programs, however, ended in 1989 when a massive earthquake in San Francisco unexpectedly caused Crown Point to move to its current location on Hawthorne Street. To learn more about woodblock programs in Japan and China, click here .
In addition to its Asian woodblock programs, Crown Point has always concentrated on etching. Its director, Valerie Wade, who joined Crown Point in 1988, ran the press after the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent move to the Hawthorne Street building.
Crown Point Press celebrated its 25th anniversary with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and archives of its work belong to the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition, sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery, was held in 1997 as Crown Point celebrated its 35th anniversary.
In 2012, Crown Point Press celebrated its 50th anniversary, and that same year, Kathen Brown published her memoir, Know You’re Lucky . The exhibition “Yes, No, Maybe: Artists Working at Crown Point Press” at the National Gallery featured 125 working samples and final prints by 25 artists who worked at Crown Point Press from 1972 to 2010. The catalog accompanying the exhibition includes an essay by curator Judith. Brody and Adam Greenhal.
We do prints because there is no finer printmaking process and one that could be more dynamic. The rich dark areas of the ink are deeply embedded in the paper, and the fine lines and delicate streaks lie on or near the surface. Our printing method is the only one in which the ink is not simply applied by film to a sheet of paper. Instead, it embosses the paper with an inked image.
Etching is the primary way that the artist marks the printing plates. Deep print is a method of printing. The artist first draws on the copper plate with a sharp tool and/or with materials such as soap, sugar, resin, or wax. The image is then etched onto the plate with acid. Finally, the printer manually injects ink into the plate and cleans the surface. The press press presses the paper into the plate to make a print. The visible edge of the plate shows that the image is pressed into the paper.
Etching is a slow process, a timeless medium. It hasn’t changed much since Rembrandt and Goya used it. But new artists use it in new ways, and we are constantly amazed at what they do with it, acquiring and giving insight into the world as it is now.