Print Solutions September 2006
History in Print
Jim Sherraden’s passion for an old
printing technique and his 126-year-old poster shop make Hatch
Show Print a cultural landmark.
BY DARIN PAINTER
Jim Sherraden has duct tape on his boots
and lyrics on his mind. It’s 1984, and as he walks down
Fourth Avenue North in Nashville, things seem lifeless. The
only businesses on the street are an adult theater, a bar, an
amplifier tube repair shop and a small building with a vintage
neon sign that reads “Hatch Show Print.”
Sherraden (rhymes with
“Aladdin”) is a recent graduate of Middle Tennessee
State University with a degree in English. He came to Nashville
armed with lyrics for Waylon Jennings and The Captain &
Tennille, and already has his name on more than 40 recorded
songs. One of his former sculpture professors knew about Hatch
Show Print and urged Sherraden to visit the shop. That’s
why he stands beneath the neon sign, wondering what’s
inside. One block away, the once-lively Ryman Auditorium,
former site of country music’s legendary Grand Ole Opry,
sits dormant.
Sherraden enters the shop and is taken
aback by its darkness. A lone light shines near the
shop’s manager, Paul Ritscher, who’s carving a
woodblock. It’s a fitting image: Hatch Show Print, one of
America’s oldest working letterpress printing shops,
began operating in 1879, the year Thomas Edison invented the
lightbulb.
The shop is dim, but surrounding the two
men are posters that illuminate the lure of more than a
century’s worth of entertainment and culture in the
South. Huge stores of wood and metal type, woodblocks and
posters promote minstrel shows, vaudeville acts, county fairs,
legendary country singers, rodeos, wrestling matches, motion
pictures and struggling rock bands.
The posters feature tall, subtly ornamented
letters distressed from a timeworn printing process of pressing
raised, inked surfaces made of wood, metal or linoleum onto
paper. Names appearing on some of the posters raise pulses
(Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen) and others raise
questions (Graves Whole Hog Sausage, Mighty Haag Circus, Alrico
Daredevils), but Sherraden suddenly feels a kinship with all of
them. Hatch’s shelves are filled with more than 10,000
blocks, thousands of photo plates and hundreds of drawers. Some
wooden typefaces have exotic names such as Egyptian and Gothic,
and the largest is a staggering 26 x 80 inches.
“Everything seemed frozen in
time,” he recalls. “I walked through this forest of
beautiful wood blocks, past these magnificent hand-operated
presses, and couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the
majesty of the place.”
Problem was, Hatch Show Print was
overwhelmed with debt. And Sherraden was so broke, he would
soon letterpress his own car license tag sticker in letters
resembling Nashville’s annual county-issued one. Still,
Ritscher hired him to document Hatch’s history, partly
because no one was certain the shop would last long. The
Macintosh computer had arrived, and graphic designers would
soon fall in love with digital publishing’s speed and
ease of use.
Sherraden then had to imagine ways Hatch
could turn a profit. In April 1984, he took over as manager. It
was a tough task: The shop employed essentially the same
process Johannes Gutenberg used when he invented movable type
in 1455 to mass-produce Bibles. Hatch needed a savior.
“When I was asked to run the shop, I said yes because I
needed a job, and Hatch needed help if it was going to
survive,” Sherraden says. “We didn’t know it
then, but deep down I realized we were truly blessed to meet
each other.”
Sherraden immediately set out to reprint
(or “restrike”) historic Hatch designs at
full-poster size and sell them, while also printing posters for
new customers. The plan worked, and Hatch began to break even.
Then 18 months into the job, Sherraden broke away, moving to
Europe to work as a lyricist for the Jonas Fjeld Band. The band
won two Spellmann awards (the Norwegian equivalent of the
Grammy) for best rock album of 1985 and 1986. In May 1986,
Sherraden returned to Nashville “triumphant but still
broke,” he recalls.
While Sherraden was away, Hatch was sold to
Opryland USA Inc., the amusement park where the Grand Ole Opry
had been located since 1974 and the cornerstone operation of
Gaylord Entertainment Company. When Opryland officials acquired
the shop, they recognized the historic value of its collection
but didn’t quite know what to do with it. In 1986,
Gaylord gave it to the Country Music Foundation (CMF), the
non-profit group that operates the Country Music Hall of Fame
& Museum in Nashville, and offered to lend it Hatch’s
woodblocks, photo plates and type for 10 years, during which
time the CMF could document the collection for historical
purposes. The Hall of Fame needed an archivist and chose
Sherraden. Six weeks later, he was Hatch’s manager again.
“I knew it was right to resurrect a tradition of
letterpress that others at Hatch had worked so hard to
begin,” he says. “The shop had too deep a history
to have these pieces end up in someone’s basement or in a
museum or in a river.”
Hatch’s Grand Ole Days
Charles R. and Herbert H. Hatch, sons of a
printer and preacher, grew up learning the craft of letterpress
printmaking and began the firm known as CR and HH Hatch in
1879. The first poster the company created was made on April 12
of that year—a 6 x 9-inch “dodger,” or
handbill, announcing the speaking appearance of Henry Ward
Beecher, a noted minister and author as well as brother to
Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Its
design was created by hand, the same way Hatch produces posters
today—design carved on a block and combined with movable
letters that were locked into a frame and positioned like a
mirror image, upside-down and backward. The frame was inked
with rollers, and paper was pressed across it to obtain a
right-side-up impression. (Hatch’s biggest and
longest-running press was an 18,500-lb. Babcock Optimus
cylinder model, used in the shop from 1904 to 1982.)
Charles’ son, Will T. Hatch, was a
master woodblock carver. He took over in 1921 and soon moved
the shop to the same building Sherraden would enter in 1984. A
handwritten log from the Hatch archives lists nearly 1,200
letterpress carvings commissioned during the ‘20s and
‘30s, and many were for barnstorming minstrel shows such
as Silas Green from New Orleans, Hatch’s largest client
during the period and the longest-running minstrel show in
America (1904-1957). One 30 x 41-inch poster advertising a
Silas Green show in 1944 (“Always Clean, Always
Good”) includes the number “11” at the
bottom-left corner. For repeat customers, the shop used numbers
to identify woodblocks rather than descriptions.
Throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s,
traveling shows hired “front men” to promote their
bands, circus carnivals and medicine shows several days in
advance of performances, and their efforts resulted in the
appearance of Hatch posters on billboards and barns all over
the South. In 1939, Hatch began to fulfill what was to become
its most noted role, supplying posters for performers of the
Grand Ole Opry, America’s longest-lived radio show. The
show was broadcast from Nashville’s War Memorial
Auditorium from 1939 to 1943, then moved to the Ryman
Auditorium a block away from Hatch’s building. In the
‘40s and ‘50s, the show’s cast included stars
such as Roy Acuff and Hank Williams, each of whom often showed
up at Hatch’s door to commission last-minute show posters
to take on the road.
Nashville had a way of transforming pain,
poverty, drink and boredom into bluegrass, rockabilly and
western swing, and Hatch was there to paper the town with all
of it. The shop also captured the glory of other musical
genres, making distinctive posters for jazz and blues artists
such as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and
bluegrass greats such as Bill Monroe.
When Will T. Hatch died in 1952, he left a
legacy of powerful woodblock images that helped define the look
of country music during the ‘40s and early ‘50s.
But the shop soon struggled, and ownership changed hands
several times. To make ends meet, Hatch began promoting newer
forms of entertainment such as all-star wrestling and rock and
roll. In 1955, a Nashville promoter brokered a $35,000 deal
that signed a small regional artist from Memphis to RCA
Records. The promoter was Colonel Tom Parker, and the artist
was Elvis Presley. Hatch ran 100 of the first posters printed
for Elvis after the Colonel took over exclusive management at a
total cost of $16. (Thirty-three years later, Guernsey’s
auction house sold three posters from the run, and one fetched
$17,000.) Hatch made its way into Life magazine in August 1956,
when a magazine photographer snapped a picture of a Florida
minister waving a Hatch poster of Elvis at his congregation,
railing against the evils of rock and roll.
Entertainers began playing more
one-nighters, and often needed posters shipped the same day
they were printed. Instead of continuing to rely on woodblocks,
the shop began using more metal photo plates to create halftone
photo reproductions. To create these plates, a black-and-white
photograph would be re-photographed as a negative, reversed,
then reshot with a dot screen onto a chemically treated piece
of copper or magnesium. The plate would then be submerged in a
series of acid baths until the image would appear, ready to
print once it was mounted onto a wood base. These photo plates
rarely wore out and could be reused inexhaustibly by
entertainers in rock and roll (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the
Rolling Stones, the Byrds), folk (Gordon Lightfoot, Peter, Paul
& Mary), Motown (the Supremes), soul (James Brown), jazz
(Sarah Vaughan) and reggae (Bob Marley).
Borrowing From the Past
to Create Today
Nine letters remain of the type used in
Hatch’s first poster in 1879, but as Brad Vetter climbs
down a ladder and opens a drawer of large typefaces on the
shop’s floor, he isn’t looking for them. Vetter,
who began working as a Hatch intern in August 2004 and now is
one of its four full-time employees, is designing a poster for
singer/songwriter John Prine. He’s looking for a large
“A” that has an old wood-grain texture to evoke a
meditative feel.
Vetter, who studied printmaking and graphic
design at Western Kentucky University, usually knows where to
find specific materials. When he was an intern, one of his
Friday tasks was putting away typefaces and blocks Hatch
employees had used during the week. Every typeface at the shop
is grouped by style, size and width, and each occupies a
different section of the shop. Each change in size occupies a
different drawer or shelf.
During his search for the “A,”
Vetter stumbled upon a small wooden block that looks like the
top of a saloon door. “I said, ‘Whoa, what’s
this one? It’s perfect!’” he recalls.
“Just by looking around the shop, you’re bound to
find something new.” He decided to use it with a
Western-style serif typeface and a deep purple ink to create a
poster that worked well for Prine, says Vetter, who also has
designed posters for Jack Daniels and the band Coldplay.
Vetter exemplifies a group that matters
greatly to Sherraden—young folks with different
backgrounds who choose to literally get their hands dirty and
learn the art of letterpress printing. The shop’s summer
interns have included photography, design and law students.
“This shop wouldn’t make it without them,”
Sherraden says. “They bring an infusion of creativity,
and are concerned about designing posters that best represent
our customers. The soul of the shop now is watching how they
work with historic type and plates and seeing their new
creations. Each of us preserves these relics not by storing
them under glass, but by using them daily. It’s
preservation through production.”
On his personal blog, former Hatch intern
Luke Wood recently wrote: “Expecting to arrive in
downtown Nashville and be making coffee or running errands for
elderly men in dusty lab coats covered in ink, I was
shocked—pleasantly surprised—to find the place
alive and kicking….The place is soaked in nostalgia.
Rather than merely yearning for the past, here I was actually
working in it.”
Because of its vast archives, Hatch’s
interns and employees borrow from the past when creating new
pieces. When Sherraden made a poster for a Springsteen
performance on the acoustic “Ghost of Tom Joad”
tour, he used an image of a car from a 1939 ad for Peco
Gasoline. Springsteen was so pleased by the fusion of past and
present that when he and the E Street Band released its Live in
New York City CD, he looked to Hatch to design the cover. This
time, Sherraden took stars from old Elvis Presley posters and
fonts from a printing company in Nashville that had gone out of
business.
Besides a rotary phone on his desk and a PC
on Hatch’s assistant manager’s desk, Sherraden says
today’s technology is not for the shop. “The
computer is the best thing that’s happened to us because
we’re the antithesis of digital design. We’re proud
to be a tonic for the information age,” he says.
Sherraden also opposes the idea of adding contemporary
typefaces, believing the Hatch family carefully chose which
ones to include. “The last thing I want to do is pollute
their vision of the shop,” he says.
But Sherraden does encourage interns and
employees to carve new typefaces and woodblocks, something
Hatch designer Agnes Barton-Sabo has tried. She recently
created posters for one of her favorite bands, Th’
Legendary Shack*Shakers. Barton-Sabo learned about Hatch from a
friend who was hitchhiking across the country, and began
working at the shop in 2004 upon graduation as a photography
student at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“Letterpress is the most human design process I can think
of, and it’s exciting to work with materials that existed
50 or 100 years ago,” she says. “There’s a
real sense of keeping this form alive. It’s a lot like
bringing out a Johnny Cash guitar and playing it. We’re
taking old blocks and type and giving them a new
life.”
Since 1992, the Country Music Hall of
Fame & Museum has owned Hatch outright. That year, the shop
moved to its current location, a 5,500-square-foot building at
316 Broadway in downtown Nashville that’s 60 feet away
from its old location beside the Ryman Auditorium. Hatch is an
amalgam of working letterpress print shop, tourist attraction,
museum and historical archive. More than 22,000 people visit
the shop a year, and they account for 30 percent of the
shop’s revenue by purchasing postcards, T-shirts, poster
overruns and other items. The majority of the shop’s
business derives from 600-plus poster jobs ordered by a diverse
mix of clients, including bands such as R.E.M., Squirrel Nut
Zippers and Yonder Mountain String Band; concession firms
representing artists such as blues legend B.B. King
(Hatch’s largest client) and Canadian rockers the
Tragically Hip; and corporations aiming for a nostalgic look.
“You can strip the romance and glamour out of the shop,
and it’s still an aggressive printing facility,”
Sherraden says. “It’s as busy as a kitchen at
lunchtime in a famous restaurant.”
“Shaking the Archive Like
a
Kaleidoscope”
One day in 1992, when Sherraden was making
restrikes from old hand-carved woodblocks, he made a
serendipitous discovery. Part of the letterpress printing
process involves running test sheets through the press to check
alignment, wording and overall look. To save paper, Sherraden
would use the same test sheets several times before discarding
them. In the process of doing this over and over, he began to
notice that the reused sheets produced a colorful jumble of
imagery that was often as beautiful as the actual posters he
was recreating.
Sherraden’s friend, sculptor Alan
LeQuire, told him, “Anyone can stand behind a press,
throw two woodblocks on top and make a poster. You need to take
it further and make it your own.” Influenced by the art
of Dutch printmaker Henry Werkman, Sherraden infused
individuality by running pieces through a large letterpress,
then overlaying them with colorful borders, touches and swaths
from an ink brayer.
Sherraden says the monoprints are a tribute
to printmaking and the work of Hatch’s former designers
and woodcarvers. He describes the process as “shaking the
archive like a kaleidoscope” and enjoys showing his
interpretation of the shop’s collection. He creates 150
to 175 richly layered works annually. On one of them, Bill
Monroe peers through a cloud of faded type, surrounded by
images from his career and other posters. In 1994, Sherraden
created 36 monoprints celebrating the singer’s career.
MCA Records liked his work so much, it recreated it using
offset lithography to promote The Music of Bill Monroe,
1936-1994, a CD boxed set compilation produced by the Country
Music Hall of Fame. “My role as printmaker is best served
by constantly creating new pieces based on my interpretation of
this magnificent archive,” Sherraden says.
Giving the archive dedicated space at Hatch
is his other main role now. The shop’s space at 316
Broadway includes an unoccupied second floor, and Sherraden
hopes it soon serves as a library and exhibition gallery.
“Anyone should be able to come here and research his
uncle who played in a carnival in Georgia for 35 years, or just
to look at beautiful photo plates. Icons from Led Zeppelin to
James Brown to Charlie Pride to Willie Mays still exist here on
copper or magnesium. “Will T. Hatch and his staff kept
meticulous files on jobs created for each customer after
1922,” Sherraden says. “It’s fascinating to
look up how much it cost to carve and print a specific
woodblock and what year blocks and type were made.”
“Jim’s a very passionate person
who hopes everyone has a chance to appreciate
letterpress,” says Brad Vetter. “He’ll take
anyone into the shop and show them our work, even if it’s
just a random person walking down the street.”
Sherraden still remembers the day he walked
down Fourth Avenue North and stepped inside Hatch for the first
time. The shop and the man have come a long way. Hatch still
produces posters the same way it did the year Edison invented
the lightbulb, but its future is brighter thanks to people like
Sherraden, who love the art form.
Darin Painter is a Cleveland-based
freelance writer. Email comments to editors
@printsolutionsmag.org.
Hatch Timeline
With 127 years under its belt,
there’s a lot to be said about where Hatch has been and
the ripples it has made along the way. Here’s a look back
at some notable moments:
1879
27-year-old Charles Hatch and his brother,
25-year-old Herbert, opened a printing shop in Nashville.
1916
Will T. Hatch and his staff kept meticulous
files on jobs created for each customer. “It’s
fascinating to look up how much it cost to carve and print a
specific woodblock and what year blocks and type were
made,” says Jim Sherraden, Hatch Show Print’s
manager.
A handwritten log from the Hatch archives lists
nearly 1,200 letterpress carvings commissioned through the
‘30s.
1939
A typo on a poster advertising the movie
“Persons in Hiding,” which is based on a book by
the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, reads, “Hoover
tells her amazing story…” Letterpress aficionados
appreciate the charming shortcomings of the antiquated printing
method: big clunky letters, smeared ink, clogged lines and
uneven ink coverage.
1939
Hatch began to fulfill what was to become
its most noted role: supplying posters for performers of the
Grand Ole Opry, America’s longest-lived radio show. The
show’s cast included stars such as Roy Acuff and Hank
Williams who often showed up at Hatch’s door to
commission last-minute posters to take on the road. The wood
block images of these posters helped define the look of country
music during the ‘40s and early ‘50s.
1948
Hatch’s neon sign was purchased with
money made from printing posters for country music legend Roy
Acuff’s unsuccessful campaign to become Tennessee’s
governor.
1952
Will T. Hatch, the last Hatch family member
to manage Hatch Show Print, died at age 56. The shop
increasingly relied on quickly composed hand-set type instead
of elaborately carved wood blocks.
1956
Hatch ran 100 of the first posters for
Elvis Presley and subsequently made its way into Life magazine
in August. A magazine photographer snapped a picture of a
Florida minister waving one of these posters at his
congregation, railing against the evils of rock and roll.
1992
The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum
bought Hatch outright. This same year, the shop moved to its
current location, a 5,500-square-foot building at 316 Broadway
in downtown Nashville that’s 60 feet away from its old
location beside the Ryman Auditorium.
2000
Hatch’s largest poster run was 58,000
for the Red Hot Chili Peppers; its smallest (just one poster)
was three years later for James Brown’s 70th birthday
celebration.
