For a person that doesn’t really care for country music (there I said it, please don’t judge me), Nashville seems like a pretty weird place. My first impression was a little like the first time I went to Camden High Street, except that rather than 15 year old kids shopping for New Rock boots and studded collars it’s filled with people in their 40’s buying cowboy hats and those funny little shoe lace tie things. Jim from the Hamilton Type Museum told me that there is live music being played out of every other shop front on the downtown strip, he wasn’t exaggerating (in fact I’d actually say it was an underestimate). As you wait to cross the street even the traffic lights play country music out of tiny street level speakers.
So the question is, what am I doing in Nashville? Well Nashville is home to Hatch Show Print, America’s best know print shop. I think I’m in Heaven.(Speaking of Heaven, in order to get to Nashville I took a 16hr over night trip via train and bus, 11hrs of which were spent sat next to a crazy man mumbling loudly about prophets and Judgement Day. That was definitely Hell.)
Hatch still functions as a fully working print shop, producing around 500-600 posters year, and when you find out that in general their minimum run of posters is 100 that’s a whole lot printing. I’ll be here for a week working alongside their printers and interns learning more about letterpress printing in a production environment.
And yes, they have cats, they are awesome. This one is called Huey, he has the build of a circus strong man
