Springtide Press ~ Washington
(Jessica Spring)

Jessica Spring: " Springtide Press designs, prints and binds unique artist books, broadsides and ephemera incorporating handmade paper and letterpress printing. Small finely-crafted editions consider historical topics and popular culture from a unique perspective."

SFCB Shelter in Studio (February, 2021) : Jessica Spring/Springtide Press: https://vimeo.com/511671460

Broadsides by Jessica Spring
Elliott Press book (Jessica Spring, instructor)
Fun and Quirky books

One Liners
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, WA: Springtide Press, 2023. Edition of 150 with 5 deluxe.

6 x 9.375 inches, 74 pages. Letterpress printed with handset type by Jessica Spring. Mohawk Superfine paper. Tue-mouche binding by Gabby Cooksey with Hook Pottery Paper case covers. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Springtide Press: "ONE LINERS features single line specimens from 238 metal typefaces in the collection at Springtide Press. Set daily from January 1, 2021 to April 6, 2022, the intent was to capture each day, from the most mundane and personal, to events unfolding in the world. There was no lack of content: on day six our nation’s Capitol was attacked, and the insanity continued with a global pandemic, political protests, environmental catastrophes, and the loss of a dear friend. Each typeface in the shop, in every size, was set. Anything too large, overlooked, or newly purchased was used to set monthly chapter opening pages and surrounded by borders from the collection. Embellishers, festoons, and vintage cuts are sprinkled throughout, to function both as decoration and to even out page lengths. An extra chapter featuring initials and monograms is included, highlighted with several two-color specimens.

“’One Liners’ is both journal and typographic specimen, revealing 461 days in the life of a printer, shared through her love of letters and wordplay."
$461

Wayfinding
ByJessica Spring and Kerri Cushman
Tacoma, WA: Springtide Press, 2023. Edition of 10.

21 x 6.25"; 8 pages including front and back. Handmade paper. Materials: pigments, wood type. Printed using a Vandercook 325 G. Four fold enclosure. Signed and numbered by the artists.

Springtide Press: "Papermaker Kerri Cushman & printer Jessica Spring met in grad school in 2001. They met papermaker and printer Ray Tomasso 15 years later. Their paths continued to crisscross through ink and paper, both artists inspired by Ray's infectious energy. Though he passed away in 2020, Ray's spirit dwells at InterOcean Studio thanks to founder Diane Tomasso (Ray's wife) as well as Rhiannon Alpers (our friend & grad school colleague). The garden's walls include a huge collection of vintage signage that - along with life's fortuitous intersections - inspired this project. We begin our book with ‘Sei qui!’ (‘You are here!’ in Italian.) As the reader follows through handmade paper pages filled with brightly colored pulp imaging and letterpress prints, the centerfold offers a reminder:

Fate, serendipity,
kismet: a moment
easily ignored as
mere coincidence
or embraced as a
signal to move.

Stay alert for waking dreams.

“WAYFINDING was produced during a residency at InterOcean Studios in Englewood, Colorado with generous assistance from Rhiannon & Diane. Our handmade paper was enhanced with Ray's collections: pure pigments, rare wood type and his Vandercook 325G. The wrapper was made at Longwood University and completed at Springtide Press in 2023. Ray made the sheet this colophon is printed upon, found tucked away, for our paths to cross again."
$630

Portmandemic
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, WA: Springtide Press, 2022. Edition of 10.

9 x 15 x 2". Letterpress printed by Jessica Spring. Ready-to-unpack portmanteau bound by Gabby Cooksey covered with Asahi bookcloth and leather straps. Printed by Jessica Spring during two sessions at In Cahoots Residency in Petaluma, and completed at Springtide Press in Tacoma. Handset type from both locations, ornaments cast by Pat Reagh, and photopolymer plates were letterpress printed on gasen and kitikata papers. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Jessica Spring: "Once opened and carefully unpacked, ‘Portmandemic’ includes two 13 x 50 inch letterpress prints made with huge wood type in 2021. One side of each print is layered with portmanteaus—a term coined by Lewis Carroll which combines porter (to carry) and manteau (mantle)—to describe two words combined for a new meaning. Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire Cat, which begins: “Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” is revealed when the prints lay folded, but disappears once unpacked. When the print trays are lifted, an essay by the artist about her pandemic travels and a glossary of portmanteaus used in the book can be read.

“’Portmandemic was Text is included from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll, with portmanteaus inspired by pandemic travels and travails.”
$2,250 (Last 3 copies)

Tensile: A Sublime Love Story
Including "Love's Philosophy" a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1819
Bisphenol Data compiled by Professor Alyce DeMarais 2017-2021
Tacoma, WA: Springtide Press, 2021. Edition of 35.

6 x 8 inches, expands to 60 inches. Letterpress printed from single-use plastics and handset type by Jessica Spring. Paper Rite-in-the Rain and Pike. Binding leporello structure with pop-up text panels. Plastic covers. Bound by Jessica Spring & Gabby Cooksey. Signed and numbered by Jessica Spring.

Jessica Spring: "’A Sublime Love Story’ weaves together a 19th century poem of seduction by Percy Bysshe Shelley, with current research on bisphenol contamination in our environment, food, water and bodies. Used to manufacture plastics and resins for food and drink packaging, bisphenol A (BPA) impacts the endocrine system, impairing development and reproductive health of animals and humans. BPA analogues, including BPE and BPS, are similar reproductive toxicants with transgenerational effects. 19th century writers didn’t know synthetic plastic would emerge in 1907 to change the world. Mary Shelley’s 'Frankenstein', published in 1818, foreshadows the cost and complexity of scientific progress and defying the natural order. In the midst of industrialization, Romantic era poets bore the responsibility of reinvigorating a spiritual connection to nature by portraying the Sublime. Both poet and scientist note the world is full of interconnectedness. Percy Shelley celebrates the mingling of rivers and oceans while scientists conclude that exposure to bisphenol contamination is ubiquitous. 'Tensile' explores the irony of our sublime love affair with plastic, a monster of our own creation."

Alyce DeMarais (University of Puget Sound): “Alyce DeMarais is Professor Emerita of Biology at the University of Puget Sound where she taught and conducted research. She and her students studied the effects of environmental chemicals on ovary function.”

Where Science Meets Art by Amy Downey: “One of the artists was Jessica Spring, a printer who’s lived in Tacoma for nearly 20 years, and whose letterpress shop, Springtide Press, is just down the street from campus. She paired up with Puget Sound Professor Emerita Alyce DeMarais, a developmental biologist who has long been interested in environmental issues. DeMarais has worked with Puget Sound students to understand how bisphenol chemicals from polycarbonate plastics can affect egg development in the ovaries of zebrafish. They concluded that these plastics, found in food and drink packaging, could also affect fertility in other vertebrate organisms, including humans. ‘Plastic has enhanced life in so many ways, but it’s caused a lot of harm, as well,’ says DeMarais.

“For their artist book, titled ‘Tensile: A Sublime Love Story,’ Spring touched on society’s obsession with plastic by weaving the zebrafish research with romantic text from a 19th-century poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. (‘Tensile,’ which means strong and flexible, is a nod to the longevity of plastic.) The artist also used single-use plastics to print the patterns onto the pages: She placed items like old bubble wrap, bendy straws, contact lens cases, bread bag clasps, and produce netting (think: avocado bags) into her press—even those skinny rings that we discard when opening milk containers. ‘Nothing printed quite as expected, and that made me like it even more,’ says Spring. ‘These were materials that I hadn’t really thought about, but I found them really compelling.’ She chose fluorescent ink for a provocative effect, while a ribbon of red paper running through the middle of the book prominently displayed the research findings of scientists, including DeMarais and her group.

“Plastics pollution is a global problem, and DeMarais says that’s why Spring’s decision to use discarded plastics to design the book was so powerful: ‘That’s just a tiny piece of what’s out there in the environment.’ The timing of the book also was interesting, notes Spring, because the use of plastics was at an all-time high during the pandemic, from restaurant takeout packaging to the plexiglass installed in stores and the workplace. ‘What struck me is that this plastic that we use so much to keep us sterile is literally making us sterile,’ says Spring. ‘The irony is just so painful’.”
$650

Printer's Blocks
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2012. Edition of 40.

11.5 x 2 x 9" aluminum box holding 28 1.5" cubes . Letterpress printed on Magnani Revere. Title etched on box cover.

Jessica Spring: "Printer's Blocks is an abecedarium composed of vintage wood type and printer's blocks letterpress printed on Magnani Revere and formed into cubes. Letters are arranged in a box as they would be in a case of type (with J and U following Z since those letters were not used by early English printers). Two sides of each block include a variety of handset patterns created from American Type Founder's Dainty Border No. 1 that – like the border – can be arranged to delight. Two bonus blocks are included with catchwords 'and' and 'the' plus ampersand and exclamation marks. "
$500

The Girl in the Moon
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2010. Edition of 72.

5.25 x 8.25"; 12 page double-sided accordion structure. Illustrations printed with photo-polymer plates and handset Artcraft. Letterpress printed on duplexed Hahnemühle Ingres. Bound in paper covered boards of indigo Momigami. Packaged in a silver bubble-wrapped envelope with Velcro closure. Illustrated by Susan Estelle Kwas. Signed by illustrator and printer.

Jessica Spring: "This book cycles the reader through one full moon night to view all manner of mischief. Using an innovative structure designed by Hedi Kyle, the three-color illustrations float off the page and the book can be displayed as an accordion or in a star shape. ... Through the use of metallic and glow-in-the-dark inks, the book delights in both sun and moonlight."

The book comes with a small black light to charge the glow-in-the-dark inks.
$300

Sheets
By Dolores Connelly
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2010. Edition of 30.

6 x 4.5 x 2.5"; four houses. Text handset and letterpress printed on handmade abaca paper. Folded and formed into house shapes. Housed in boxes made with Paper Studio's recycled cardboard box paper.

Colophon: "Sheets is a cycle of haiku by Dolores Connelly, each poem capturing a moment within a season. These haiku are excerpted with permission of the author from A Twisted Balance, One-Line Haiku and a Few Senryu, an unpublished collection of one hundred haiku dedicated to people forced from their homelands or houses."

Jessica Spring: "The ongoing cycle of homelessness throughout a year is reflected in the patterns and cycling colors printed on the interior of each paper house, muted but shining through translucent fiber."

    no night bus
  the only sheets around
hard cold rain

            ten below tonight
                Thai Cafe denies street guy
                      their crapper
                 Buddha decor

$224

Horse Power
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2009. Edition of 51.

Springtide Press: "Horse Power traces the history of this majestic animal through domestication and popular culture and is letterpress printed with photopolymer plates, vintage horse blocks, and wood type. Words and phrases in the English language are explored as well, revealing their horsey origins."

Jessica Spring: " There is something utterly compelling about a horse, a creature whose history is so intertwined with the human. Our ancestors relied on this beast of burden for transportation, warfare, and sustenance. Sacrificed in the Rig Veda, glorified in the Koran, and captured in cave paintings, horses have left an indelible hoof print on our collective consciousness.

"Despite our rich history together, horses have become primarily a source of entertainment. Molded in plastic to collect, bred and raised for racing careers, or relegated to pulling carriages in the midst of city traffic, their power was supplanted by that of the engine.

"Look back on our struggle for freedom, trace our present day strength to its source, and you'll find that man's pathway to glory is strewn with the bones of a horse. -Author unknown"

Horse Power was available in three versions:

Thoroughbred Edition: (Sold)
One-of-a-Kind. 20-inch Model Horse split in two, which acted as a binding to an accordion book printed on handmade horsehair paper. This one-of-a-kind has been sold.

Draft Edition:
Edition of 15. 5.5 x 6.125 x 1.25"; 11 unnumbered pages. Accordion. Letterpress printed on handmade horsehair paper using photopolymer plates, vintage horse blocks, and wood type. Enclosed in clamshell box with a horseshoe attached to lid. One-of-a-kind vintage photograph tip-in on interior lid.
(SOLD)

Pony Edition:
Edition of 35. 5.5 x 6.125 x 1.25"; 11 unnumbered pages. Accordion. Letterpress printed on Stonehenge using photopolymer plates, vintage horse blocks, and wood type. Slipped into a Fabriano Roma brown wrapper with leather tie.
$90

Lewises & Clarks
By Jessica Spring
2004. Edition of 40.

13.75 x 4.75" gatefold construction with 16 pages each side. The covers are bound in cutch-dyed chamois, and the text is letterpress printed with photopolymer plates on coffee-dyed Fabriano Mediovalis.

Jessica Spring, a new arrival in the Northwest during the bicentennial celebration of Lewis and Clark's exploration, offered this gathering of Lewises & Clarks as a (perhaps) tongue-in-cheek counter-punch to the onslaught of Lewis & Clark material that was appearing.

Spring: "Lewises and Clarks profiles extraordinary pioneers that also deserve recognition in the midst of the anniversary year of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Many of those featured are women and African Americans."
$300

A Proverbial Book
By Jessica Spring
2002. Edition of 40.

The text is letterpress printed with photopolymer plates on Fabriano Mediovalis. Based on a medieval structure, the book is sewn on cords and covered in Brazil wood-dyed chamois. Each cover features a vintage cigarette card from a series of proverbs.

A selection of proverbs are amusingly paired with hand-colored illustrations from a 1930s vocabulary primer.
$150

Click image to enlarge

An Inflammatory Guide:
Banned & Challenged Books You Should Read
2024 Edition
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2024. Unstated edition.

3 x 3.75 inches; 22 pages. Letterpress printed with foil stamped covers. Matchbook construction with double sided accordion extending out.

Jessica Spring: "The first edition of ‘An Inflammatory Guide: Banned & Challenged Books You Should Read’ was printed in 2005, with an update in 2012. This 2024 edition reveals a dramatic increase in challenged and banned books—especially and alarmingly in public libraries.

“A collaboration with sweet pea, the owner of King's Bookstore, this little accordion book expands from within a matchbook-inspired cover that reads "open mind before striking." Banned and challenged books—many familiar and surprising—are organized under eight categories, including LGBTQIA+ and Racism/DEI, with quotes from authors on censorship. A portion of all sales are donated to Freedom to Read Foundation, a non-profit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association."

Introduction: “Challenges are formal attempts to remove a book from a library or school curriculum. A successful attempt results in a banned book”
$50

Friendly Borders
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2017. Unstated.

4.25 x 6"; 18 cards. Letterpress printed. Laid in envelope card case with slip-and-slot closure made by Gabby Cooksey.

Jessica Spring: "Friendly Borders (AKA Republican Flashcards) features 18 brightly colored handset letterpress borders surrounding embracing words like mercy, love, respect, kindness."
$50

Anchored
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2017. Edition of 40.

Size: 2.25 x 2.25 x .25", opens to 3 x 7". (Miniature when closed.) Letterpress printed with handset metal type and ornaments in one large circular form on vintage maritime maps and Usuzumi paper. Cut into pages before binding. Twine closure through metal grommets. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Jessica Spring: "The playful structure of 'Anchoring,' an origami petal fold, reveals variations on the 'row, row, row, your boat' nursery rhyme. It was inspired by visits to see my father as he was ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. Despite losing most of his memories, the very earliest sometimes remained —-like the refrain of familiar songs. Challenging pain or anxiety could be diverted by a rousing round of 'row, row.' Dad always joined in with gusto, finding profound relief in knowing the words and being-as he always was-an essential part of the fun. The last round ends the song: 'just come home to me'."
$50

Collectors' Tales
Curator and Chief Collector - Jessica Spring
Art historian - Annie Morse
Illustrator - Susan Estelle Kwas
2001. Edition of 15.

Cards are handmade, duplexed sheets of cotton and abaca. Printed letterpress on a Vandercook #4, using photopolymer plates and the photographs printed as duotones. Includes an essay written by Annie Morse on the nature of collecting. Illustrations by Susan Estelle Kwas.

"Collectors' Tales" examines the obsession to collect, identify, and display objects of desire. Each box of the edition is handmade and features a deck of cards profiling the collectors. The box contains an object provided by one of the fifteen collectors. Each box thus becomes unique since each one focuses on a different collector and collection.
(SOLD)

Do You Feel Beautiful?
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2009. Edition of 10.

11.5 x 13.25"; 5 leaves. Letterpress printed on pages of the November 2006 Braille edition of Seventeen. Handset in a Cheltenham typeface, "rarely associated with beauty." Laid in plexiglas boards with white cloth spine, ribbon tie. In handmade red stitched white slipcover.

Aphorisms on beauty (from Ancient Greece via novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Stephen Sondheim, Greek/Roman mythology, and Confucius) arrayed on leaves from a Braille edition of Seventeen. The word play and graphic wit here are very much palpable.

Jessica Spring: "My youngest sister loves trolling junk shops as much as I do. She found the Braille edition of Seventeen magazine and knew I'd want it for something. There were two big signatures of loose folios, unbound, and I didn't do anything with it for years. I definitely read (but mostly looked at pictures) in Seventeen in the 70s –all the fashion Dos and Don'ts, quizzes for attracting boys, earnest replies in the advice columns. It seems very ironic to me that such a visual magazine could be completely converted to words, and stranger still, words that you feel. So the text came from cultural references to beauty all the way back to Confucius. And of course it had to be printed in pink (a color I really dislike). I just had a show with a set framed in hot pink and they provoke a lot of curiosity – people really want to touch the pages and know what they say. So far I haven't had anyone able to read Braille, so it's a mystery."
(SOLD)

Four Elements
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2005. Edition of 100.

Pinwheel kit: 8.5 x 8.5" instruction sheet; 7.6 x 7.6" pinwheel sheet; assembling kit including display stand. Letterpress printed with handset type in six colors.

Jessica Spring: "A pinwheel spins text that explores the four elements and the ongoing battle between love and strife. The front features a quote from Greek philosopher Empedocles: Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: Enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus and Nestis, moistening mortal springs… with tears."

"Pinned to a pencil stamped Be in readiness for favorable winds, Four Elements is ... in six colors. Packaged as a step-by-step kit, the pinwheel travels safely and inspires great pinwheel-making memories during assembly."
(SOLD)

An Inflammatory Guide:
Banned & Challenged
Books You Should Read
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2012.
Unnumbered edition of 200.

3.75 x 3.125" closed, extends to 33"; 22 pages. Double-sided accordion structure. Letterpress printed. Bound in fluorescent matchbook cover with foil-stamped warning: "Open Mind Before Striking."

Jessica Spring: "Published for Banned Books Week, this letterpress-printed accordion is bound in a fluorescent matchbook cover foil-stamped 'Open Mind Before Striking.' It features books banned and challenged under categories like racism, nudity, or homosexual content with quotes about censorship and intellectual freedom. A collaboration with Sweet Pea Flaherty of King's Bookstore, a portion of proceeds benefit the Freedom to Read Foundation."
(SOLD/Out of Print)

Memory Lame
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2018. Edition of 25.

10 x 13 inches, includes five chapters, enclosed in Saint-Armand wrapper. Built structure is 3 feet wide, 13 inches tall. Letterpress printed with handset wood and metal type, ornaments, and photo-polymer plates by Jessica Spring. Paper: Saint-Armand, Magnani and handmade abaca made in residency at the Morgan Conservatory. Bound by Gabby Cooksey.

Jessica Spring: "Memory Lame focuses on retention and loss of memory. The book structure must be built by the reader with content emanating from a central, pentagonal memory palace-the most common mnemonic place system-aided by cues of geometric shapes and large numerals. Surrounding the palace are excerpts from Rhetorica ad Herennium, the oldest known book on rhetoric and memory. Billy Collins' poem 'Forgetfulness' is repeated in each chapter, the text moving from black to gray as the reader circles the book. Common mnemonic devices tease the memory, printed on sheets of handmade Saint-Armand. Tucked in each chapter are illustrations of plants that improve cognitive function, printed on transparent abaca. Text set in geometric shapes share the author's grueling experience of cognitive and memory testing."
(SOLD/Out of Print)

Rags to Riches
A Capitalist Flexagon
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2012. Edition of 99.

Black folder, 6 x 6", 2 pages, holds a flexagon 4.25". Letterpress printed in gold, copper, silver and black with photopolymer plates on paper handmade by Helen Hiebert from recycled linen rags and shredded currency. Laid in pocket of letterpress printed black folder.

Jessica Spring: "Rags to Riches: A Capitalist Flexagon is a tri-hexagon, a structure invented in 1939 by Arthur Stone. A flexagon appears to have just two sides, but when flexed by the reader, a third side is revealed. Manipulating this hexagon reveals a 19th century English proverb (begin at the golden pointer) and provides an opportunity to consider the flow of cash.

"The panels read in a continuous cycle: Rags make paper. Paper makes money. / Money makes banks. Banks make loans. / Loans make beggars. Beggars make rags."
(SOLD)

Titillating Thaumatrope
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press.

4" diameter disc packaged in a plain brown wrapper with instructions. Letterpress printed with handset metal type and vintage cuts.

Jessica Spring: "Invented in the 1820s, the thaumatrope or 'wonder turner' works on the principle of persistence of vision. Hold both strings to twirl the disc. As the disc spins, a series of quick flashes is perceived as one continuous image. Faster than the human eye, thaumatropes are considered antecedents of motion pictures, particularly animation."
(SOLD)

xenagogy x
By Jessica Spring
Tacoma, Washington: Springtide Press, 2019. Edition of 45.

10 x 7.25" closed, expands to 24". Letterpress printed with handset wood and metal and Ludlow-cast type. Printed on French Speckletone paper. Bound in varnished railroad board covers. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Jessica Spring: "X has never been common in the English language, and just .02 percent of the dictionary begins with this rare letter. For letterpress printers using wood type, the X is often missing from a font, or the poor sort has had its reverse side surrendered for carving a sorely needed A or E instead.

"During a residency at Shooting Star Press in Little Rock, Arkansas, I had the opportunity to explore the huge wood type collection, full of rare and exotic specimens. Inspired by the extraordinary xenodochy (hospitality) of my hosts in contrast to our country’s disturbing xenophobia (fear of foreigners), I set out to create Xenagogy X, a guidebook. Words led by the letter X are surrounded by their definitions and framed by X specimens, all bound in an X-cordion. An independent variable, an unknown value, the letter X serves to expand and excite."
(SOLD/Out of Print)