By Michael Cobb
Photographs by Stephanie Zollshan

“I love working with these big old machines,” said Jane Buck of the Chandler & Price platen presses—one from 1890, the other from 1920—in her Hillsdale, New York, print shop. Her antique equipment allows her to create designs that appeal to people who appreciate the beauty of handmade things and are looking for something one-of-a-kind. “There’s a magic to it. It enables me to provide a completely bespoke experience,” she said.

Originally from Nottinghamshire, England, Buck always loved drawing from nature. She studied art and fashion at university and taught herself screen printing. After meeting Simon, her American-born, New Zealand-raised man, they moved to New York City in 1999 and married shortly after.

In 2005, Buck started Foxy & Winston, a line of stationery named for her parents. She owned a store by the same name in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where she was printing greeting cards using vivid gouache with silkscreen. Receiving more requests for custom work, Buck knew she “needed to learn letterpress to print the type of projects coming my way,” she said. She took a class, then took a leap and moved to Hillsdale with Simon and their two dogs in 2018. “It’s in the middle of nowhere but in the center of everything, close to Hudson and Great Barrington. We love taking our beagles to Roeliff Jansen Park,” she said.

Once she found a space in town—which now goes by the name Hudson Valley Letterpress—she acquired the antique presses. Buck begins most of her designs by sketching with a pencil. “Clients often want me to draw the wedding venue, so I focus on architectural features, coming up with a simplified version to make it personal to them.” Birth announcements are some of Buck’s favorite work because they often include animals, insects, and botanicals, which she loves to draw.

She also creates personal and business stationery, but her main bread and butter is wedding suites. Once the client is happy with the design, Buck sends it off to be made into a polymer plate for printing. “On its return, I attach it to the press and go to print,” she said. As she operates the machines, the raised design of the plate gets inked, then pressed into cotton rag stock, creating the “debossed” effect that gives letterpress printing its pleasing tactile quality. “Every job is a different and fun challenge,” she said. “Kind of like letterpress.”