When I started Crown Point Press in 1962 my equipment was a typewriter and a hand-cranked etching press. I worked alone, printing the prints, helping artists make plates, and generally running things. Now, we have a staff of ten (Valerie Wade is our director), and we have computers, websites, and a gallery alongside our studio. Our business has been radically changed by technology, but our means of production has not changed. Artists still draw on copper plates, and printers still ink and print them by hand. In 1965 Richard Diebenkorn drew a woman’s face on a plate and fifty-one years later Jacqueline Humphries, working at the same table, integrated emojis with abstraction. She said she was thinking about the plates, not the prints. “The plates make the print.” Take a look at the list of artists we have published. They come to San Francisco from around the world to work with us in our historic building, built in 1922 for the San Francisco News. If you can, visit our gallery. We are across the street from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Besides creating and publishing etchings, we also publish the Magical Secrets instructional books for etching and hold summer workshops open to all. Archives of our prints are held by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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• Commercial & Digital Prints

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