A Week in Purgatory!

Purgatory Pie Press has been producing limited editions for 20 years with non-stop creativity and infectious high spirits. Letterpress printer Dikko Faust and designer/editor Esther K. Smith collaborate with other artists and writers to make artists' books and prints.

Special visitors: Typographer Dikko Faust started Purgatory Pie Press as a grad student in Madison, Wisconsin, when he pied an overfilled case of 8 point Century Oldstyle his first day at Walter Hamady's letterpress class. Designer Esther Smith entered Purgatory when they made their own wedding invitation in 1980. Purgatory Pie Press has had retrospective exhibitions at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, HarperCollins Gallery, Harvard University and Smith College. Faust and Smith teach book arts, graphic design and letterpress at Center for Book Arts, Cooper Union, and City University of New York. So far, the press has collaborated with 100 artists and handsets real type, "not this newfangled virtual eyewash."

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