Lancaster Printers Fair Will Be Held Sept. 20

The .918 Club will provide just the "types" of things that interest people who enjoy letterpress printing.

The 12th annual Lancaster Printers Fair will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Willow Street Fire Company, 2901 Willow Street Pike.

There will be no admission charge and plenty of free parking. The event will be held rain or shine. Go to http://www.lancasterprintersfair.org for additional information.

There will be 21 vendors from all over the East Coast, .918 Club president Kenneth Kulakowsky said. "They're going to have a variety of equipment, supplies, and printed materials, and demonstrations all involved around print making," he added.

Hot dogs, Turkey Hill drinks, and Herr's potato chips will be sold.

"There's going to be a lot of old equipment that's going to be available for sale and supplies that we're selling out of our overages," said Kulakowsky. "We got a lot of donations, and after we get doubles and triples and so forth, we try to get it into the hands of hobby printers who would like to continue on with the printing process."

Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about the craft. "If they have if they want to find out what print making and letterpress printing is about, this is the place they should go," Kulakowsky said. "There are multiple approaches of the same process. And you always say it's not your grandfather's printing press anymore. The stuff that people are doing now with printing, it's not commercial printing. It's more all art and hobby printing and very specialized printing that's being done by individuals. And the commercial aspect of it has long gone for letterpress printing. But as far as the printing of personalized items and specialty items, it's still very viable."

The Printers Fair is the group's major fundraising project. "It used to help us fund the Letterpress Printing Center (on the campus of Thaddeus Stevens College), which was closed down in 2023," Kulakowsky said. "We're still trying to find a new location and not having much luck right now. That's why we're trying to raise more money so we can have money to reopen it. It was all hands-on activities for school kids."

The .918 Club previously hosted Scouts and school groups at the Letterpress Printing Center. "They wanted to know about the history, and we do the history of communications," Kulakowsky said. "If you have a group that's studying this the Civil War and you want to know how communications and printing was done in the Civil War, we can show them, and we used to be able to have them actually set up type and print." The museum located at 346 N. Queen St., Lancaster, is now big enough to do that.

The .918 Club's name is derived from the way printing was done. "The letters are put together one at a time to form words and sentences," Kulakowsky said. "Even though there are different sizes, they have one size that's the same for both pieces, and that's the height, which is 0.918 of an inch. So anything you have to use for printing, all the presses are set up that all the type is 0.918 of an inch high."

Sept. 18 (9/18) is National Letterpress Appreciation Day, so the fair is always held on the Saturday closest to that date, Kulakowsky explained.

The .918 Club meets the fourth Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. at The Studios in The Candy Factory, 342 N. Queen St., Lancaster, which is in the same complex as the museum.

Everyone is welcome, and the .918 Club is always seeking volunteers. "We're looking for people who want to help here in the museum," said Kulakowsky. We go through a couple orientations. We don't put them out by themselves, naturally. We will mentor them for a while to see until they feel comfortable about running the museum."

The museum is staffed by volunteers from noon to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays and on First Friday nights.