Charles Tabor loves nothing more than the sound of a letterpress.
It whirrs, then whispers, then clanks.
Tabor’s hands become part of the machine’s rhythm, transforming a stack of plain cards into a batch of freshly-printed artwork as they pass over the platen, a moving metal surface.
“It’s sort of mesmerizing, therapeutic,” Tabor said. “Maybe there’s something in the way that it requires you to focus that causes you to have to disconnect.”
Tabor works inside the print shop at Canterbury Shaker Village, where the disappearing art of pressing ink to paper clings to life. The machines Tabor runs are from the same era of equipment used by the town’s Shaker community from 1830 until 1900. Instead of printing seed packets, tincture labels and product catalogs, Tabor makes original artwork and guides letterpress workshops for interested members of the public.
The former musician, who has explored careers ranging from screenprinting to digital UI/UX design, never expected to find so much happiness behind the flywheel of the Golding Pearl machines. He still struggles to put an inky finger on what makes the process so meaningful to him.
“I can’t figure out why I love this so much,” Tabor said. “If I never heard another song again, fine. If I could never print again on these old machines, that would be a more difficult letting go. It does something inside of me that I’ve never experienced.”
Tools of tradition
Despite the rustic appearance of each machine and the cases of metal type lining the walls, printing on letterpresses holds a curious simplicity.
Tabor dabs blobs of ink, the consistency of toothpaste, onto a circular metal plate. When he spins the side flywheel and pumps the foot pedal, two long cylinders spur into action and roll the pigment into a thin, even layer.
At his work station behind the press, Tabor positions a collection of metal typeface pieces inside a cast-iron frame. He combines standardized blocks of wood, called reglets and furniture, with expandable pieces of metal called quoins, to create even horizontal and vertical pressure. Once the frame is set, Tabor positions it inside the chase of the press and lifts the engaging lever.
As Tabor slips a blank card on the flat surface, called the platen, the ink rollers brush over the raised lettering of the typeface. He continues to pump the foot pedal, which lifts the platen and presses his piece of paper into the chosen design. Ink imprints into the cotton substrate, leaving Tabor’s finished artwork dry and ready for immediate replication.
“These machines bring me a lot of joy,” Tabor said. “There’s something really amazing about connecting with these presses that lasted for a bit over a century…and that nowadays, are all being reused as tools for making artwork or the preservation of history.”
He likes to work on one of the presses sitting by the perpetually open door of the print shop. Whether staring at the sunny field outside or welcoming curious visitors who poke their head in, he finds long-awaited peace in its rhythm.
‘A wonderful endeavor’
Tabor went through most of his 20s and 30s searching for the mental clarity that letterpress gives him. He played banjo, keyboard and guitar in various bands, all the while harboring an appreciation for physical design.
“I’ve always loved mass-produced art, something you’re holding, something beautiful that you can hand to somebody else,” Tabor explained.
After overcoming addiction, Tabor moved from Ohio to the Capital Area. He spent nine months screenprinting at Teddy’s Tees in Concord, but it didn’t scratch his artistic itch. Tabor then toured other industrial printing companies in the area and worked for a bit at Concord Photo Engraving before moving to the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. A friend told him about the presses at Canterbury Shaker Village.
After spending one day with now 86-year-old master printer Jim MacNab in the shop, he realized he had found the right art form. That was in 2022, and he has worn a red Shaker Village work apron ever since.
Five months after starting work at the Canterbury shop, Tabor saw a tabletop press up for sale. He debated whether to take the personal plunge into printmaking, but Macnab encouraged him not to pass up on the deal. Soon after, Tabor bought a double cabinet of typeface. He squeezed both into his apartment hallway.
He started to dialogue with a friend about buying a printing company, Saturn Press, near Mount Desert Island in Acadia. The negotiations never panned out, so Tabor played with the thought of founding his own business instead. He picked out a name, Floodwaters Press, in commemoration of the floods that ravaged New England in 2023.
“There’s a lot of symbolism in flood waters,” Tabor said. “I think there’s something dangerous about them, something terrifying. But then there’s also spiritual connections and faith. You see how it cleanses, too, in a very powerful way.”
In 2024, Tabor finished his Adobe graphic design certification and started taking courses in UI/UX, a shorthand for user interface and user experience. Though he gained new skill sets, it wasn’t the kind of work he loved. Instead of finishing the last half of the six-month program, he decided to pour his full attention into Floodwaters Press. The company launched this past April.
“It’s been a wonderful endeavor, offering design services and print services like custom printing for customers, and offering my own product line of greeting cards,” Tabor said.
At the same time, he is working with Canterbury Shaker Village to offer a series of workshops where visitors can learn to set type and print cards. Tabor now shares his love of letterpress in both the lessons he gives and the items he sells from his shop.
The once-rigid limitations of metal typeface have given way to modernization. Artists can now design patterns on interfaces like Adobe Illustrator before transferring them to film and then to hard yellow photopolymer that mounts on an aluminum plate.
That allows Tabor to create and sell his own line of artwork and greeting cards through Floodwaters Press. Recently, he designed a sunshine-themed birthday card for a son of friends after finding inspiration in a damaged metal printing block at the Canterbury shop. The artist is particularly proud of his creativity and recycled design elements on the four-plate card.
“This has been one of my favorite projects not only because of who I’m making it for, but also the fun of taking something that historically was used for something, then finding that it’s ruined, but then preserving the essence of it and making it into something that’s viable,” Tabor said.
He’s found new ideas in the shop, and he’s also built new relationships. Macnab and Tabor bonded over their shared love of the forgotten art of letterpressing. They can now replace metal tracks or troubleshoot roller issues with mutual respect for the machines.
“There’s some essence of him being a mentor of sorts,” Tabor said. “I don’t know if I’ve known that with anybody, where we’re side by side with each other and just love the same thing together. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that with an older man in the way I’ve experienced that with Jim.”
Tabor’s printmaking workshops will run most Fridays, Sundays and Mondays through Thanksgiving. He continues to seek out visitors who share a curiosity for the art form.
“To find this obscure way of printing that’s almost forgotten, and probably most of the culture at large is almost forgotten,” he said, as he tapped his heart. “It just fits so perfectly in here.”
This story has been updated to reflect accurate terminology and mechanics of the letterpress.