In some traditions, the Wayzgoose was a celebration given by master printers for their workers to mark the beginning of the season working by candlelight.
Hamilton's annual Wayzgoose conference gathers type-loving dreamers and doers from near and far to share their love of letterpress printing, typography, and design. A weekend filled with presentations, hands-on activities, social events, and camaraderie creates a lively atmosphere for making connections.
With the 2024 conference, Hamilton will have hosted 16 Wayzgoose events since its founding as a museum. Each conference has been commemorated with a poster custom-designed by a different letterpress printer willing to make the generous donation of talent and time to print conference posters for all Wayzgoose attendees. This time-traveling exhibit showcases the entire body of conference posters and the stories behind them.
In added recognition of the community created by each Wayzgoose conference, Hamilton began having attendees sign two copies of the conference poster: one for Hamilton archives, and the other for the poster designer/printer. This exhibit features the "community-signed" poster from Hamilton's archive, alongside the original poster.
The Wayzgoose Conference Poster exhibit opened to Wayzgoose attendees on November 8, and to the public on November 14. Keep scrolling to experience the online version of this exhibit!
Online Exhibit:
16 Years of Hamilton Wayzgoose Posters
Wayzgoose #1: 2009 - Celene Aubry, Run With Scissors, Please!
12.5 x 18 in / 31.7 x 48 cm
Celene printed this poster using her personal collection of wood type. Jim Moran described the "birth" of the first Wayzgoose this way: "In 2008... my brother Bill and I... were discussing with other printers what we hoped to do at the Hamilton museum... workshops, tours, various things. And Bill says, 'We're going to do a conference in our very first year.' Everybody in the room stopped and stared at Bill like, ‘No we are not ready to do that. That’s a lot of work.’ But we pulled it off… And so the following November, we did have a conference… We had about 75 or 80 people there."
Celene Aubry is the Director and Shop Manager at Hatch Show Print, the iconic letterpress print shop continuously operating since 1879 in Nashville, Tennessee. In between poster runs and whatnot, she also enjoys analog photography, making cyanotypes and van Dyke photoprints specifically.
Wayzgoose #2: 2010 - Rick Griffith assisted by Jane Bartmann and Craig Grabhorn, Matter Studio
19 x 26 in / 49 x 66 cm
This poster (which identified all of the 'Goose speakers by last name) was printed in the Hamilton museum’s print shop as a workshop at Wayzgoose Number 2, printed on 3 presses simultaneously—on whatever paper was hanging around...you might find it with an array of colors and effects.
Rick Griffith is a collagist, writer, letterpress printer, and designer based in Denver, Colorado. Along with his partner, Debra Johnson, he founded the graphic design consultancy, MATTER. Griffith was a visiting artist at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in 2022.
Wayzgoose #3: 2011 - Stacey Stern, Steracle Press
19.5 x 26 in / 49.5 x 66 cm
Stacey Stern printed the poster while at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. It was all done at the old museum location on the museum’s large Vandercook press. For the background she used scrap cutoffs of wood that she found. The paper was part of a scrap paper pile and may be Stardream.
Stacey Stern runs Steracle Press, a commercial letterpress in Chicago, IL owned and operated by women. They use traditional hand printing tools, equipment and techniques to create bespoke stationery goods for their clients.
Wayzgoose #4: 2012 - Brad Vetter, Hatch Show Print
Printed with Hatch "job" Gothic type on Cougar Natural paper,
13 x 22.75 in / 33.2 x 57.5 cm
This poster was created at Hatch Show print using the pressure printing technique alongside a little bit of Hatch's iconic wood type collection. This poster also utilized non-traditional materials like peg hole board/upside down type to make some fun patterns and textures. This print also features a carving of the extremely rare left-handed Vandercook carved by an unnamed intern—it was too fun not to use! This was one of my last projects at Hatch before leaving to start my own shop. Hatch and Hamilton have each been so instrumental in my letterpress career, and this poster pays homage to both!
Brad Vetter is a designer, letterpress printer, artist, and (occasional) educator. Brad began printing letterpress at the legendary Hatch Show Print in Nashville, TN. During his time at Hatch, he printed posters for some of his favorite bands, taught the interns and swept the floors. Armed with a printing press and some wood type, Brad went on to start his own shop, Brad Vetter Design in 2012. These days, Brad spends his time teaching workshops, graphic designing things, running an art space, printing posters, and working to build community in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Wayzgoose #5: 2013 - Tracy Honn
Printed with various Gothic wood, plastic, and metal type on Appleton Lightspecks Haze paper, 19.25 x 25 in / 49 x 64 cm
At Wayzgoose 2012 we learned that the museum had lost its lease. Hamilton didn't have a bunch of money, and paid nominal rent for a leaky, though genuine, part of the original Hamilton plant. The news hit like an all-hands-on-deck emergency. Museum friends quickly contributed funds toward the purchase of a building, and staff organized a volunteer-supported move. By April 2013 everything had been packed, loaded, moved to a new building, and put in place (if not actually unpacked). It was a huge undertaking and everyone involved felt like a member of a heroic team.
It was uncertain if the museum could manage to move and host an annual conference in the same year. Staff planned Wayzgoose 2013 anyway, and I was invited to design the poster. I dearly wanted to work in the new space and use Hamilton types. As it turned out the text I was setting was so long my only choice was to use types from the Globe collection--which were plentiful but shopworn. When it was typeset, I could barely fit the form to the page. I remember the tympan popped off with every other impression, and I nearly ran out of the black ink we'd set aside for the edition. I got my wish of printing in the new pressroom where I discovered that light bouncing off the press bed (from the overhead skylight) could put your eyes out. I loved it. The poster uses an excerpt from W.H. Auden's libretto for the opera Paul Bunyan by Benjamin Britten. The text beginning with “Wanted. The Lost”, from Paul's greeting to the lumberjacks, sums up the spirit of everyone who'd worked to reopen the museum.
Tracy Honn is a printing history educator, curator, and letterpress printer living in Madison Wisconsin. She is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she directed the Silver Buckle Press. In 2020 Honn co-curated Speaking of Book Arts: Oral Histories from UW-Madison held at the Chazen Museum of Art, and also co-founded the Quarantine Public Library. Honn was a Visiting Artist at Hamilton from 2012–2015, and is currently president of the executive board of directors for Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
Wayzgoose #6: 2014 - Paul Brown, Cutthroat Trout Press
Printed with various Hamilton Gothic fonts and borders on Mohawk Superfine paper, 14 x 21.5 in / 25.5 x 54 cm
Paul Brown is retired from Indiana University where he served as a faculty member teaching graphic design and letterpress. His work has been recognized in national and international publications and gallery exhibitions. Brown was a Visiting Artist at Hamilton from 2009–2012.
Wayzgoose #7: 2015 - Alex MacAskill, Hatch Show Print
Printed with Hatch wood and metal type, 22 x 27 in / 45 x 56 cm
Hatch Show Print is a working design and letterpress print shop that has been in operation since 1879. The staff leverage the shop’s wood and metal type and hand carved printing blocks of imagery and graphic elements to make posters for clients ranging from the NFL to Gillian Welch, and Dolly Parton to Guns N’ Roses. Incorporating the sensibilities of the twenty-first century into the traditions of a nineteenth-century print shop helps fulfill the mission of “preservation through production” in this digital age.
Wayzgoose #8: 2016 - Dan Elliot
Printed with Unit Gothic wood type and foundry metal News Gothic type on Mohawk Superfine paper, 17.75 x 23.5 in / 45 x 60 cm
Dan Elliot is a Professor in the School of Art and Design at East Carolina University. He spent the summer of 2017 at Hamilton as a Visiting Artist where he explored how graphic design has the power to affect change.
Wayzgoose #9: 2017 - Jennifer Farrell, Starshaped Press
Printed on Mohawk Strathmore Impress Soft White paper,
12 x 17.75 in / 30.5 x 45 cm
This poster pays homage to the once-standing and now gone iconic Hamilton Factory smokestack which, on the poster, continues to spew type out into the world.
Since 1999, Farrell has operated Starshaped Press. All work in the studio is done with metal and wood type, making Starshaped one of the few presses in the country producing commercial work while preserving the craft of antique typography. Jennifer Farrell was a Visiting Artist at Hamilton from 2019–2022.
Wayzgoose #10: 2018 - Stephanie Carpenter,
Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum
Printed with various Hamilton wood and metal type on Mohawk Superfine cover paper, 12 x 17.75 in / 30.5 x 45 cm
This poster celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Hamilton Wayzgoose. It showcases many of the museum’s spectacular fonts through use of the roman numeral X. It was printed in the pressroom at the museum.
Hamilton Program Officer Stephanie Carpenter is a graphic designer, letterpress printer, and book artist. At the museum she teaches letterpress and bookmaking workshops, serves as in-house printer, and more. Carpenter is a graduate of the graphic design Master Program at Indiana University.
Wayzgoose #11: 2019 - Casey McGarr, Inky Lips Press
Printed with Page type and others on French Durotone Newsprint offwhite paper,
12 x 17.75 in / 30.5 x 45 cm
Casey McGarr splits his time between the Inky Lips Letterpress and his work as a professor at Texas A&M. Since 2001 Inky Lips Letterpress has been designing and printing ephemera for a variety of local, national and international clients.
Awayzgoose #12: 2020 - Tom Walker, Ramicack Press
Designed using the Hamilton digital type faces Brylski, Arabesque, and Geometric and ornaments from the Star set.
In the middle of working with Hamilton on the designs for the 2020 Wayzgoose poster, the COVID pandemic shut down all public events. Tom Walker had to “go back to the whiteboard”! The conference would now need to be held completely online and he would need to create a digital poster for a virtual event. Instead of a printed letterpress poster, the poster was a virtual image that was viewed from a computer screen. The print in this exhibit was produced specifically for the exhibit.
Tom Walker is currently Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum’s 5th Visiting Artist.
Wayzgoose #13: 2021 - Allison Tipton with Matt Holben, Madeleine Page, and Katherine Stankewicz, MICA
Printed with wood type from MICA's Globe collection on Neenah Classic Crest smooth natural white #100 cover, 11.5 x 17 in / 29.1 x 43.2 cm
Wayzgoose #14: 2022 - Kim Miller, Tribune Show Print
Printed with Poster Gothic, Playbill, and Franklin Gothic wood type on Mohawk Superfine paper, 12 x 17.75 in / 30.5 x 45 cm
Tribune Showprint began as the Benton County Tribune in 1878. The original owners, A.L. Pittenger and Richard Stockholm opened the shop in Fowler, Indiana. After a long history of changes in owners and locations, Miller bought the shop and moved it to Muncie in May 2016.
Wayzgoose #15: 2023 - Eric Woods, The Firecracker Press
23.75 x 17.75 in / 60.5 x 45 cm
The 2023 Wayzgoose poster became its own lifeform, in the heat of the midwestern summer, as design and production took shape. The Firecracker Press used their workhorse, gothic type as inspiration to finish a new typeface that had been in-progress at the studio for years. That type became the focus of the poster, and opened the universe of color; a favorite realm. Before long, it became apparent that this wasn't really a poster, but a three-dimensional life of its own.
The Firecracker Press was founded by Eric Woods in 2002. He designs and prints posters, cards, packaging, and other letterpress goods.
Wayzgoose #16: 2024 - Katherine Fries with Ama Ocasio Alvarado, Baylee Bellamy, AJ Habing, and Hannah Parker; Hullabaloo Press
Printed with Konop and Arts Hamilton wood type; stars and star border Moore Wood Type; and Franklin Extra Condensed metal type on Neenah Royal Sundance ultra white, 12 x 17.75 in / 30.5 x 45 cm
