Bonnie Thompson Norman's Profile

For Bonnie Thompson Norman books are a passion as well as a profession. She has been proprietor of The Windowpane Press, a letterpress printing and book arts studio, for over twenty years. Her mentor in printing has been Saul Marks of The Plantin Press, (Los Angeles) and she has taken workshops from artists and craftsmen such as Mark Andersson, Gary Frost, Daniel Kelm, Susan King, Hedi Kyle, Kitty Maryatt, Dominic Riley, Terry Rutherford and Claire Van Vliet. Bonnie works full-time as a hand bookbinder in a commercial bindery. Evenings and weekends, she teaches classes in printing and bookmaking. Her studio has many things found in a traditional print shop and bindery such as a variety of printing presses, hundreds of cases of type, a guillotine paper cutter, a Jacques board shear and, not the least, a wonderful library. Participants learn how to set type one letter at a time and hand feed pages into a press, or they learn the craft of binding a book by hand, or creating artist’s books. These opportunities and pleasures, not diminished or replaced by the convenience and miracle of the computer age, celebrate the venerable crafts of letterpress printing and book making in a manner both accessible and relevant today.

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