Proprietor Jessica Spring started setting cold type on a Compugraphic Editwriter 7300 phototypesetting machine (a huge console with a big green screen) in 1982 as an undergraduate English major, beginning a lifelong interest in typography. She learned to set real metal type in 1989 and has been a letterpress printer ever since, even inventing Daredevil Furniture for the composition of metal type in circles, curves and angles. Her work at Springtide Press—artist books, broadsides and ephemera—is included in collections around the country and abroad.
Collaborations are an important part of her work, either printing for other artists or teaching traditional letterpress printing, typography and book arts. She collaborates on the ongoing Dead Feminists series, and co-authored Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color. Spring has an MFA from Columbia College Chicago and teaches workshops virtually and in person around the country.

Collections

  1. Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
  2. Baylor University
  3. Boston Athenaeum
  4. Brigham Young University
  5. The British Library
  6. Brown University
  7. Cal Poly Kennedy
  8. Columbia College Chicago
  9. George Mason University
  10. Getty Research Library
  11. Indiana University
  12. Lafayette College
  13. Library of Congress
  14. Longwood University
  15. Marlboro College
  16. Michigan State
  17. Multnomah County Library (Portland, OR)
  18. The Newberry Library (Chicago, IL)
  19. Northwestern University
  20. Ohio Wesleyan
  21. Otis College
  22. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
  23. Queens College
  24. Ringling School of Art & Design
  25. San Jose State University
  26. SF–MOMA
  27. Savannah College of Art & Design
  28. School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  29. Scripps College
  30. Swarthmore College
  31. Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
  32. UCLA
  33. University of Alberta
  34. University of California–San Diego
  35. University of Delaware
  36. University of Denver
  37. University of Georgia
  38. University of Iowa
  39. University of Mississippi–Oxford
  40. University of Northern Texas
  41. University of Puget Sound
  42. University of South Carolina
  43. University of Southern California
  44. UCSB Fine Arts Library
  45. The University of the South
  46. University of Utah
  47. University of Vermont
  48. University of Washington
  49. University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
  50. University of Wyoming
  51. Wesleyan University
  52. Washington State Library
  53. Williams College
  54. Yale University