Stinehour Press to Close

The Stinehour Press of Lunenburg, Vermont, has announced that it will cease operations as of Monday. Stinehour has a longstanding reputation as one of the best quality book printers in America. The Press has won more than 50 awards for its books and has a long and prestigious client list.

Stinehour published many photography books over the years (by itself or in collaboration with other printers, designers, and binderies) and enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for the superlative quality of its productions. "Printed at the Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vermont" was for decades virtually the stamp of excellence in photography book printing and design. 

Founded by Roderick Stinehour in 1952, the Press was owned by the Stinehour family until it was sold to an Irish conglomerate in 1998. When the parent company decided to leave the printing business in 2001, Stinehour was purchased by a small group of its managers. The group now lacks the capital to modernize the press's physical plant and equipment sufficiently to enable it to compete for business.

A skeleton crew from among the current 21 employees will stay on to complete ongoing projects, and management says it will do all it can to help its highly skilled workforce to transition.

Focus magazine posted the entire Stinehour press release on the Large Format board, and here is a link to the article in the Burlington (VT) Free Press.

Really good reproduction of photographs in books has never been an automatic process, but requires care, attention, judgment, and craft. The artisans of Stinehour Press created many beautiful examples over the years, which remain as a testament to the company's devotion to the art of fine bookmaking.

____________________

Mike (Thanks to Oren)

Geoff Wittig comments: This is a genuine tragedy, the demise of one of the few genuinely artistic book printers in America. Stinehour was chosen by Joseph Blumenthal for his seminal works The Art of the Printed Book, and The Printed Book in America. Christopher Burkett, one of today's finest practicing color landscape photographers, worked at Stinehour Press in the late 1980s doing their 4-color offset printing.

Back in the 1920s–1930s, fine book printing was recognized as an art form in its own right. Truly gifted artisans like the Grabhorn brothers and Bruce Rogers printed books whose artistic qualities matched the words they carried. Stinehour Press was a living link to that artistic tradition, surviving in an age of giant publishing conglomerates grinding out multi-million copy first-printings of the latest Grisham thriller.

And now they're gone too.

Comments

[Carl Leonardi]

A very good explanation of why the have to shut down.
http://caledonianrecord.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=39010&TM=38503

[Rodger Kingston]

I am shocked to learn that Stinehour is closing. It's a bit like hearing that Tiger Woods is retiring from golf (he's not), or that Leica is going out of business (they're not - at least not this week).

What makes this news a bit more personal is that Stinehour is quite literally just now completing a book of mine: all they have left to do is to print the cover, and send it all off to the binder (check out "In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday" at Amazon.com, where it's been scheduled for release since February).

I was somewhat reassured by what you related in the third paragraph - "A skeleton crew from among the current 21 employees will stay on to complete ongoing projects" - and I am sure that this press, which has operated with so much integrity for so many years, will not leave anyone hanging out to dry.

I'm sorry that this beautiful book, which is also the catalog for an exhibition of works from my collection of 19th and early 20th century vernacular photographs at the Boston University Art Gallery, will be Stinehour's swan song as well.

Rodger Kingston

[Geoffrey Hiller]

Very sad new about the closing of Stinehour Press. I remember so many of their wonderful books when I began as a photographer

[Bill Mitchell]

Without making any overt political comments, I've gotta say that I've lived through one Depression, many, many Recessions, and 3 1/2 major US wars.
And to quote Bette Davis in "All About Eve," "Fasten your seatbelts, boys, it's gonna be a bumpy ride."

[Mike Johnston]

Rodger,
I already have your book pre-ordered!!

I agree it's very sad about Stinehour, although I have at least a kernal of suspicion that the current blizzard of publicity about the closing might be one last-ditch effort to find an investor to save the company. The money they need isn't THAT much in the land of investment capital (all too easy for me to say).

Lucky for your Collection to be one of the last. I'm awaiting the book.

Mike J.

[Tom Kaszuba]

Another painful loss of a legendary company whose superb quality oozed from every publication that it delivered. The end of western civilization can't be too far away as we continue down the path of the Walmartization of America.