It all began in the late 1970s when I apprenticed at the age of 17 to a tiny letterpress job shop in San Francisco. After working several years in commercial print shops throughout San Francisco & Seattle, I met my husband, Chris, in 1987 in Seattle while hunting for a press. While assisting Chris to complete a fine press poetry chapbook in 1992, we fell in love. Though we’d each established private presses with unique visions, in 1994 we combined our print shops, mingled our dingbats & moved from Seattle to the Skagit Valley where we began working collaboratively as Stern & Faye, Printers. For the next 14 years we published limited edition fine press poetry chapbooks & offered commercial letterpress & hand binding services to produce commission books, job work & ephemera.

In the winter of 2006 we lost Chris to cancer. I miss him tremendously. But with the generous help & loving support of many dear friends, I have preserved the heart of our shop & the spirit of our creative work together. I now continue to offer relief printing, hand bookbinding & letterpress printing services to a large community of artists, writers, graphic designers & others. It is my great pleasure to make this beautiful studio available to others through private instruction & by offering my services as master printer with over 30 years of experience to assist clients to create letterpress prints & unique book works.