Hanging out with Dikko Faust at Purgatory Pie Press in lower Manhattan. Purgatory Pie Press started in the late seventies and they are still creating museum quality handmade books using hand-set wood and metal type. Here Dikko is printing a three color job on his sturdy Vandercook machine. You might notice he is hand mixing the ink on the end there -- not work for a novice printer. Every movement he makes tells a story -- this has been his life for many many years, and he knows every aspect of printing from mark one. He refers to it as "a dance," where he trips the print lever, lets go of the floor pedal that holds the paper and swings it through the rollers across the inked plate. As each page runs through, he turns and hands it to me and I set it on a wooden rack for drying. The job is part of PPP's long postcard subscription; every single postcard is printed by hand with extreme care and expertise.

Faust also teaches advanced letterpress classes both at the Purgatory Pie Press studio and at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and is currently on a tour of the northwest with his wife and partner in crime, Esther K Smith. Esther is herself the author of How To Make Books, Magic Books & Paper Toys, and The Paper Bride, available from Random House. Together they are Purgatory Pie Press, and have been doing this for thirty years. They have exhibited at Harvard University, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smith College, San Francisco's Center for the Book, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tate, MOMA, Brooklyn Museum, Cooper-Hewitt, National Gallery of Art, The Getty, Corcoran, The Walker, and the San Francisco MOMA.

On this day we were listening to Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. Faust told me one of his favorite drummers was Andrew Andrew Cyrille. We agreed also on Han Bennink. When I brought up William Parker something shifted in his speech, and he said, I've played with him. You've played with William Parker? I said. Once, he said. Faust was talking about his trombone, which was propped up under his extensive cd collection. Who is this man? Letterpress expert AND trombonist? This is no ordinary print shop. Check out their inventory if you will. Instabooks, Purgatoys, yearly datebooks all in limited runs. Does Dikko Faust have a batmobile? I wouldn't be surprised.....