Violet Press & Paper

The story

In an age where paper goods are spat out by high-speed digital printers on thin glossy stock, stepping into 332 Main Street feels like stumbling into a quiet guild of industrial preservation. Founded by Vi (rhymes with sky), Violet Press is a working letterpress shop in Downtown Longmont centered around metal type, heavy ink, and iron machinery. The center piece of the studio floor is Dorothy, a Chandler & Price platen press salvaged from an old newspaper print shop in Kansas and retrofitted with a small motor to help run sheets hand-fed one by single one.

Instead of treating vintage letterpress as a museum relic behind velvet ropes, Vi and her brother Jake operate the space as a working production studio and hands-on workshop. In the introductory class, you aren't watching a demonstration from a distance—you stand at the type drawers, picking out individual lead letterforms, locking type into the chase, and operating the press to pull your own stack of custom stationery.

It is a gritty, tactile alternative to standard corporate team-builders or wine-and-canvas nights. Every step relies on pure physical mechanics—hand-mixing transparent ink colors, adjusting gauge pins for precise paper registration, and fine-tuning paper packing to feel the deep deboss impression left on heavy paper.