Elisheba Bagrow: Lichen & Pines Letterpress

written by Elisheba bagrow

published in Issue No. 9: November/December 2020

*Elisheba in her studio |* *image by Katie Wood, Crowheart Creative*

Whenever I enter the Flathead Valley, my body relaxes. My shoulders drop, my breathing becomes easier. I feel a grounding that flows through my body and centers me. The earth pulls me, and I want to embrace every tree, float in all the rivers, see every cloud.

I first came here a young, naive, slightly sheltered gal from Tennessee, not knowing half of what I was getting myself into. Just graduating from college and ready to dive straight into a season with the Montana Conservation Corps, I ate up the Wild West like I’d been starving my whole life. Camping, hiking, mountains, rivers, trail work, crosscut saws, beers, boys. I dove in hard. The adventures and experiences I’ve had fill countless journals, some held together by rubber bands and full of leaves and papers, grimy with dirt and maybe a little chalsa (cheese dip & salsa, an incomparable backcountry delight).

After 6 seasons with MCC and the Forest Service combined, I started to get an itch for something else. Art was always an escape for me and I took at least one art class, if not more, every year I was in school— all kinds; drawing, painting, photography, ceramics. While in the backcountry at Schafer Meadows Ranger Station, my main source of creativity was letter writing. I would make envelopes out of old magazines, with water & flour for glue. Drawing, stamping, finding odds and ends of leaves I could stuff in that wouldn’t anger the postal service and fit easily in the boxes packed out by the mule train.

One day I was reading, what book I don’t remember, but it must have been good because this idea came and hit me full force. I would open up a stationery store that had all the beautiful paper things, and it would provide everything anyone needed to write a letter, right down to the desks. It was a grand idea and the planning started right away. What artists we would carry, the kind of community the shop would create. I really wanted it to be in the Flathead Valley, a place that had become so supportive, where we have to be so creative in how we live because of how remote and unique this state is. There would be no internet, a place to get away from the hustle & grind. Slowly though, reality started to set in. This would take a large investment, much commitment, and business savvy I didn’t have at the time. Sometime during all of this dreaming, a friend suggested I make my own cards, and that sounded like the most impossible thing in the world.

*Image by* *Sami Clifford, Honeyseed Photography & Film*

But this paper dream kept me going, and finally, when my last season with the Forest Service ended, I got to really take a chance to see if, maybe, I could make my own cards. There is a school in Seattle that focuses on design skills, and they had a letterpress program that was two and a half months long and very affordable. I packed up most of what I had in my car and drove to Seattle.

It was love.

All this time I had spent on power points in college was graphic design. Noticing the branding and the typography was marketing and branding. All the hours fawning over antiques and the strong draw to work with my hands was letterpress.

So then the dream changed a little bit; it became a desire for a printing press, which had its own challenges. A breakup left me wondering about my personal life for a little bit, and with some job changes and unknowns, life eventually led me to Bozeman, Montana, where I got to learn from Molly with Ice Pond Press and Stephanie Newman at the university. During my time there, and completely unplanned, an opportunity came for me to buy my own press.

*Image by Katie Wood, Crowheart Creative*

Letterpress printing is a very old form, and for most of its lifetime, hasn’t been considered an art but a necessity. Since the early 15th century, the way we got all of our news and education was through printing, attributed to Johannes Gutenberg. He created a quick way to create moveable metal type and print large pages at once, combined with the work of a press. This process grew with technology until it was outgrown by the digital age, and there was a short period where it was mostly forgotten until the 1990s. Still, the artisan qualities began to emerge again within the wedding and stationery industries.

Choosing to buy the press was a difficult decision for me— the doubt I had of myself and the future was strong, and it was one of the larger commitments I had made in my life. It wasn’t just buying the press itself but then the act of using it, making something of it. Also, moving & storing it— my press weighs 2,000 pounds and does not fit through a standard door. A dear friend, Charis Young, was my strongest support, and she really believed in me. She told me countless times how capable I was and that all things could be figured out when they needed to be.

With her help and some magical timing, I made the decision to buy the press. It was scary and exciting and huge and doable all at the same time. About 4 months after buying the press, I was able to get her working, and by the end of the year had come up with Lichen & Pines Letterpress, an artisan printing service.

All of this has been over the course of 5 years, and there have been significant ups and downs, so much doubt of myself, my purpose, what can I offer those around me? The time I was living in Bozeman had some wonderful experiences in store, and I am so grateful for everything I learned and everyone I met there. But a part of the dream was having this craft up in the Flathead. During the fall of 2019, I moved back to the Flathead with a lot of unknowns and a hope for what could be created.

“Standing at my press, each time creating something new in an old way—this has become a home.”

— Elisheba Bagrow

Coming home has been a lot of being in this physical place that calls to me so strongly and also about coming home to myself. Cliche though it may sound, working towards this dream of stationery has brought all of my strengths & weaknesses into play and allowed me to stretch in ways I never would have imagined. There have been many times of sacrifice; running a solo women-led business is not all cute photos and beautiful things, although it is a lot of it and I am certainly ok with it. Learning such an old craft, there are times when I’m working where the clanky lull of the press, the smell of ink & mineral spirits draws me into this energy where I am aware of the timelessness of this skill. That I get to be a part of it, keeping it going into the future. Remembering that is worth all of the difficulty, 2,000 pounds and all.

This whole time the bulk of decisions have been made by me, yet countless people have helped me on this journey— from places to live and to keep my press, words of encouragement, buying of my wares. It can be overwhelming— the amount of love & grace given to me during this time of my life. Even now, as I write this, the awareness of how so many people have been there for me, for this dream, it is insurmountable. Home is also community, and while I did get to build my own studio this summer, it looks different than the original dream of a store. And while my personal physical home is still changing, the home inside myself and those around me is where I am glad to be.