THE AMERICAN SHOW PRINTER: CURTISS SHOW PRINT AND HATCH SHOW PRINT

Abstract

The history of American popular entertainment is documented in many different ways, ranging from materials such as correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, company records, oral-history interviews, and autobiographies that directly tell the story of performers, business managers, and behind-the-scenes crew, to material created by others and used for the promotion of the artists. In this second category fall the subjects of this article, two letterpress show printers, Curtiss Show Print of Continental, Ohio, and Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee. There were many show printers across the country from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, but the majority of these companies have closed, and their type and printing blocks have been discarded or dispersed. Although other printers altered their operations because of changes in technology that allow work to be done in less laborious ways, Curtiss Show Print and Hatch Show Print are still working and using the old equipment and techniques. Both Nyle Stateler, owner of Curtiss Show Print, and Jim Sherraden, manager of Hatch Show Print, realize the historical and research value of their show-print materials, and both have taken steps to save those materials, forging institutional relationships that are commitments for the preservation of their show-print work.