Meet Ben Sargent | Printer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ben Sargent and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ben, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
My own business–a one-man letterpress-printing shop–was sort of inevitable. My father and his brother got into letterpress printing when they were teenagers in 1926, at a time when it was promoted as a hobby for adolescent boys. Many years later–when I was 12 years old–Dad decided it was time to introduce my brother and me to the trade, and he gifted us with a printing outfit that included a table-top press and seven fonts of handset type. Dad himself got back into printing in a very busy way, and when he moved to Austin in 1993, he brought his shop–now including a full-size platen press and about 230 fonts of type–and I got back into printing myself. After my retirement from a 35-year career as an editorial cartoonist, I started printing pretty much full-time, and the shop has grown into a busy operation helping out numerous designers and clients with letterpress work.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Letterpress printing is a particularly satisfying trade in many ways. It is tactile, hands-on and even after working in it for more than 60 years, still a bit mysterious. As long as I have been a printer, I learn new tricks and techniques all the time, sometimes from colleagues, sometimes from the trial-and-error that is particularly characteristic of the old-time printing trade. Requires much patience and ingenuity, and makes the work very satisfying.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Austin is such a vibrant and diverse city, it’s hard to pin down just one or a few things; I think one would tailor such a visit to the visitor involved. (A beer or barbecue aficionado, for example, could certainly be occupied for a week and still have places to visit.) Another example would be a cartoonist friend of mine who has a scholarly interest in Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society era. He’s coming for a visit and will be hosted to the presidential museum and the LBJ Ranch, among other historic sites. Austin’s a fertile field for just about any visitor.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Since getting back into letterpress printing some 30 years ago, I have been so impressed by the designers with whom I work, and the other printers in Austin’s letterpress community, and am particularly proud that most of them are young women, I guess attracted by the creative possibilities and artisanal nature of the work. I also want to shout out to one of our most helpful friends, Rebecca Miller and her colleagues at Boxcar Press in Syracuse, where I and most of my colleagues get the photopolymer printing plates we frequently use in out work.

Website: www.sargentbrothersprinters.com

Instagram: instagram.com/sgtbros/