PHOTOS: Printing the old fashioned way at Tin Can Valley Printing
- Updated
Craig Kotasek uses presses from the late 1800s to early 1900s he has rescued from closing newspapers to create posters and announcements at Tin Can Valley Printing, housed in a renovated granary at his family farm near Le Sueur.
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Craig Kotasek, owner of Tin Can Valley Printing Company, looks at a card he printed in his shop near his Le Sueur home. The shop used to be a soybean granary on his family’s farm.
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Craig Kotasek, owner of Tin Can Valley Printing Company, prints cards on his 1923 press in a shop near his Le Sueur home. The press is the newest one he owns.
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Some of the letterpress posters Kotasek has made at Tin Can Valley Printing.
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The first woodcuts Kotasek carved were a guitar and a banjo, which he used on music posters.
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Letters wait to be used in one of Tin Can Valley Printing’s posters.
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Craig Kotasek, owner of Tin Can Valley Printing Company, prints a card in his shop near his Le Sueur home.
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Some of the woodcuts Kotasek uses in his poster and card printing.
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Craig Kotasek, owner of Tin Can Valley Printing Company, works in his print shop, a remodeled soybean granary on his family farm near Le Sueur.
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A woodcut and resulting Valentine’s Day card.
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Cans of ink wait to be used.
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Red ink is ready to be used on a card at Tin Can Valley Printing Company.
As featured on
LE SUEUR — When artist Craig Kotasek saw an antique printing press firsthand at an exhibit in Minneapolis two decades ago, he noticed a resemblance to the agriculture equipment he’d grown up around as a kid living on a farm near Le Sueur.
