Go Behind the Scenes of Nashville's Hatch Show Print

Welcome to Hatch Show Print, a Nashville institution continuously in operation since 1879. Hatch Show Print is a printmaking and letterpress shop housed inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Nashville where today's printmakers use original press dies that are more than 100 years old.

The Hatch brothers, Charles and Herbert, were the sons of a Wisconsin printmaker who moved his family to Nashville in 1875. Four years later, the pair had their own print shop on Cherry Street (now known as Fourth Avenue), and their first job was a handbill advertising a speaking engagement by Henry Ward Beecher, a preacher and abolitionist who was passing through Nashville.

A June 1880 issue of the Nashville Banner newspaper — the original home of Hatch Show Print — advertised their services as "C.R. and H.H. Hatch Steam Book and Job Printers," offering to print "all manner of printing on the most reasonable terms."

Printing turned out to be a lucrative business for the Hatch brothers. There was no large format poster company in Nashville at the time they opened, but there was plenty of demand. Nashville was also within a day's drive of 75% of the US population and had easy transit access via rail and water. All things considered, it was a convenient place to get a poster printed, especially for passing artists and performers.

The shop eventually zeroed in on entertainment posters. Throughout the years, their clients have included Collective Soul, Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, Dolly Parton, Orville Peck and Aretha Franklin.

“It’s actually easier to name the people that we haven’t worked with enough quite frankly," says Celene Aubrey, director and shop manager at Hatch Show Print.

In the early 1900s, William T. Hatch was the first printer to add the faces of musicians onto the posters, which gave radio listeners of the Grand Ole Opry the first chance to see what their favorite musicians actually looked like since TV didn't become common in homes until the 1950s.

Hatch Show Print is best known for its brightly colored show posters, but when the shop opened, it did large format advertisements like billboards, murals and supermarket ads. It also printed letterhead for various businesses. Everything from design to execution has been done in-house since 1879.

The shop produces 600-800 show posters a year using the same print dies the Hatch brothers were using at the end of the 19th century.

While the shop takes full advantage of technology to communicate with clients, all posters are still printed by hand with press blocks. Everything is typeset and then photos of proofs are taken to provide customers with a digital proof to approve before the hand-printing process begins.

Hatch still uses the same late-1800s type and design concepts that worked almost 150 years ago. "You can typeset anything using what’s in the shop and it will look good," Celene said.

Hatch Show Print is home to thousands of print blocks stored in hundreds of drawers organized by width and height of each character.

As the decades passed, the printing press fell by the wayside in favor of offset printing (using metal plates and rubber blankets to mass produce copies) and later digital printing via inkjet or laser printer. But Hatch Print Show never wavered from the printing press technique and has managed to keep up with design needs of modern clients.

Today, if a project requires a new die, it is still hand-carved and added to the vast library of printmaking dies.

Technological advancement caused a separation between graphic design and print shops. Instead, printers became just printers while graphic design embraced a digital workspace. Now, graphic designers curious about the roots of the profession are finding their way back to the craft where it all started.

The "Wall of Wonder" is where letters that are more than 3 inches tall are kept, as well as the library of handcarved images. The library includes a bit of everything from cute hedgehogs to the image of a dancing couple used to advertise supper clubs in the 1930s. Dies are made from a variety of materials including wood, rubber and linoleum.

After more than 140 years worth of printmaking, the drawers and shelves around the shop are overflowing with nearly every die imaginable including cars, people, the Nashville skyline and music-themed dies.

When country music ensemble the Zac Brown Band needed a poster made for an appearance at the nearby Ryman Auditorium, his team went to Hatch Show Print with a few requests: black background, gold ink and the image of the Ryman somewhere on the poster.

The idea was for the background of the poster to be black, but the shop can do a variety of backgrounds with different patterns and colors.

The gold ink was custom mixed in-house, and it popped perfectly against the poster's black background.

After the poster was typeset and the Zac Brown Band approved the design, the gold ink was applied to the dies and the individual posters were put through the press to transfer the ink onto the black background.

While the ink comes in basic colors, Hatch Show Print can customize colors based on a customer's needs and can match brand colors for their corporate clients.