The Scarlet Letterpress

The Scarlet Letterpress is the book-arts makerspace for the Rutgers Initiative for the Book. We are dedicated to critical and creative exploration of the material word, where the literary arts meet the handicrafts of printing and bookmaking.

Located on the third floor of Murray Hall, we are open to students, faculty, staff and New Jersey residents. No experience is required.

The Letterpress offers hands-on experience with moveable type and hand-operated printing presses. We also make available typewriters, equipment for making paper and ink, and more analogue technologies of print making and bookhistory. Our collection of materials and technologies is ever-growing, so please stop by to see what’s new!

Get in touch if you would like to visit our workspace or talk about our resources.

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How to Use the Press

Drop in during our OPEN HOURS:

Wednesday 1-5pm
Thursday 1-5pm
Friday: 10a-12n & 1-5pm

Murray Hall Room 309, on the Rutgers-New Brunswick College Ave Campus.

No experience is necessary!

Roll on in, or ROLL US OUT

If you’re Rutgers faculty, we’d love to visit your class. We can introduce your students to letterpress printing, papermaking, bookbinding, inkmaking, relief-block printing, and more.

Find out more here.

So much of our students’ lives are virtual– but reading shouldn’t be. If you think the Letterpress can bring something to your class, please fill out our REQUEST FORM.

We can find a time to bring your class into the Scarlet Letterpress… or arrange for one of the Rutgers Book Initiative fellows to visit with equipment for a hands-on session.

Interested in co-hosting an event or putting together a workshop for your club? Reach out! We’d be happy to work with you.

Recent events include workshops with RAHSA, The Anthologist, the Rutgers Poetry Club, the Aro and Ace Alliance, Sigma Tau Delta (the English Honors society), and others.

Some events we have hosted in the past include workshops on block printing, poster-making, writing letters in quill and ink, printing poems and prose, making paper, or printing holiday cards.

GET IN TOUCH if you’d like to learn more!

Announcements

Open Hours: New and Improved!

Announcing our new, expanded open hours!

❦ Wednesday: 1-5pm

❦ Thursday: 1-5pm

❦ Friday: 10-12pm & 1-5pm

Come by! All are welcome, and training will be provided.

Classroom Visits: the SL Goes Mobile!

Want your class to visit the Scarlet Letterpress?

Rutgers faculty interested in a classroom visit or workshop can find out more here.

Fill out our Contact Form to arrange a class visit to the Scarlet Letterpress– or have one of our fellows visit you.

Workshops and Events

Check out some recent and upcoming events!

RIB at the Black Bibliography Project Conference

April 9

The Black Bibliography Project, a digital humanities initiative that aims to revitalize descriptive bibliography for African American literary studies, is hosting a conference at Rutgers from April 9-10. The proceedings will include two printing workshops at the Scarlet Letterpress and a panel presentation by a Book Initiative graduate fellow, Mitchell Edwards. Please register here if you would like to attend. There is no registration fee. Thursday & Friday April 9th & 10th | All Day Alexander Library | College Avenue, New Brunswick

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2nd Annual Medieval Materiality Event: Medieval Ink

April 22 @ 10:00 am

Join the Rutgers Book Initiative, the Early English Reading Group, and the Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium for our Second Annual Medieval Materiality Event! Come learn how to make medieval ink and hear live readings of Old and Middle English literature! The Scarlet Letterpress will demonstrate how to make medieval inks: black, blue, and red (and potentially more!). Anyone can stop by to participate in making medieval ink and writing with it on historic parchment and historical cloth paper. Email Novella Frasier (novella.r.frasier@rutgers.edu) to RSVP for a free lunch at noon among friends and medievalists! Wednesday April 22nd | 10:00 am - 5:00 pm Room 101A (The Lounge) Murray Hall | College Avenue, New Brunswick

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The Scarlet Letterpress at Rutgers Day 2026

April 25 @ 10:00 am

Visit our Rutgers Day table at Voorhees Mall, and take home a bookmark or postcard! Join us in printing historical materials associated with Bram Stoker's 1894 Gothic novel Dracula. Sunday April 25th | 10:00 am - 4:00 pm English Department Tent | College Avenue, New Brunswick

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Day of Performance: Something Printed This Way Comes

April 29

Puppets! Playbills! And Plenty of Performative Pandemonium! Professor Talley Murphy and the Murray-Hall Players will be performing Macbeth in and around Murray Hall. All are welcome– to perform, to witness, or to be made victims of the one-day regicidal celebration. To mark the event, the Scarlet Letterpress will be printing and distributing hand-made playbills, and reconstructing some Shakespearean stage-blood. Spot-remover will be provided! Wednesday April 29th | Times TBD In and around Murray Hall | College Avenue, New Brunswick

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BEGINNINGS

On Election Day, 2023, 120 people crowded into Rutgers’s new humanities makerspace, the Scarlet Letterpress, to learn to print on a vintage press, bind their own notebook, make typewriter art, or examine old books for clues to the people who owned them. Students, faculty, and community members each walked away with their own handmade copy of a poem by Evie Shockley, Distinguished Professor of English and a finalist for the National Book Award.