Kathryn Hunter began Blackbird Letterpress in 2003 in Lafayette, Louisiana, after she bought a Chandler & Price 8x12 letterpress. Since she couldn't move the 1100lb press into her apartment, her friends, Pudd & Leigh Anne, came to the rescue by offering their back room as a printshop. The type came from a printer outside of Chicago. Pudd & Kathryn flew up to to the Windy city and loaded a couple tons of type and cabinets and other goodies out of a basement into a moving truck, and drove it back to Bayou Country. A collection of vintage printers' cuts came from a long time printer in New Iberia, Louisiana. The printshop grew little by little in that back room until it was bursting the seams. Blackbird now works out of a mural-clad building in Baton Rouge, which they share with a cool metalworking business and two frisky guard dogs. The printshop continues to expand with the addition of a Vandercook SP15, C&P 10x15, Heidelberg Windmill 10x15, a 30" paper cutter, flat files, and lots of other tools.