Volunteers at Work

The Museum of Printing owes a mountain of gratitude to the many volunteers who help the Museum fulfill its mission of preserving the rich history of the graphic arts, printing equipment, and printing craftsmanship. Museum volunteers refurbish presses, sort type & dingbats, organize our collection, digitize documents, plan & execute events, give tours, rebind books, run our social media, and help out in general. If you’d like to join our army of volunteers, send an e-mail to .

Mitch Ahern

Mitch Ahern teaches our popular fabric printing workshop and also helps us with press restoration. Mitch used our 1880s Acorn press recently to print a long textile banner using wood type. He is the Museum’s Director of Operations.

Nate Antczak

Nate Antczak is a master carpenter. He built the beautiful bookcases in the Romano Library and most of the wall display cases in the Museum. He recently expanded our typewriter display by adding another row for our vintage typewriters.

Stop by the Museum any Saturday from 10–4 and have a look at our expanded typewriter display.

Chris Bradford

Chris Bradford is one of our most mechanically inclined volunteers. He has quickly learned to run our Ludlow and Linotype for demonstrations, and he is doing a great job making sure our letterpress lab’s presses are in excellent working order.

Claire-Marie Brady

Claire-Marie Brady is a student at Wheaton College who is helping the Museum by inputting book information into the Romano Library database. Over 7,000 books are now in a searchable format, with at least another thousand to go.

Shoshana Burgett

Shoshana Burgett, a thought leader and industry consultant, joined the Museum’s board to help with fundraising and expanding our membership. She brings extensive experience in market research, market intelligence, on-demand printing, manufacturing, and personalization.

Peter Corriveau

When equipment and other donations arrive at the Museum, we can always count on Peter Corriveau to help get them into our garage to begin the process of sorting and refurbishment (where Peter also excels).

Nancy Fenton

Nancy Fenton, shown here sorting materials from the Schappler Typographic Ephemera collection, is also responsible for creating an index for the Penrose Annual.

(P.S. Here’s a link to more information on the Penrose Annual: https://www.museumofprinting.org/news-and-events/the-penrose-annual/)

Michele Gabrielson

Michele Gabrielson is helping the Museum by organizing related ephemera from the TJ Lyons collection of vintage wood and metal type.

Cliff Garber

Cliff Garber remembers his father’s print shop from his youth — the Intertype, the Ludlow, foundry type, the Miehle — but he entered the printing world as a typesetter in the middle of the phototype era. He stayed for digital type and went freelance when Macs and pixels changed the world. Cliff is still doing print in this great age of typography but also designs & produces websites. Coding websites reminds him of working on his beloved Quadex and checking the results on a “preview” screen. He thinks back to 1988, when his boss, looking at an early Postscript imagesetter, said “I’ll see you in the type museum.” In fact, he built & has maintained the Museum’s website for something like 20 years. He also designs and typesets our quarterly newsletter.

Barry Green

Barry Green provides tours for the U.S. Park Service at the Lowell National Historical Park. In his spare time he volunteers at the Museum sorting type, scanning, running the Ludlow, and offering tours.

Jim Hamilton

Museum of Printing volunteer Jim Hamilton helps coordinate the Museum’s social media efforts and he’s also on the board — not his mention another vital role as editor and contributor to our quarterly newsletter. For many years he was a printing industry analyst for InfoTrends. Early on he worked for Linotype.

Mary Ingram

Volunteer Mary Ingram is shown here working on a project in our Letterpress Studio to identify the type and label the drawers appropriately. These fonts are among the hundreds that Museum members can use in their own projects.

Ben Lambert

Museum of Printing volunteer Ben Lambert ran a large offset printing company in New England and loves to integrate his experience as he takes visitors on tours.

Steve Lyons

Steve Lyons has printing in his blood. He’s the grandson of T.J. Lyons, who put together a unique 19th century typeface collection presently housed at the Massachusetts College of Art. Steve spent his career in healthcare but upon retirement he started volunteering at print-related institutions, including the Museum of Printing.

Dan Maffeo

Dan has been in the printing industry his entire career. He served his country in the US Air Force 1970–1974 as a “printer.” He worked in production at several area Boston printers. He then moved to the vendor side of the industry and held senior executive positions at companies including Fujifilm (20 years), Agfa, Prisco, Superior Printing Ink, and Kodak.

Dan’s role at the Museum is fundraising through corporate sponsorships and increasing corporate and individual Museum memberships.

Christine Mistretta

Christine Elizabeth Mistretta is a “book surgeon.” She repairs and re-binds some of the Museum’s most valuable treasures. From type specimen books of the 1800s, to bound volumes of Printing Arts magazine, to first editions of classic printing books, she restores them for the present and the future. She also collects antique newspapers and posts them on her Facebook blog, “Below the Masthead.” (https://www.facebook.com/themastheadlibrary). Christine is the Museum’s Acting Executive Director.

Mindy Mitrano

Mindy Mitrano helps part-time with marketing and graphic design for the Museum. As a volunteer, she began by cataloguing books in our library and continues to donate beautiful cookies from her business, Mindy Paper Cookies (see www.mindypaper.com).

Carolyn Muskat

Artist & master printer Carolyn Muskat of Muskat Studios is on the Museum’s board and is responsible for our membership efforts. She has also taught workshops at the Museum including one on the art of stone lithographic printing. Many thanks Carolyn!

Mark Nystedt

Museum of Printing volunteer Mark Nystedt is a Naval atomic submarine veteran. He rides his motorized wheelchair to the Museum every Saturday and helps us out in the Bible Archive. Many thanks, Mark!

Kim Pickard

Kim Pickard teaches photography at Northern Essex Community College and has been involved with the Museum of Printing since its inception. He is famous for his photo cover art for years of New England Printer magazine covers. He has been photographing the Museum’s collection of posters for reproduction.

Richard Pitkin

Shown here sorting some pied type, Richard Pitkin is a retired engineer who is fascinated by the Museum's collection.

George Richardson

Volunteer George Richardson organizes Spanish-speaking group tours for the Museum of Printing. Many thanks, George!

John Rogers

John Rogers is an avid letterpress printer and has probably been responsible for moving almost every device the Museum has. Retired after a long career in the construction industry, he has volunteered in many roles since the 1990s, including as a board member.

Frank Romano

Museum President Frank Romano, RIT professor emeritus, is one of the most familiar faces at the Museum. Frank’s active involvement in all phases of the Museum’s work is reflected in our growing collection, our extensive library, our member’s newsletter, and our wide range of activities. Frank’s career started at the Linotype office in Brooklyn, New York. Many folks first became familiar with Frank through his publishing work, including the industry magazine TypeWorld. He has written dozens of books, including most recently a trilogy: History of the Linotype Company, History of the Phototypesetting Era, and History of Desktop Publishing. Frank is also a frequent video contributor to WhatTheyThink. He is a busy man and we are grateful for all of his volunteer work for the Museum!

Steve Ryan

At the Museum of Printing, volunteer Steve Ryan is the first person you see when you check in and the last person you see when you check out. Thank you, Steve!

Olga Shabalina, PhD

Olga Shabalina came to volunteer at the Museum of Printing through her PhD study at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign exploring evolution of media technologies and advertising design. Olga helps us with social media planning. She creates monthly content calendars, and you can occasionally see her at the Museum taking pictures for future posts.

Paul Singer

In addition to the forty-one typewriters that we currently have on display, we have even more in storage. Paul Singer, a typewriter aficionado, volunteered to organize them for us. He tagged them, put them into a database, and tested many of them. Wow, thanks Paul!

Billy Soucy

Billy Soucy has been a Museum volunteer for decades. He spent 60 years in the printing industry. He contributed to the book he is holding, Print Town: Brattleboro’s Legacy of Words, which tells the story of Brattleboro and its amazing print legacy.

Steve Vickers

For Volunteers at Work Wednesday, here is our newest volunteer, Steve Vickers, who has been organizing our John Trieste Library’s collection of type specimen books. This collection is unique in that it houses one of the largest collections of the specimen books produced by typesetting service bureaus. These were foundries that made type as well as printing & typesetting services that used type.

Andy Volpe

Andy Volpe helps the Museum in so many ways. Here he is sorting type, but he also helps Museum President Frank Romano catalog books for our library, with other volunteers he provides the muscle power to move new acquisitions to their rightful place, and, last but not least, he is our social media guru for Facebook.

Kit von Sück

Kit von Sück is meticulously sorting wood type into usable fonts. (We have an extensive collection of rare ornate types which will see their way onto members’ posters and projects over time. Kit spent over 40 years in the data processing industry and commutes from Vermont to help at the Museum. He was a valued and consistent presence at the Museum for many years and we are so grateful for his work.

We are very sorry to report that Kit died in April of 2022. Our condolences to his wife, children, family, and many friends.

Ed Welch

Ed Welch is one of the Museum’s newest volunteers. He repairs offset presses for a living, but as shown here, he is intrigued by our 1881 Cottrell steam-driven letterpress.

Bob Wislocky

Board member and Museum volunteer Bob Wislocky is a third generation typographer and owner of Newark Trade in Orange, New Jersey. His team designed and produced the Museum’s 2021 calendar, which highlights photos of natural letterforms as found in the world around us. They also created an amazing perpetual calendar, a historian’s delight, highlighting printing throughout the ages, which can be used for many years to come by rearranging the calendar display panels. Both calendars are available in our gift shop.