DABF26 Curator's Workshop: Lettertexts

Bookings open 20 October alongside wider DABF26 programme announcement.

This hands-on collaborative workshop at The National Print Museum, Beggar’s Bush Barracks, opens out the theme of this year’s Dublin Art Book Fair, Colophon. The colophon is the space, often adjacent, for acknowledging all the other crucial structural relationships and support structures and material processes without which, of course, books as we understand them simply cannot come to be. Taking the theme as its cue, the workshop will bring participants together with book artists Clare Bell, Megan Gerard O’Connell and Mary Plunkett, as well as DABF26 Guest Curator Nathan O’Donnell, to contribute to a collective experimental publication. Using a synthesis of writing, composition, and letterpress print, participants will explore the processes, materials and relationships involved in gathering materials for the printed page.

This workshop is in collaboration with The National Print Museum. The National Print Museum celebrates the story of printing in Ireland and its impact. As custodian of the national collection of printing heritage, the museum preserves material objects, stories, and the craft of printing. This partnership between the National Print Museum and the Dublin Art Book Fair builds upon a rich sense of shared interests across both sites in the methods and processes of publishing and the production of knowledge through print.

Event Location: This is an off-site workshop at The National Print Musem. For further information on location and accessibility please visit their website. National Print Museum: Journey Through Printing History: https://www.nationalprintmuseum.ie/visit-us/accessibility/

Clare Bell is a designer and researcher who teaches at TU Dublin. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, she was recently awarded an International Society of Typographic Designers Certificate of Excellence (2024) for a project undertaken with Mark Porter, a former colleague at the Guardian newspaper. She has an ongoing collaborative practice with Nathan O’Donnell, making use of participatory and collective processes to produce publications and projects.

Megan Gerard O’Connell uses Letterform as both the source and the subject of her practice, as she produces original works and collaborates with artists and writers at her letterpress studio, Paris. Through her imprint Salt & Cedar (founded in Detroit, 2012), she has generated editions and spearheaded experiences for a diversity of readers and cocreators. Her works have been shown in venues and collected by libraries and archives internationally. As a life-long educator, she continues to share her passion for typography by offering the History of Type at School of Visual Art, NYC, and through book fairs, presentations and workshops.

Mary Plunkett is a graphic designer and printmaker who specialises in letterpress printing, with a particular interest in book arts. She enjoys collaborating with other artists, writers and designers and in 2015 set up her own workshop, the Belgrave Private Press. In May 2026 she was appointed Letterpress Learning Officer, at the National Print Museum, a new role which combines hands-on printing, creative design, education, and collections stewardship to support the sustainability of letterpress printing.

Dublin Art Book Fair (3–13 December 2026) is a centre for contemporary artist books offering a wide selection of artist publications and titles from creative, small and independent publishers, both Irish or international, to browse or buy. In conjunction with the Fair, DABF presents an programme of book launches, publishers talks, and workshops, offering ways to engage and gain insight into contemporary independent and arts publishing.

Dublin Art Book Fair 2026 is generously sponsored by our longstanding partner Henry J Lyons and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.